The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5) (part 9 of 9)

7. #F# was made up from several copies, one of which was the following, ‘John o Cockielaw,’ in Scott’s youthful handwriting, inserted, as No 3, at the beginning of a MS. volume, in small folio, containing a number of prose pieces, and beginning with excerpts from Law’s Memorials. Abbotsford Library, L. 2.

1 Johnny got up in a May morning, Calld for water to wash his hands: ‘Gar louse to me my good gray dogs That are tied with iron bands.’

2 When Johnny’s mother got word o that, For grief she has lain down: ‘O Johnny, for my benison, I red you bide at hame!’

3 He’s putten on his black velvet, Likewise his London brown, And he’s awa to Durrisdeer, To hunt the dun deer down.

4 Johnny shot, and the dun deer lap, And he wounded her on the side; Between the water and the brae, There he laid her pride.

5 He’s taken out the liver o her, And likewise sae the lungs, And he has made a’ his dogs to feast As they had been earl’s sons.

6 They eat sae much o the venison, And drank sae much of the blood, That they a’ then lay down and slept, And slept as they had been dead.

7 And bye there cam a silly ald man, And an ill death might he die! And he’s awa to the seven forresters, As fast as he can drie.

8 ‘As I cam down by Merriemas, And down aboon the scroggs, The bonniest boy that ever I saw Lay sleeping amang his doggs.

9 ‘The shirt that was upon his back Was of the holland fine, The cravat that was about his neck Was of the cambrick lawn.

10 ‘The coat that was upon his back Was of the London brown, The doublet . . . . Was of the Lincome twine.’

11 Out and spak the first forrester, That was a forrester our them a’; If this be John o Cockielaw, Nae nearer him we’ll draw.

12 Then out and spak the sixth, That was . forrester amang them a’; If this is John o Cockielaw, Nearer to him we’ll draw.

13 Johnny shot six of the forresters, And wounded the seventh, we say, And set him on a milk-white steed To carry tidings away.

4^4. Wi He there he (he written in place of another word). Wi He struck out.

6^3. Originally, That they lay a’ them down.

7^2. Originally, And a silly ald man was he.

11^2. was hed. hed struck out.

116. Adam Bell, etc.

P. 18. The Tell story in The Braemar Highlands, by Elizabeth Taylor, Edinburgh, 1869, pp. 99–103, is a transparent plagiarism, as indeed the author of the book seems to be aware.

117. A Gest of Robyn Hode.

P. 40 ff. Thomas Robinhood is one of six witnesses to a grant in the 4th of Richard II. (June 22, 1380–June 21, 1381). See Historical MSS Commission, Fifth Report, Appendix, p. 511, col. 2. The pronunciation, Robinhood (p. 41 a, note †), is clearly seen in the jingle quoted by Nash, Strange Newes, 1593, Works, ed. Grosart, II, 230: “Ah, neighbourhood, neighbourhood, Dead and buried art thou with Robinhood.”

Among the disbursements of John Lord Howard, afterwards Duke of Norfolk, occurs the following: “And the same day, my Lord paide to Robard Hoode for viij. shafftys xvj. d.” (This is Friday, Sept. 26, 1483.) Household Books of John Duke of Norfolk and Thomas Earl of Surrey, temp. 1481–1490, ed. by J. P. Collier, 1844, Roxburghe Club, p. 464. Collier, p. 525, remarks that “the coincidence that the duke bought them of a person of the name of Robin Hood is singular.”

The Crosscombe Church-Wardens’ Accounts (in Church-Wardens’ Accounts of Croscombe, Pilton, Yatton, etc., ranging from 1349 to 1560, ed. by Right Rev. Bishop Hobhouse, Somerset Record Soc. Publications, IV, 1890):

“Comes Thomas Blower and John Hille, and presents in xl s. of Roben Hod’s recones.” 147[6 7] (accounts for 147⅚), p. 4.

“Comys Robin Hode and presents in xxxiij s. iv d.” 148⅔ (for 148½), p. 10.

“Ric. Willes was Roben Hode, and presents in for yere past xxiij s.” 148¾ (for 148⅔), p. 11.

“Comys Robyn Hode, Wyllyam Wyndylsor, and presents in for the yere paste iij l. vj s. viij d. ob.” 148[6 7] (for 148⅚), p. 14.

“Robyn Hode presents in xlvj s. viij. d.” 149⅘ (for 149¾), p. 20.

And so of later years.

A pasture called Robynhode Closse is mentioned in the Chamberlains’ Accounts of the town of Nottingham in 1485, 1486, and 1500: Records of the Borough of Nottingham, III, 64, 230, 254. A Robynhode Well near the same town is mentioned in a presentment at the sessions of July 20, 1500 (III, 74), and again in 1548 as Robyn’s Wood Well (IV, 441). Robin Hood’s Acre is mentioned in 162⅘ (IV, 441). Robbin-hoodes Wele is mentioned in Jack of Dover, his Quest of Inquirie, 1604, Hazlitt, Jest-Books, II, 315. (The above by G. L. K.)

49 b. Italian robber-songs. “Sulle piazze romane e napoletane ognuno ha potuto sentire ripetere i canti epici che celebrano le imprese di famosi banditi o prepotenti, Meo Pataca, Mastrilli, Frà Diavolo:” Cantù, Documenti alla Storia universale (1858), V, 891.

53 a. Note on 243–47. The same incident in The Jests of Scogin, Hazlitt’s Jest-Books, II, 151. (G. L. K.)

53 f., 519 a. See also the traditional story how Bishop Forbes, of Corse, lent his brother a thousand marks on the security of God Almighty, in The Scotsman’s Library, by James Mitchell, 1825, p. 576. (W. Macmath.)

121. Robin Hood and the Potter.

P. 108 a. Compare the Great-Russian bylinas about Il’ja of Murom and his son (daughter). Il’ja is captain of the march-keepers, Dobrynja second in command. No man, on foot or on horse, no bird or beast, undertakes to pass. But one day a young hero crosses, neither greeting nor paying toll. One of the guards, commonly Dobrynja, is sent after him, but comes back in a fright. Il’ja takes the matter in hand, has a fight with the young man, is worsted at first, but afterwards gets the better of him. Wollner, Volksepik der Grossrussen, p. 115. (W. W.)

141. Robin Hood rescuing Will Stutly.

P. 186. Stanzas 19, 20. The boon of being allowed to fight at odds, rather than be judicially executed, is of very common occurrence in South-Slavic songs, generally with the nuance that the hero asks to have the worst horse and the worst weapon. A well-known instance is the Servian song of Jurišić Janko, Karadžić, II, 319, No 52, and the older Croat song of Svilojević (treating the same matter), Bogišić, p. 120 No 46. (W. W.)

155. Sir Hugh, or, The Jew’s Daughter.

P. 241. For the subject in general, and particularly ‘el santo niño de la Guardia,’ see further H. C. Lea, in The English Historical Review, IV, 229, 1889.

242 b, fourth paragraph. See J. Loeb, Un mémoire de Laurent Ganganelli sur la calomnie du meurtre rituel, in Revue des Etudes juives, XVIII, 179 ff., 1889. (G. L. K.) For the other side: Il sangue cristiano nei riti ebraici della moderna sinagoga. Versione dal greco del Professore N. F. S. Prato, 1883. Henri Desportes, Le mystère du sang chez les Juifs de tous les temps. Paris, 1889.

