C. E. Nelson argued for a common archetype (from which all the ballads derive), composed around the year 1700 by "a literate individual of antiquarian bent" living in Berwickshire. Nelson starts off with a working assumption that the archetype ballad, "a not too remote ancestor of Greenwood['s version" was "purposefully reduced from the romance". What made his argument convincing was his observation that the romance was actually "printed as late as the seventeenth century" (a printing of 1652 existed, republished ), a fact missed by several commentators and not noticed in Murray's "Published Texts" section.