story focuses on the exploits of the fiancé who must recover a golden ball in order to save his love from the noose. The incident resembles The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was. Other fairy tales in the English language, telling the story more fully, always retell some variant on the heroine's being hanged for losing an object of gold. "Gallows Pole" and commercial recordings Lead Belly version Folksinger Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, who also popularized such songs as "Cotton Fields" and "Midnight Special", first recorded "The Gallis Pole" in the 1930s. His haunting, shrill tenor delivers the lyrical counterpoint, and his story is punctuated with spoken-word, as he "interrupts his song to discourse on its theme". Country blues trio Koerner, Ray & Glover covered the Lead Belly version on their 1963 debut album Blues, Rags and Hollers, under the title "Hangman." John Jacob Niles versions Folk singer John Jacob Niles recorded the song at least twice: On March 25, 1940 as "The Maid freed from the Gallows", re-issued on the compilation album "My Precarious Life in the Public Domain", then in April 1960 in a more dramatic version as "The Hangman" on his album "The Ballads of John Jacob Niles". Odetta version Folksinger Odetta released the song under the title "The Gallows Pole" on her third album At the Gate of Horn in 1957 and on her live album Odetta at Carnegie Hall which was recorded on April 8, 1960. Judy Collins and Bob Dylan versions Judy Collins performed the song "Anathea" throughout 1963 (including a rendition at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival), credited to Neil Roth and Lydia Wood. It is thematically similar to the Hungarian "Feher Anna", even to the detail of the name of the brother (Lazlo). It appeared on her third album, Judy Collins 3, released in early 1964. Bob Dylan recorded a thematically similar "Seven Curses" in 1963, during the sessions for his The Times They Are A-Changin' album. The song tells a similar story, but from the point of view of the condemned's daughter. Here, it is not the maiden who is to be hanged but her father, for stealing a stallion. The woman offers to buy her father's freedom from the judge, who responds: "Gold will never free your father/ the price my dear is you, instead". The maiden pays the judge's terrible price but wakes