246 b. #E# 5. The following stanza was inserted by Motherwell as a variation in a copy of his Minstrelsy afterwards acquired by Mr P. A. Ramsay:

She went down to the Jew’s garden, Where the grass grows lang and green, She pulled an apple aff the tree, Wi a red cheek and a green, She hung it on a gouden chain, To wile that bonnie babe in.

249 ff. A version resembling #H-M#, #O# has been kindly communicated by Mr P. Z. Round.

* * * * *

Written down April, 1891, by Mrs W. H. Gill, of Sidcup, Kent, as recited to her in childhood by a maid-servant in London.

1 It rained so high, it rained so low, . . . . . . . In the Jew’s garden all below.

2 Out came a Jew, All clothëd in green, Saying, Come hither, come hither, my sweet little boy, And fetch your ball again.

3 ‘I won’t come hither, I shan’t come hither, Without my school-fellows all; My mother would beat me, my father would kill me, And cause my blood to pour.

4 ‘He showed me an apple as green as grass, He showed me a gay gold ring, He showed me a cherry as red as blood, And that enticed me in.

5 ‘He enticed me into the parlour, He enticed me into the kitchen, And there I saw my own dear sister, A picking of a chicken.

6 ‘He set me in a golden chair And gave me sugar sweet; He laid me on a dresser-board, And stabbed me like a sheep.

7 ‘With a Bible at my head, A Testament at my feet, A prayer-book at the side of me, And a penknife in so deep.

8 ‘If my mother should enquire for me, Tell her I’m asleep; Tell her I’m at heaven’s gate, Where her and I shall meet.’

156. Queen Eleanor’s Confession.

Pp. 258 ff.

* * * * *

‘Earl Marshall,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 4 b, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of William Laidlaw.

1 The queen of England she is seek, And seek and like to dee; She has sent for friers out of France, To bespeek hir speed[i]ly.

2 The king has cald on his merrymen, By thirtys and by threes; Earl Marshall should have been the formest man, But the very last man was he.

3 ‘The queen of England s[h]e is seek, And seek and like to dee, And she has sent for friers out of France, To bespeek hir speedyly.

4 ‘But I will put on a frier’s weeg, And ye’l put on another, And we’ll away to Queen Helen gaits, Like friers both together.’

5 ‘O no, no,’ says Earl Marshall, ‘For this it must not be; For if the queen get word of that, High hanged I will be.’

6 ‘But I will swear by my septer and crown, And by the seas so free, I will swear by my septer and crown, Earl Marshall, thow’s no dee.’

7 So he has put on a frier’s wig, And the king has put on another, And they are away to Queen Helen gaits, Like friers both together.

8 When they came to Queen Helen gaits, They tirled at the pin; There was non so ready as the queene herself To open and let them in.

9 ‘O are you two Scottish dogs?— And hanged you shall be— Or are [you] friers come out of France, To bespeek me speedily?’

10 ‘We are not two Scottish dogs, Nor hanged we shall be; For we have not spoken a wrong word Since we came over the sea.’

11 ‘Well then, the very first that ever I sind I freely confess to thee; Earl Marshall took my maidenhead Below yon greenwood tree.’

12 ‘That is a sin, and very great sin, But the Pope will pardon thee;’ ‘Amene, Amene,’ says Earl Marshall, But a feert, feert heart had he.

13 ‘The very next sin that ever I sind I freely confess to thee; I had [poisen] seven years in my breast To poisen King Hendry.’

14 ‘That is a sin, and very great sin, But the Pope forgiveth thee;’ ‘Amene, Amene,’ says Earl Marshall, But a feert, feert heart had he.

15 ‘The very next sin that ever I sind I freely confess to thee; I poisened one of my court’s ladies, Was far more fairer than me.’

16 ‘That is a sin, and a very great sin, But the Pope forgiveth thee;’ ‘Amene, Amene,’ says Earl Marshall, But a feert, feert heart had he.

17 ‘Do you see yon bony boys, Playing at the baw? The oldest of them is Earl Marshall’s, And I like him best of all.’

18 ‘That is a sin, and very great sin, But the Pope forgiveth thee;’ ‘Amene, Amene,’ says Earl Marshall, But a feert, feert heart had he.

19 ‘Do ye see two bony [boys], Playing at the baw? The youngest of them is King Hendry’s, And I like him worst of all.

20 ‘Because he is headed like a bull, And his nose is like a boar;’ ‘What is the matter?’ says King Henry, ‘For he shall be my heir.’

21 Now he put off his frier’s wig And drest himself [in] red; She wrung hir hands, and tore hir hair, And s[w]ore she was betraid.

22 ‘Had I not sworn by my septer and crown, And by the seas so free, Had I not sworn by my septer and crown, Earl Marshall, thowst have died.’

4^2. yet.

4^3. will.

14^2. they.

19^2. is Earl Marshall’s.

158. Hugh Spencer’s Feats in France.

III, 276, note †. I had remarked that this ballad was after the fashion of Russian bylinas. Professor Wollner indicates especially the bylina of Dobrynja and Vasilij Kazimirović, which in a general way is singularly like ‘Hugh Spencer.’ In this very fine ballad, Vladimir is in arrears with his tribute to a Saracen king, and appoints Vasilij his envoy, to make payment. Vasilij asks that he may have Dobrynja go with him, and Dobrynja asks for Ivanuka’s company. (Compare #B#.) Dobrynja beats the king at chess and at the bow (which corresponds to the justing in the English ballad); then follows a great fight, the result of which is that the Saracen king is fain to pay tribute himself. Wollner, Volksepik der Grossrussen, pp. 123–125.

Other examples of difficult feats done in foreign lands, commonly by comrades of the hero, in Karadić, II, 445, 465, Nos 75, 79; also II, 132, No 29; and the Bulgarian Sbornik, II, 130, 1, 132, 3. (W. W.)

161. The Battle of Otterburn.

Pp. 294, 520. St George Our Lady’s Knight. ‘Swete Sainct George, our ladies knyght,’ Skelton, ‘Against the Scottes,’ v. 141, Dyce, I, 186; ‘Thankyd be Saynte Gorge our ladyes knythe,’ in the ‘Ballade of the Scottysche Kynge,’ p. 95 of the fac-simile edition by J. Ashton, 1882 (where the passage is somewhat different). In his note, II, 220, to the poem ‘Against the Scottes,’ Dyce remarks that St George is called Our Lady’s Knight “in a song written about the same time as the present poem, Cott. MS. Domit. A. xviii. fol. 248.” This appears to be the song quoted from the same MS. by Sir H. Ellis, Original Letters, First Series, I, 79:

‘Swet Sent Jorge, our Ladyes knyte, Save Kyng Hary bothe be day and nyȝth.’

In his Chorus de Dis, super triumphali victoria contra Gallos, etc., Skelton speaks of St George as Gloria Cappadocis divæ milesque Mariæ, v. 13; Dyce, I, 191. See also John Anstis, The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, London, 1724, I, 122; II, 27, 48 f. (G. L. K.)

299. #C.# First published in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 27. 1^{3,4} there read The doughty earl of Douglas rode Into England, to catch a prey; 31^1, Yield thee, O yield thee, etc., and 31^3, Whom to shall I yield, said, etc.

