It tells how King John, covetous of the bishop of Canterbury's wealth, compels him on pain of death to answer three impossible questions.
[a] The ballad is classified as Aarne-Thompson folktale type "AT 922" of the shepherd substituting for the priest to answer the king's questions (For analogues, see Parallels below).
Enraged that the bishop (variant B, the abbot) of Canterbury maintained a household with many servants and riches paid by comfortable income, the king summons him to court, accuses him of treason, threatening him with beheading and the confiscation of income afterwards, unless the cleric can correctly answer three questions: The king sends the bishop off, allowing a thinking period of twenty days (B, three days).
[1] William Chappell ventured to guess that the ballad entitled "A defence for Mylkemaydes against the terme of Mawken" (before 1563-4), with the refrain "Down, a-downe, &c." might have been set to the same tune.
Like his father, John had a conflict with the Catholic Church, and refused to ratify the Pope's choice for the post of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton.
[citation needed] There is also the suggestion that the educated bishop (or abbot) is not as wise as the uneducated brother (or shepherd) - implying there is a "native wit" that is more valuable than school-book wisdom.
[citation needed] Child's variant A is the poem "Kinge John and Bishopp" taken from the Percy Folio manuscript.
Some are illustrated with woodcuts:[e] Child mentions that "there are at least two other broadsides extant upon the same subject," noted earlier by Bishop Percy.
There are minute discrepancies in detail, such as the king allowing three week grace period, demanding that his worth be guessed to within a half crown (rather than a penny).
[22] To encompass some of the oriental examples it seems, the précis of this motif index is more loosely stated; thus according to Marzolph AT 922 constitutes "Schwierige Fragen klug beantwortet (Difficult question answered wisely).
[g] In it, he compiled some 474 variants across to the Asian continent and spanning from German, Scandinavian to Turkic and Finno-Ugric languages; of these, 410 were oral, all dating to the 19th and 20th century.
[27] The Norwegian folktale Presten og klokkeren (Asbjornsen and Moe's Norske Folkeeventyr Ny Samling No.
In the folktale, a priest who is in the habit of shouting everyone else to swerve when he is travelling the road gets in trouble by behaving the same way before the king, who threatens to defrock him if he is not competent to answer them.
The priest condescendingly says a fool can stump ten wise men with questions, and refuses to the king, so his clerk makes the appearance.
[28][29][30][31] The short stories (novelle) of Franco Sachetti (died c. 1400) include a tale, in two forms, in which one of the questions concurs with the ballads: the Bernabò Visconti asks what is his worth, and the miller appraises him as no more than 29 deniers.
[32][34] The Speculum Morale (14th century) a later addition to Vincent of Beauvais's works records a story of a king who tried to relieve a wealthy wise man of some of his riches by stumping him with questions, only to be foiled.
"[36][38] By a more recent scholar, the ballad has been suggested as a possible source to "The Tale of the Three Questions" in John Gower (d. 1408)'s Confessio Amantis.
Here the King is guilty of envy, asks three difficult questions, and a distant relative of inferior standing comes to the rescue.
[42] Edward Francis Rimbault provided musical history on the tune (on this and other pieces in Percy's Reliques)[37] Chappell & Macfarren's work expands on the musicology.
"Shaking of the sheets" is sung by Steeleye Span on the album Tempted and Tried and by The City Waites on Ghosts, Witches and Demons (1995).
In 1891 Charles Josph Frost wrote a cantata "King John and the Abbot of Canterbury" based on the ballad.
[41][49] In 1750 The Gentleman's Magazine published a song called "A Ballad of New Scotland", to be sung to the tune "King John and the Abbot of Canterbury".