The person who adventured this dangerous personification of the Evil One
was never known. Whether some bold and benevolent individual,
interposing on behalf of the fatherless and famishing little ones, or
some being of a less substantial nature,--whether one of those immortal
intelligences of a middle order between earth and heaven, who at that
time were supposed to take pleasure in tormenting the vicious and
unworthy,--is more than our limited capacities can disclose.
It is said that on Easter Monday following the Black Knight died; and
though probably it had no connection with the circumstances we have
related, yet was his decease a sufficiently strange event in the
mysterious chapter of coincidences to warrant this memorial.
FAIR ELLEN OF RADCLIFFE.
In Percy's Relics, this ballad is called "The Lady Isabella's Tragedy,"
and is thus introduced:--
"This ballad is given from an old black-letter copy in the Pepys
Collection, collated with another in the British Museum, H. 263,
folio. It is there entitled, 'The Lady Isabella's Tragedy, or the
Step-Mother's Cruelty; being a relation of a lamentable and cruel
murther, committed on the body of the Lady Isabella, the only
daughter to a noble Duke, etc.
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