For his later edition of ‘The Battle of Otterburn,’ Scott says he used “two copies ... obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest.” James Hogg sent Scott, in a letter dated September 10 (1802?), twenty-nine stanzas “collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind,” and subsequently recovered, by “pumping” his “old friends’ memory,” other lines and half lines out of which (using the necessary cement, and not a little) he built up eleven stanzas more, and these he seems to have forwarded in the same letter. These two communications are what is described by Scott as two copies. They will be combined here according to Hogg’s directions, and the second set of verses bracketed for distinction.

The materials out of which #C# was constructed can now easily be separated. We must bear in mind that Scott allowed himself a liberty of alteration; this he did not, however, carry very far in the present instance. 1–13, 15–19, 23 are taken, with slight change or none, from Hogg’s first “copy” of verses; 24, 26–29 from the second; 30–35 are repeated from Scott’s first edition. 14 is altered from #A# 16; 20=Hogg 21^{1,2} + Scott; 21=Hogg 22^1 + Hogg 35^{2–4}; 22=Hogg 23^{1,3} + Scott; 25=Hogg 28^1 + #B# 8^{2–4}. Scott did well to drop Hogg 9, and ought to have dropped Hogg 8.

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 132, Abbotsford, stanzas 1–24, 35–38, 40; the same, No 5, stanzas 25–34, 39. Communicated to Scott, in a letter, by James Hogg.

1 It fell about the Lammas time, When the muir-men won their hay, That the doughty Earl Douglas went Into England to catch a prey.

2 He chose the Gordons and the Graemes, With the Lindsays light and gay; But the Jardines wadna wi him ride, And they rued it to this day.

3 And he has burnt the dales o Tine And part of Almonshire, And three good towers on Roxburgh fells He left them all on fire.

4 Then he marchd up to Newcastle, And rode it round about: ‘O whae’s the lord of this castle, Or whae’s the lady o ‘t?’

5 But up spake proud Lord Piercy then, And O but he spak hie! I am the lord of this castle, And my wife’s the lady gaye.’

6 ‘If you are lord of this castle, Sae weel it pleases me; For ere I cross the border again The ane of us shall die.’

7 He took a lang speir in his hand, Was made of the metal free, And for to meet the Douglas then He rode most furiously.

8 But O how pale his lady lookd, Frae off the castle wa, When down before the Scottish spear She saw brave Piercy fa!

9 How pale and wan his lady lookd, Frae off the castle hieght, When she beheld her Piercy yield To doughty Douglas’ might!

10 ‘Had we twa been upon the green, And never an eye to see, I should have had ye flesh and fell; But your sword shall gae wi me.’

11 ‘But gae you up to Otterburn, And there wait dayes three, And if I come not ere three days’ end A fause lord ca ye me.’

12 ‘The Otterburn’s a bonny burn, ’Tis pleasant there to be, But there is naught at Otterburn To feed my men and me.

13 ‘The deer rins wild owr hill and dale, The birds fly wild frae tree to tree, And there is neither bread nor kale To fend my men and me.

14 ‘But I will stay at Otterburn, Where you shall welcome be; And if ye come not ere three days’ end A coward I’ll ca thee.’

15 ‘Then gae your ways to Otterburn, And there wait dayes three; And if I come not ere three days’ end A coward ye’s ca me.’

16 They lighted high on Otterburn, Upon the bent so brown, They lighted high on Otterburn, And threw their pallions down.

17 And he that had a bonny boy Sent his horses to grass, And he that had not a bonny boy His ain servant he was.

18 But up then spak a little page, Before the peep of the dawn; ‘O waken ye, waken ye, my good lord, For Piercy’s hard at hand!’

19 ‘Ye lie, ye lie, ye loud liar, Sae loud I hear ye lie! The Piercy hadna men yestreen To dight my men and me.

20 ‘But I have seen a dreary dream, Beyond the isle o Sky; I saw a dead man won the fight, And I think that man was I.’

21 He belted on his good broad-sword And to the field he ran, Where he met wi the proud Piercy, And a’ his goodly train.

22 When Piercy wi the Douglas met, I wat he was right keen; They swakked their swords till sair they swat, And the blood ran them between.

23 But Piercy wi his good broad-sword, Was made o the metal free, Has wounded Douglas on the brow Till backward he did flee.

24 Then he calld on his little page, And said, Run speedily, And bring my ain dear sister’s son, Sir Hugh Montgomery.

25 [Who, when he saw the Douglas bleed, His heart was wonder wae: ‘Now, by my sword, that haughty lord Shall rue before he gae.’

26 ‘My nephew bauld,’ the Douglas said, ‘What boots the death of ane? Last night I dreamd a dreary dream, And I ken the day’s thy ain.

27 ‘I dreamd I saw a battle fought Beyond the isle o Sky, When lo, a dead man wan the field, And I thought that man was I.

28 ‘My wound is deep, I fain wad sleep, Nae mair I’ll fighting see; Gae lay me in the breaken bush That grows on yonder lee.

29 ‘But tell na ane of my brave men That I lye bleeding wan, But let the name of Douglas still Be shouted in the van.

30 ‘And bury me here on this lee, Beneath the blooming brier, And never let a mortal ken A kindly Scot lyes here.’

31 He liftit up that noble lord, Wi the saut tear in his ee, And hid him in the breaken bush, On yonder lily lee.

32 The moon was clear, the day drew near, The spears in flinters flew, But mony gallant Englishman Ere day the Scotsmen slew.

33 Sir Hugh Montgomery he rode Thro all the field in sight, And loud the name of Douglas still He urgd wi a’ his might.

34 The Gordons good, in English blood They steepd their hose and shoon, The Lindsays flew like fire about, Till a’ the fray was doon.]

35 When stout Sir Hugh wi Piercy met, I wat he was right fain; They swakked their swords till sair they swat, And the blood ran down like rain.

36 ‘O yield thee, Piercy,’ said Sir Hugh, ‘O yield, or ye shall die!’ ‘Fain wad I yield,’ proud Piercy said, ‘But neer to loun like thee.’

37 ‘Thou shalt not yield to knave nor loun, Nor shalt thou yield to me; But yield thee to the breaken bush That grows on yonder lee.’

38 ‘I will not yield to bush or brier, Nor will I yield to thee; But I will yield to Lord Douglas, Or Sir Hugh Montgomery.’

39 [When Piercy knew it was Sir Hugh, He fell low on his knee, But soon he raisd him up again, Wi mickle courtesy.]

40 He left not an Englishman on the field . . . . . . . That he hadna either killd or taen Ere his heart’s blood was cauld.

35^3. swords still.

Hogg writes:

“As for the scraps of Otterburn which I have got, they seem to have been some confused jumble, made by some person who had learned both the songs which you have, and in time had been straitened to make one out of them both. But you shall have it as I had it, saving that, as usual, I have sometimes helped the measure, without altering one original word.”

After 24: “This ballad, which I have collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind, seems hitherto considerably entire; but now, when it becomes most interesting, they have both failed me, and I have been obliged to take much of it in plain prose. However, as none of them seemed to know anything of the history save what they had learned from the song, I took it the more kindly. Any few verses which follow are to me unintelligible.

“He told Sir Hugh that he was dying, and ordered him to conceal his body, and neither let his own men nor Piercy’s know; which he did, and the battle went on headed by Sir Hugh Montgomery, and at length” (35, etc.).

After 38: “Piercy seems to have been fighting devilishly in the dark; indeed, my relaters added no more, but told me that Sir Hugh died on the field, but that” (40).

