Compare The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman (annotated)

The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman is a classic English poem by the great English writers, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray. In some collection of old English Ballads there is an ancient ditty which I am told bears some remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem. I beg to quote the emphatic language of my estimable friend (if he will allow me to call him so), the Black Bear in Piccadilly, and to assure all to whom these presents may come, that "_I_ am the original." This affecting legend is given in the following pages precisely as I have frequently heard it sung on Saturday nights, outside a house of general refreshment (familiarly termed a wine vaults) at Battle-bridge.