Ballad makers weren't picky about their rhymes. Less than perfect rhyme combinations such as again/ten, blame/nane, mair/before, king/nane, wrong/won, and pap/that abound in ballads. In fact, a ballad with perfect rhymes is automatically suspect; as balladry was originally an oral tradition, and dialects varied widely, the words didn't necessarily sound like their written-down version. A singer could make even the most unlikly of rhymes work well.