In the postscript, Hogg writes:

“Not being able to get the letter away to the post, I have taken the opportunity of again pumping my old friends’ memory, and have recovered some more lines and half lines of Otterburn, of which I am become somewhat enamourd. These I have been obliged to arrange somewhat myself, as you will see below; but so mixed are they with original lines and sentences that I think, if you pleased, they might pass without any acknowledgment. Sure no man will like an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious. After [24] you may read [25–34]. Then after [38] read [39].”

Of Almonshire [3^2] Hogg writes: “Almon shire may probably be a corruption of Banburgh shire, but as both my relaters called it so, I thought proper to preserve it.”

Andrew Livingston writes to Scott, Airds by Castle Douglas, 28th April, 1806, Letters, I, No 183: “My mother recollects seven or eight verses of the ballad of ‘The Battle of Otterburn’ different from any I have seen either in the first and second editions of the Minstrelsy or in Percy’s Reliques.... In several parts they bear a great resemblance to the copy in the first edition of the Minstrelsy.”

162. The Hunting of the Cheviot.

P. 306. Fighting on or with stumps, etc.

Ketilbjörn’s foot is cut off at the ankle-joint. He does not fall, but hobbles against his enemies and kills two of them before his strength gives out: Gull-þóris Saga, c. 18, ed. Maurer, p. 75. Gnúpr fought on his knees after his foot was off: Vemundar Saga ok Vígaskútu, c. 13, Rafn, Íslendinga Sögur, II, 266. Sörli kills eleven men with his club, hobbling round on one foot and one stump (apparently, though Sörli and Hárr are perhaps confused in the narrative): Göngu-Hrólfs Saga, c. 31, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur, III, 329, Ásmundarson, III, 214 (wrongly, 114). Már fights when both his hands are off: Gull-þóris Saga, c. 10, Maurer, p. 59. Compare the exploits of Sölvi after both his hands have been cut off: Göngu-Hrólfs Saga, c. 31, Rafn, F. S., III, 331, Ásmundarson, III, 215 (wrongly 115); and Röndólfr’s performances after one of his hands has been cut off and all the toes of one foot, in the same saga, c. 30, Rafn, p. 324 f., Ásmundarson, p. 211 (111); and Göngu-Hrólfr’s, who has had both feet cut off while he slept, the same saga, c. 25, Rafn, pp. 307–9, Ásmundarson, 197 f. The Highlander at the battle of Gasklune had his predecessor in Ali, in the same saga, c. 30, Rafn, p. 324, Ásmundarson, p. 210 (110). (G. L. K.)

167. Sir Andrew Barton.

P. 338 b. Gold to bury body. So in the story of Buridan and the Queen of France, Haupt’s Zeitschrift II, 364. (G. L. K.)

In Apollonius of Tyre: puellam in loculo conposuit . . . et uiginti sestertios ad caput ipsius posuit, et scripturam sic continentem: Quicumque corpus istud inuenerit et humo tradiderit medios sibi teneat, medios pro funere expendat; et misit in mare. C. 25, ed. Riese, p. 29. Cf. Jourdains de Blaivies, 2222–33, K. Hofmann, Amis et Amiles und Jourdains de Blaivies, 1882, p. 168 f. (P. Z. Round.)

‘The Sonnge of Sir Andraye Barton, Knight,’ English Miscellanies, edited by James Raine, Surtees Society, vol. lxxxv, p. 64, 1890; from a MS. in a hand of the sixteenth century now in York Minster Library.

This very interesting version of Sir Andrew Barton, the editor informs us, was originally No 25 of a ballad-book in small quarto. It came recently “into the possession of the Dean and Chapter of York with a number of papers which belonged in the seventeenth century to the episcopal families of Lamplugh and Davenant.” If, as is altogether probable, there were copies of other ballads in the same book in quality as good as this, and if, as is equally probable, no more of the book can be recovered, our only comfort is the cold one of having had losses. In several details this copy differs from that of the Percy MS., but not more than would be expected. The English sail out of the Thames on the morrow after midsummer month, July 1, and come back the night before St Maudlen’s eve, or the night of July 20, stanzas 17, 74. In stanza 42 Barton boasts that he had once sent thirty Portingail heads home salted— ‘to eat with bread’! We read in Lesley’s History that the Hollanders had taken and spoiled divers Scots ships, and had cruelly murdered and cast overboard the merchants and passengers; in revenge for which Andrew Barton took many ships of that country, and filled certain pipes with the heads of the Hollanders and sent them to the Scottish king. (Ed. 1830, p. 74; ed. 1578, p. 329.) The eating is a ferocious addition of the ballad. Several passages of this copy are corrupted. A throws light upon some of these places, but others remain to me unamendable.

1 It fell against a midsomer moneth, When birds soonge well in every tree, Our worthë prence, Kinge Henrye, He roode untoe a chelvellrye.

2 And allsoe toe a forrest soe faire, Wher his Grace wente toe tak the ayre; And twentye marchantes of London citie Then on there knees they kneelled there.

3 ‘Ye are welcome home, my rich merchantes, The best salers in Christentie!’ ‘We thanke yowe; by the rood, we are salers good, But rich merchantes we cannot be.

4 ‘To France nor Flanders we der not goe, Nor a Burgesse voy[a]ge we der not fare, For a robber that lyes abrod on the sea, And robs us of oure merchantes-ware.’

5 King Henry was stout, and turnd hime about; He sware by the lord that was mickell of might, ‘Is ther any rober in the world soe stoute Der worke toe England that unrighte?’

6 The merchantes answered, soore they sight, With a woefull harte to the kinge againe, ‘He is one that robes us of our right, Were we twentie shippes and he but one.’

7 King Henrye lookte over his shoulder agayne, Amongst his lordes of hye degree: ‘Have I not a lord in all my land soe stoute Der take yon robber upon the sea?’

8 ‘Yes,’ then did answeer my lord Charls Howwarde, Neare the kinge’s grace that he did stande; He saide, If your Grace will give me leave, My selfe will be the onlie man,

9 ‘That will goe beat Sir Andrewe Barton Upon the seas, if he be there; I’le ether bringe hime and his shippe toe this lande, Ore I’le come in England never more.’

10 ‘Yow shall have five hundrethe men,’ saide Kinge Henrye, ‘Chuse them within my realme soe free, Beside all other merriners and boys, Toe gide the great shippe on the sea.’

11 The first of all the lord up cald, A noble gunner he was one; This man was thre score yeares and ten, And Petter Symond height his name.

12 ‘Petter,’ quoeth he, ‘I must saill the sea, Toe looke an enemye, God be my speede! As thowe arte ould, I have chossen the Of a hundreth gunners to be the headde.’

13 He said, If your Honor have chossen me Of a hundreth gunners to be the headd, On your mayn-mast-tre let me be hangd, If I miss thre mille a pennye breed.

14 Then next of all my lord up cald, A noble boweman he was ane; In Yorkeshier was this gentleman borne, And William Horsley height his name.

15 ‘Horsley,’ saide he, ‘I must saill the sea, To meete an enemee, thow must knowe; I have oft [been] told of thy artillorye, But of thy shootinge I never sawe.

16 ‘Yet fore thye drawght that thowe dost drawe, Of a hundreth bowemen to be the heade;’ Said Horsley then, Let me be hang[d]e, If I mis twelve score a twelt penc[e] breed.

