"The Bramble Briar", "The Merchant's Daughter" or "In Bruton Town" (Roud 18;[1] Laws M32) is a traditional English folk murder ballad that tells the story of how two brothers murder a servant who is courting their sister.
In other versions of the story, she severs the head of the unfortunate victim, and takes it back with her in a jar.
It is a re-telling of a 14th-century tale called Isabella and the Pot of Basil by Boccaccio although, according to The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs the story was probably not new even then.
[2] The English romantic poet, John Keats, adapted the story into a poem called Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.
[3] Pre-Raphaelite artist William Holman Hunt illustrated Keats's poem in his painting, Isabella and the Pot of Basil, in 1868.