Johnie Cock

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Johnie Cock is Child ballad 114, existing in many variants.

[edit] Synopsis

Johnie Cock is warned by his mother that he's in danger and nevertheless goes poaching and kills a deer. He feeds his dogs and sleeps in the woods. A man, sometimes a palmer, betrays him to foresters. They attack him while he sleeps. Johnie wakes. Either he or his sister's son rebukes them for the attack, in most variants saying that even a wolf would not have attacked him like that. In most variants, he fights and kills all of them but one, whom he wounds.

Usually, he dies of his wounds while still in the wood. In one variant, he is laid low, and the king sends him a pardon.