17 Yea, pickmen more, and bowmen both, This worthë Howward tooke to the sea; On the morowe after midsomer moneth Out of Temes mouth saillëd he.

18 Hee had not sailled one daie but three, After his Honor tooke to the sea, When he mette with one Harrie Huntte, In Newcastell ther dwelte hee.

19 When he sawe the lion of England out blaisse, The streemers and the roose about his eye, Full soonne he let his toppe-saill fall; That was a tooken of curtissie.

20 My lord he cald of Henry Huntte, Bad Harry Hunt both stay and stande; Saies, Tell me where thy dwellinge is, And whome unto thye shippe belonnges.

21 Henrye Hunt he answered, sore he sight, With a woefull hart and a sorrowefull minde, ‘I and this shippe doth both belonge Unto the Newe Castell that stands upon Tyne.’

22 ‘But haist thowe harde,’ said my lord Charles Hawward, ‘Wher thowe haist travelled, by daie or by night, Of a robber that lies abroode on the sea, They call him Sir Andrewe Barton, knight?’

23 ‘Yes,’ Harye answered, sore he sight, With a woefull hart thus did he saye; ‘Mary, overwell I knowe that wight, I was his pressoner yesterdaie.

24 ‘Toe frome home, my lord, that I was boune, A Burgess voyage was boune so faire, Sir Andrewe Barton met with me, And robd me of mye merchantes-waire.

25 ‘And I ame a man in mickle debte, And everye one craves his owne of mee; And I am boune to London, my lorde, Fore toe comepleanne to good King Henrye.’

26 ‘But even I pray the,’ saies Lord Charlles Howeerd, ‘Henrye, let me that robber see, Where that Scoott hath teyne from the a grootte, I’le paye the back a shillinge,’ said hee.

27 ‘Nay, God forbid! yea, noble lord, I heare your Honor speake amisse; Christ keepe yowe out of his companye! Ye wott not what kine a man he is.

28 ‘He is brase within and steelle without, He beares beames in his topcastle hye, He hath threscore peece on ether side, Besides, my lorde, well mande is he.

29 ‘He hath a pennis is dearelye deighte, She is dearelye deighte and of mickell pried; His pennis hath ninescorre men and more, And thirtene peece on ethere side.

30 ‘Were yowe twentie shippes, my lorde, As your Honor is but one, Ethere bye lerbord or by lowe That Scootte would overcome yowe, everye one.’

31 ‘Marye, that’s ill hartinge,’ saies my lord Charlls Howeward, ‘Harye, to welcome a stranger to the sea; I’le ether bringe thatt Scootte and his shippe toe England, Or into Scootteland hee [’s] carrye me.’

32 ‘Well, since the matter is soe flatte, Take heed, I’le tell yowe this before; If yowe Sir Andrewe chance toe borde, Let noe man toe his topcastle goe.

33 ‘Excepte yowe have a gunner goode That can well marke with his eye; First seeke to gette his pennis sunk, The soonner overcome his selfe may bee.

34 ‘Yesterdaie I was Sir Andrewe’s pressonner, And ther he tooke me sworne,’ saide hee; ‘Before I’le leave off my serving God, My wild-maide oeth may brooken be.

35 ‘Will yowe lend me sexe peece of ordenance, my lord, To carye into my shippe with mee? Toe morrowe by seven a clocke, and souner, In the morne yowe shall Sir Andrewe see.

36 ‘Fore I will set yowe a glasse, my lord, That yowe shall saille forth all this night; Toe morrowe be seven a clocke, and souner, Yow’s se Sir Andrewe Barton, knight.’

37 Nowe will we leave talkinge of Harry Hunt; The worthye Howwarde tooke to the sea; By the morne, by seven a clocke, and souner, My lord hee did Sir Andrewe see.

38 A larborde, wher Sir Andrewe laye, They saide he tould his gold in the light; ‘Nowe, by my faith,’ saide my lord Charlles Howwarde, ‘I se yonne Scootte, a worthë wight!

39 ‘All our greatt ordienance wee’ll take in; Fetch downe my streemers,’ then saide hee, ‘And hange me forth a white willowe-wande, As a marchante-man that sailles by the sea.’

40 By Sir Andrewe then mye lord he past, And noe topsaille let fall would hee: ‘What meanes yonne English dogg?’ he saies, ‘Dogs doe knowe noe curtissie.

41 ‘For I have staid heare in this place Admirall more then yearës three; Yet was not ther Englisheman or Portingaill Could passe by me with his liffe,’ saide he.

42 ‘Once I met with the Portingaills, Yea, I met with them, ye, I indeed; I salted thirtie of ther heades, And sent them home to eate with breade.

43 ‘Nowe by me is yoen pedler past; It greves me at the hart,’ said hee; ‘Fetch me yoen English dogs,’ he saide, ‘I’le hange them al on my mayn-mast-tree.’

44 Then his pennis shotte of a peec[e] of ordenance; The shootte my lord might verye well ken, Fore he shootte downe his missonne-mast, And kild fifteen of my lordë’s men.

45 ‘Come hether, Peter Simond,’ said my lord Charles Howward, ‘Letes se thi word standis in steede; On my mayn-mast-tre thowe must be hunge, If thowe misse three mill a penney breed.’

46 Petter was ould, his hart was bould; He tooke a peece frome hie and laid hir beloue; He put in a chean of yeard[ë]s nine, Besides all other greate shoote and smalle.

47 And as he maide that gune to goe, And verye well he marke[d] with his eie, The first sight that Sir Andrewe sawe, He sawe his penis sunke in the sea.

48 When Sir Andrewe sawe his pennis sunke, That man in his hart was no thinge well: ‘Cut me my cabells! let me be lousse! I’le fetch yoen English dogges me selne.’

49 When my lord sawe Sir Andrewe from his anker loouse, Nay, Lord! a mighty man was hee: ‘Let my drumes strike up and my trumpetes sound, And blaise my banners vailliantlie.’

50 Peter Simon’s sonne shoote of a gune; That Sir Andrewe might very well ken; Fore he shoott throughe his over-decke, And kild fifttie of Sir Andrewe’s men.

51 ‘Ever alack!’ said Sir Andrewe Barton, ‘I like not of this geare,’ saide hee; ‘I doubt this is some English lorde That’s comed to taik me on the sea.’

52 Harrye Hunt came in on the other side; The shoote Sir Andrewe might very well ken; Fore he shoote downe his misson-mast, And kild other fortye of his men.

53 ‘Ever alacke!’ said Sir Andrewe Barton, ‘What maye a trewe man thinke or saye? He is becomed my greatest enymye That was my pressonner yesterdaie.

54 ‘Yet feare no English dogges,’ said Sir Andrew Barton, ‘Nor fore ther forse stand ye [in] no awe; My hands shall hange them all my selfe, Froe once I let my beames downe fawe.

55 ‘Come hether quick, thou Girdon goode, And come thou hether at my call, Fore heare I may noe longer staye; Goe up and let my beames down fall.’

56 Then he swarmd up the maine-mast-tree, With mickell might and all his maine; Then Horsley with a broode-headed arrowe Stroke then Girdon throughe the weame.

57 And he fell backe to the hatches againe, And in that wound full sore did bleed; The blood that ran soe fast from hime, They said it was the Girdon’s deed.

58 ‘Come hether, thow James Hamelton, Thowe my sister’s sonne, I have noe moe; I’le give the five hundreth pound,’ he saide, ‘Ife thowe wilt toe the top[ca]saille goe.’

