The story of the _Horn_ in _Morte Arthur_ varies a good deal from this of our poet, as the reader will judge from the following extract:--"By the way they met with a knight that was sent from Morgan la Faye to king Arthur, and this knight had a fair horne all garnished with gold, and the horne had such a virtue, that there might no ladye or gentlewoman drinke of that horne, but if she were true to her husband: and if shee were false she should spill all the drinke, and if shee were true unto her lorde, shee might drink peaceably: and because of queene Guenever and in despite of Sir Launcelot du Lake, this horne was sent unto king Arthur." This horn is intercepted and brought unto another king named Marke, who is not a whit more fortunate than the British hero, for he makes "his qeene drinke thereof and an hundred ladies moe, and there were but foure ladies of all those that drank cleane," of which number the said queen proves not to be one (book ii. chap. 22, ed. 1632).
In other respects the two stories are so different, that we have just reason to suppose this ballad was written before that romance was translated into English.
As for queen Guenever, she is here represented no otherwise than in the old histories and romances. Holinshed observes, that "she was evil reported of, as noted of incontinence and breach of faith to hir husband" (vol. i. p. 93).
Such readers, as have no relish for pure antiquity, will find a more modern copy of this ballad at the end of the volume.
[For Percy's further notes on this ballad see the modernized version (book iii. No. 18). Professor Child prints the ballad in his _English and Scottish Ballads_ (vol. i. p. 1) with a full notice of the various forms of the story by way of introduction. He writes:--"No incident is more common in romantic fiction than the employment of some magical contrivance as a test of conjugal fidelity, or of constancy in love. In some romances of the Round Table, and tales founded upon them, this experiment is performed by means either of an enchanted horn, of such properties that no dishonoured husband or unfaithful wife can drink from it without spilling, or of a mantle which will fit none but chaste women. The earliest known instances of the use of these ordeals are afforded by the _Lai du Corn_, by Robert Bikez, a French minstrel of the twelfth or thirteenth century, and the _Fabliau du Mantel_ _Mautaillé_, which, in the opinion of a competent critic, dates from the second half of the thirteenth century, and is only the older lay worked up into a new shape (Wolf, _Ueber die Lais_, 327, sq., 342, sq.). We are not to suppose, however, that either of these pieces presents us with the primitive form of this humorous invention. Robert Bikez tells us that he learned his story from an abbot, and that 'noble ecclesiast' stood but one further back in a line of tradition which curiosity will never follow to its source."