Chapter IX: Binnorie

_Source_.--From the ballad of the “Twa Sisters o' Binnorie.” I have used the longer version in Roberts's _Legendary Ballads_, with one or two touches from Mr. Allingham's shorter and more powerful variant in _The Ballad Book_. A tale is the better for length, a ballad for its curtness.

_Parallels_.--The story is clearly that of Grimm's “Singing Bone” (No. 28), where one brother slays the other and buries him under a bush. Years after a shepherd passing by finds a bone under the bush, and, blowing through this, hears the bone denounce the murderer. For numerous variants in Ballads and Folk Tales, see Prof. Child's _English and Scotch Ballads_ (ed. 1886), i. 125, 493; iii. 499.