59 Then he swarmd up the mayn-mast-tree. With mickell might and all his mayne; Then Horsley with a broode-arrowe-head Tooke hime in at the buttuke of the utuer beame.

60 Yet frome the tre he would not parte, But up in haist he did prossed; Then Horsley with anotheir arrowe Strooke then Hamelton throughe the heade.

61 When Sir Andrewe sawe his sister’s sonne slayne, That man in his heart was nothinge well: ‘Fight, maisters!’ said Sir Andrewe Barton, ‘It’s time I’le to the top myselne.’

62 Then he put on the armere of prooffe, And it was guilt with gold full cleare: ‘My brother John of Barton,’ he saide, ‘Full longe against Portingaill he it weare.’

63 When he had on that armore of prooffe, Yea, on his bodye he had that on, Marry, they that sawe Sir Andrewe Barton Said arrowes nor guns he feared none.

64 Yet Horsley drewe a broode-headed arrowe, With mickell might and all his mayne; That shaft against Sir Andrewe’s brest Came back to my lord Howwarde’s shippe agayne.

65 When my lord he sawe that arrowe comme, My lord he was a woefull wight; ‘Marke well thine ame, Horsley,’ he saide, ‘Fore that same shoote I’le make the knight.’

66 ‘Ever alacke!’ said Horsley then, ’ For howe soe ever this geare doth goe, If I for my service louse my heade, I have in this shippe but arrowe[s] towe.’

67 Yet he mar[k]t hime with the one of them, In a previe place and a secrete pert; He shoote hime in at the left oxtere, The arrowe quiett throughe [the] harte.

68 ‘Feight, maisters!’ said Sir Andrewe Barton, ‘I’se a lettle hurt, but I ame not slayne; I’le lie me downe and bleede a whill, I’le risse and feight with yowe agayne.

69 ‘Yet feare noe English dogges,’ said Sir Andrewe Barton, ‘Nore fore there force stand ye [in] noe awe; Stick stifeley to Sir Andrewe Barton, Feight till ye heare my whisstill blowe.’

70 The could noe skill of the whisstill heare; Quoeth Hary Hunt, I der lay my heade, My lord, yowe maye take the shippe when yowe will, I se Sir Andrewe Barton [’s] deade.

71 And then they borded that noble shippe, On both the sides, with all ther men; Ther was eighten [score] Scootes a live, Besides all other was hurte and slayne.

72 Then up my lord tooke Sir Andrewe Barton, And of he cutt the dead man’s head: ‘I would forsweare England for twenty years, Toe have the quicke as thowe art deade.

73 But of he cut the dead man’s heade, And bounde his bodye toe borden tre, And tiede five hundreth angels about his midle, That was toe cause hime buried toe bee.

74 Then they sailled toe Ingland agayne, With mickle merienes, as I weane; They entred Englishe land agayn On the night before S^{te} Maudlen even.

75 Toe mete my lord came the kinge an quen, And many nobles of hie degree; They came fore noe kind of thinge But Sir Andrewe Barton they would see.

76 Quoth my lord, Yowe may thanke Allmighty God, And foure men in the shippe with mee, That ever we scaipt Sir Andrewe [’s] hands; England had never such an enniemie.

77 ‘That’s Henrye Hunt and Petter Symon, William Horsley and Petter Symon [’s] sonne; Reward all thoesse fore there paynes, They did good service att that time.’

78 ‘Henry Hunt shall have his whistle and chean, A noble a daie I’le give him,’ quoeth hee, ‘And his coustome betwexte Trent tid and Tyne, Soe longe as he doth use the sea.

79 ‘Petter Symon shall have a crowne a daie, Halfe a crowne I’le give his sonne; That was fore a shoott he sente Sir Andrew Barton with his gune.

80 ‘Horsley, right I’le make the a knight, In Yorkshiere shall thy dwellinge be; My lord Charlles Howwarde shall be an earle, And soe was never Howward before,’ quoth he.

81 ‘Everye Englishe man shall have eightten pens a daie That did mainetayne [t]his feight soe free, And everye Scotchman a shillinge a daie Till they come atte my brother Jamie.’

In eight-line stanzas.

1^4. chelvellrye. chevachie? or some sort of vallie?

3^1. Yea.

4^2. farre.

10^3. and blause.

10^4. give the the.

14^4. height: was interlined.

16^2. thou’s be?

19^2. sterne. For streemers, see 39^2, and B 33^2.

23^3. weight.

28^3. threscoree.

29^4. sidde.

30^1. Were yare. Perhaps thare.

30^3. by lowe. Cf. #A# 29^2:==hull?

32^3. you and.

38^4, 65^2. weight.

44^4. xv^{th}.

45^2. the word.

46^3. ninee.

47^3. sawee.

52^1. sidde.

54^2. yea no.

55^1. hether, drinke.

58^2. noe more.

58^4, 66^2. goee.

59^3. Probably broode-headed arrowe, as in 56^3, 64^1.

59^4. utuer==outer? bane? But I do not understand.

62^4. Portingaill they weare: cf. #A# 59^4.

72^3. xx^{th}.

73^3. 5: angles.

75^1. Toe might.

78^2. An noble.

79^4. gunee.

81^4. Jamie, Jamiee.

168. Flodden Field.

P, 351 b, 12. See an account of the exhumation of a corpse wrapped in a hide without a covering of lead, in Archæologia, I, 34. (G. L. K.)

169. Johnie Armstrong.

P. 367, note †. A new-born child thrown into the water by its mother tells her that she has lost Paradise: ‘L’Enfant noyé,’ La Tradition, V, 116.

172. Musselburgh Field.

P. 378. Is this the song quoted by Sir Toby in Twelfth Night, II, 3 (and hitherto unidentified), “O, the twelfth day of December”? (G. L. K.)

173. Mary Hamilton.

Pp. 379–97. #I# a was first printed in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, II, 163. (Read in 1^2, on her; in 3^2, hand.) The copy principally used was one furnished by Sharpe, which was not #A a#, and has not so far been recovered. Besides this, “copies from various quarters” were resorted to. (Half a dozen stanzas are found in #G#, but #G# itself is very likely a compilation). Eight copies from Abbotsford are now printed for the first time. Two of these may have been in Scott’s hands in time to be used, two were certainly not, and for the others we have no date.

There is only one novel feature in all these copies: in #U# 13 Mary’s paramour is a pottinger. The remark that there is no trace of an admixture of the Russian story with that of the apothecary, page 383, must therefore be withdrawn.[151] Mary in this version, as in #E#, #F#, #Q#, #T#, #U#, #V#, #Y#, is daughter of the Duke of York.

#X#, like #E#, #F#, has borrowed from No 95: see 13–15.

* * * * *

Finlay sent Scott, March 27, 1803, the following copy of ‘The Queen’s Marie,’ as he “had written it down from memory:” Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 87, Abbotsford. Stanzas 10, 9, 12 appear in the second volume of the Minstrelsy, 1802, p. 154, with the variation of a couple of words, as ‘The Lament of the Queen’s Marie’ (here #I b#). Perhaps Finlay adopted these three stanzas into his copy. Stanzas 1, 3, 6, 8, with very slight variations, were printed by Finlay in the preface to his Scottish Ballads, 1808 (#O#).

1 There lived a lord into the South, An he had daughters three; The youngest o them’s gaen to the king’s court, To learn some courtesie.

