"The Devil's Nine Questions", also known as "Riddles Wisely Expounded" is a traditional English song, dating at least to 1450. The first known tune was attached to it in 1719. In the earliest surviving version of the song, "Inter diabolus et virgo", "between the devil and the maiden" (mid-15th century), the "foul fiend" proposes to abduct a maiden unless she can answer a series of riddles. The woman prays to Jesus for wisdom, and answers the riddles correctly. In later versions, a knight puts a woman to test before he marries her (sometimes after seducing her), or a devil disguised as a knight tries to carry her off. The woman knows the answers and thus either wins the marriage or is free of the devil. In the latter case, the last riddle is often "what is worse than woman?" (The answer is the devil). A simpler example of seemingly impossible riddles is "The Riddle Song" in this section. The motif of riddling in folklore is very ancient, the stories of Oedipus and Samson giving two early examples. The melody is from Bertrand Bronson's Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, collected from Mrs. Rill Martin, Virginia, 1922. It is #1 in F. J. Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads and is #161 in The Roud Index of Folk Songs, and exists in several variants. It was printed (with a different tune) in The Burl Ives Song Book.