Collectanea.
85
That if the former be the case, the line "Child Rowland to the dark tower came" is not, as Halliwell thought, from a ballad, and of separate origin from the other lines Edgar quotes.
(5) Child and many Shakespearean commentators are possibly in error in regarding the lines as a ballad snatch.
(6) That Shakespeare's memory was possibly aided by reason of the lines "Fe, fi, fo, fum," etc. being a folk-tale commonplace, or else a repeated stanza in the cante-fable of Child Rowland, and that from out of his own memory he quotes the lines with all that seeming delightful inconsequence with which he scatters such pieces of folk-lore and tradition throughout his plays.
Joseph J. MacSweeney.