2 She had na been in the king’s court A twelvemonth an a day, When word is thro the kitchen gaen, An likewise thro the ha, That Mary Moil was gane wi child To the highest steward of a’.

3 She rowd it into a basket An flang’t into the sea, Saying, Sink ye soon, my bonny babe, Ye’se neer get mair o me.

4 She rowd it into a basket An flang’t into the faem, Saying, Sink ye soon, my bonny babe, I’se gang a maiden hame.

5 O whan the news cam to the king An angry man was he; He has taen the table wi his foot, An in flinders gart it flie.

6 ‘O woe be to you, ye ill woman, An ill death may ye die! Gin ye had spared the sweet baby’s life, It might have been an honour to thee.

7 ‘O busk ye, busk ye, Mary Moil, O busk, an gang wi me, For agen the morn at ten o clock A rare sight ye sall see.’

8 She wadna put on her gown o black, Nor yet wad she o brown, But she wad put on her gown o gowd, To glance thro Embro town.

9 O whan she cam to the Netherbow Port She gied loud laughters three, But whan she cam to the gallows-foot The tear blinded her ee.

10 Saying, O ye mariners, mariners, That sail upon the sea, Let not my father nor mother to wit The death that I maun die.

11 ‘For little did father or mother wit, The day they cradled me, What foreign lands I should travel in, Or what death I should die.

12 ‘Yestreen the Queen had four Maries, The night she’ll hae but three; There was Mary Seton, an Mary Beaton, An Mary Carmichael, an me.’

3^3, 4^3. We should read Sink ye, soom ye, as in A 3^3, U 14^3, X 4^3, and other copies.

* * * * *

Communicated to Sir Walter Scott by Mrs Christiana Greenwood, London, 21st February and 27th May, 1806, from the recitation of her mother and her aunt, who learned the ballad above fifty years before from Kirstan Scot, then an old woman, at Longnewton, near Jedburgh: Letters at Abbotsford, I, Nos 173, 189.

1 There was a duke, and he dwelt in York, And he had daughters three; One of them was an hostler-wife, And two were gay ladies.

2 O word’s gane to Queen Mary’s court, As fast as it coud gee, That Mary Hamilton’s born a bairn, And the baby they coud na see.

3 Then came the queen and a’ her maids, Swift tripping down the stair: ‘Where is the baby, Mary, That we heard weep sae sair?’

4 ‘O say not so, Queen Mary, Nor bear ill tales o me, For this is but a sore sickness That oft times troubles me.’

5 They sought it up, they sought it down, They sought it below the bed, And there the[y] saw the bonny wee babe, Lying wallowing in its bluid.

6 ‘Now busk ye, busk ye, Mary Hamilton, Busk ye and gang wi me, For I maun away to Edinbro town, A rich wedding to see.’

7 Mary wad na put on the black velvet, Nor yet wad put on the brown, But she’s put on the red velvet, To shine thro Edinbro town.

8 When she came unto the town, And near the Tolbooth stair, There stood many a lady gay, Weeping for Mary fair.

9 ‘O haud yeer tongue[s], ye ladys a’, And weep na mair for me! O haud yeer tongues, ye ladys a’, For it’s for my fault I dee.

10 ‘The king he took me on his knee And he gae three drinks to me, And a’ to put the babie back, But it wad na gang back for me.

11 ‘O ye mariners, ye mariners a’, That sail out-owr the sea, Let neither my father nor mother get wit What has become o me!

12 ‘Let neither my father nor mother ken, Nor my bauld brethren three, For muckle wad be the gude red bluid That wad be shed for me.

13 ‘Aft hae I laced Queen Mary’s back, Aft hae I kaimed her hair, And a’ the reward she’s gein to me’s The gallows to be my heir.

14 ‘Yestreen the queen had four Marys, The night she’l hae but three; There was Mary Seatoun, and Mary Beatoun, An Mary Carmichal, an me.’

* * * * *

‘Lament of the Queen’s Marie,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 92, Abbotsford. Communicated to Scott, 7th January, 1804, by Rev. George Paxton, Kilmaurs, near Kilmarnock, Ayrshire (afterwards professor of divinity at Edinburgh); from the mouth of Jean Milne, his “aged mother, formerly an unwearied singer of Scotish songs.”

1 ‘My father was the Duke of York, My mother a gay ladye, And I myself a daintie dame; The queen she sent for me.

2 ‘But the queen’s meat it was sae sweet, And her clothing was sae rare, It made me long for a young man’s bed, And I rued it evermair.’

3 But word is up, and word is down, Amang the ladyes a’, That Marie’s born a babe sin yestreen, That babe it is awa.

4 But the queen she gat wit of this, She calld for a berry-brown gown, And she’s awa to Marie’s bower, The bower that Marie lay in.

5 ‘Open your door, my Marie,’ she says, ‘My bonny and fair Marie; They say you have born a babe sin yestreen, That babe I fain wad see.’

6 ‘It is not sae wi me, madam, It is not sae wi me; It is but a fit of my sair sickness, That oft times troubles me.’

7 ‘Get up, get up, my Marie,’ she says, ‘My bonny and fair Marie, And we’ll away to Edinburgh town, And try the verity.’

8 Slowly, slowly, gat she up, And slowly pat she on, And slowly went she to that milk-steed, To ride to Edinburgh town.

9 But when they cam to Edinburgh, And in by the Towbooth stair, There was mony a virtuous ladye Letting the tears fa there.

10 ‘Why weep ye sae for me, madams? Why weep ye sae for me? For sin ye brought me to this town This death ye gar me die.’

11 When she cam to the Netherbow Port, She gae loud laughters three; But when she cam to the gallows-foot The tear blinded her ee.

12 ‘Yestreen the queen had four Maries, The night she’ll hae but three; There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beatoun, And Marie Carmichael, and me.

13 ‘My love he was a pottinger, Mony drink he gae me, And a’ to put back that bonnie babe, But alas! it wad na do.

14 ‘I pat that bonny babe in a box, And set it on the sea; O sink ye, swim ye, bonny babe! Ye’s neer get mair o me.

15 ‘O all ye jolly sailors, That sail upon the sea, Let neither my father nor mother ken The death that I maun die.

16 ‘But if my father and mother kend The death that I maun die, O mony wad be the good red guineas That wad be gien for me.’

* * * * *

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 9, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of William Laidlaw.

1 ‘My father was the Duke of York, My mother the gay ladie, An I myself a maiden bright, An the queen desired me.’

2 But there word gane to the kitchen, There’s word gane to the ha, That Mary mild she gangs wi child To the uppermost stewart of a’.

3 Than they sought but, and they sou[ght] ben, They sought aneath the bed, An there the fand the bonnie lad-bairn, Lyin lappin in his blood.

4 ‘Gae buss ye, Marie Hamilton, Gae buss ye, buss ye bra, For ye maun away to Edin[brough] town, The queen’s birthday ...’

5 She wadna put on her black, bla[ck] silk, Nor wad she put on the brown, But she pat on the glisterin stufs, To glister in Edinbrough town.

6 An whan she cam to the water-gate Loud laughters gae she three, But whan she cam to the Netherbow Port The tear blinded Marie’s ee.

7 ’Twas up than spak Queen Marie’s nurse, An a sorry woman was she: ‘Whae sae clever o fit and ready o wit Has telld sic news o thee!’

8 ‘Oft have I Queen Marie’s head Oft have I caimd her hair, An a’ the thanks I’ve gotten for that Is the gallows to be my heir!

9 ‘Oft have I dressd Queen Marie’s head, An laid her in her bed, An a’ the thanks I’ve gotten for that Is the green gallows-tree to tread!

10 ‘O spare, O spare, O judge,’ she cried, ‘O spair a day for me!’ ‘There is nae law in our land, ladie, To let a murderer be.’

11 ‘Yestreen the queen had four Maries, The night she’ll hae but three; There was Marie Seaton, and Ma[rie] Bea[ton], An Marie Carmichael, an me.

12 ‘O if my father now but kend The death that I’m to die, O muckle, muckle wad be the red gowd That he wad gie for me.

13 ‘An if my brothers kend the death That I am now to die, O muckle, muckle wad be the red blood That wad be shed for me.’

2^{3,4}. Or:

That Mary Hamilton’s born a bairn An murderd it at the wa.

3^1, 11^3. Edge bound in.

8^1. caimd written, but struck out.

8^3. & I the.

* * * * *

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 85, Abbotsford.

1 There lived a man in the North Countree And he had doghters three; The youngest o them’s to Edinbourgh gaen, Ane o the queen’s Marys to be.

2 Queen Mary’s bread it was sae white, And her wine it ran sae clear, It shewed her the way to the butler’s bed, And I wait she’s bought dear.

3 For Mary’s to the garden gaen, To eat o the saven tree, And a’ ‘s to pit her young son back, But back he wad na be.

4 So Mary’s to her chamber gaen, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5 Queen Mary she came down the stair, And a’ her maids afore her: ‘Oh, Mary Miles, where is the child That I have heard greet sae sore O?’

6 ‘There is no child with me, madam, There is no child with me; It was only a bit of a cholick I took, And I thought I was gawen to dee.’

7 So they looked up, and they looked down, And they looked beneath the bed-foot, And there they saw a bonnie boy, Lying weltering in his blood.

8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Since that you have killed your own dear child, The same death you shall dee.’

9 When Mary came afore the court, A loud laugh laughed she; But when she came to the [gallows-]fit The tear blinded her ee.

* * * * * *

10 ‘O wha will comb Queen Mary’s heed? Or wha will brade her hair? And wha will lace her middle sae jimp Whan [I] am nae langer there?

11 ‘Yestreen the queen [had] four Maries, The night she’ll hae but three; There was Mary Seaten, and Mary Beaten, And Mary Carmichal, and me.

* * * * * *

12 ‘I’ll not put on my robes of black, Nor yet my robes of brown, But I’ll put on a shining braw garb, That will shine thro Edinbourgh town.’

* * * * * *

13 Oh, whan she came to the Cannongate, The Cannongate sae hee, There mony a lord and belted knight Was grieved for her beautee.

* * * * * *

14 And whan she came to [the] Hee Town, The Hee Town sae hee,

* * * * * *

10^1. Oh.

11^{1,2}. Added in a different hand.

12^3. shinning.

* * * * *

‘The Queen’s Maries,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 91, Abbotsford.

1 There livd a lord in the West Country, And he had daughters three; The youngest o them’s to the queen’s court, To learn some courtesy.

2 She hadna been at the queen’s court A year but and a day Till she has fa’n as big wi child, As big as she coud gae.

3 She’s gane into the garden To pu the sycamore tree, And taen the bony bairn in her arms And thrown it in the sea.

4 She rowd it in her apron And threw it in the sea: ‘Gae sink or soom, my bony sweet babe, Ye’ll never get mair o me.’

5 Then in an came Queen Mary, Wi gowd rings on her hair: ‘O Mary mild, where is the child That I heard greet sae sair?’

6 ‘It wasna a babe, my royal liege, Last night that troubled me, But it was a fit o sair sickness, And I was lyken to dee.’

7 ‘O hold yere tongue, Mary Hamilton, Sae loud as I hear ye lee! For I’ll send you to Enbro town, The verity to see.’

8 She wadna put on the ribbons o black, Nor yet wad she the brown, But she wad put on the ribbons o gowd, To gae glittring through Enbro town.

9 As she rade up the Sands o Leith, Riding on a white horse, O little did she think that day To die at Enbro Corss!

10 As she rade up the Cannongate, She leugh loud laughters three, And mony a lord and lady said, ‘Alas for that lady!’

11 ‘Ye needna say Oh, ye needna cry Eh, Alas for that lady! Ye’ll neer see grace in a graceless face, As little ye’ll see in me.’

12 When she came to the Netherbow Port, She leugh loud laughters three, But ere she came to the gallows-foot The tear blinded her eie; Saying, Tye a white napkin owr my face, For that gibbet I downa see.

13 ‘O hold yere hand, Lord Justice! O hold it a little while! I think I see my ain true-love Come wandring mony a mile.

14 ‘O have ye brought me ony o my gowd? Or ony o my weel-won fee? Or are ye come to see me hangd, Upon this gallows-tree?’

15 ‘O I hae brought ye nane o yere gowd, Nor nane o yere weel-won fee, But I am come to see ye hangd, And hangit ye shall be.’

16 ‘O all ye men and mariners, That sail for wealth or fame, Let never my father or mother get wit But what I’m coming hame.

17 ‘O all ye men and mariners, That sail upon the sea, Let never my father or mother get wit The death that I maun dee.

18 ‘Yestreen the queen had four Maries, The night she’ll hae but three; There was Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton, And Mary Carmichael, and me.’

* * * * *

‘The Queen’s Marys,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 144, Abbotsford.

1 ‘Yestreen the queen had four Marys, The night she’ll hae but three; She had Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton, And Mary Carmichael, and me.

2 ‘My feather was the Duke of York, My mother a gay lady, And I mysell a bonnie young may, And the king fell in love we me.

3 ‘The king’s kisses they were so sweet, And his wine it was so strong, That I became a mother Before fifteen years old.’

4 ‘O tell the truth now, Mary, And sett this matter right; What hae ye made o the babey Was greeting yesternight?’

5 ‘O I will tell you, madam the queen, I winna tell a lie; I put it in a bottomless boat And bad it sail the sea.’

6 ‘Ye lie, ye lie now, Mary, Sae loud’s I hear you lie! You wasnae out o the palace, So that coud never be.’

7 ‘Weel I will tell you, madam, Though it should gar me weep; I stabbd it we my little pen-knife, And bad it take a sleep.’

8 When she came up the Netherbow, She geed loud laughters three; But when she came out o the Parliament Close The tear blinded her ee.

9 ‘O little does my feather ken The death I am to die, Or muckel wad be the red, red gould Wad be payed doun for me.

10 ‘O little does my mother think The death that I am to die, Or monie wad be the saut, saut tears That she wad shed for me.

11 ‘O never lett my brothers ken The death that I am to die, For muckel wad be the red, red blood That wad be shed for me.

12 ‘Aft hae I washd the king’s bonnie face, Kaimd doun his yellow hair, And this is a’ the reward he’s geen me, The gallows to be my share.’

* * * * *

‘The Queen’s Marie,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 90 a, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of John Leyden.

1 ‘Buss ye, bonny Marie Hamilton, Buss and gae wi me, For ye maun gae to Edinborough, A great wedding to see.’

2 ‘Ride hooly, hooly, gentlemen, Ride hooly now wi me, For never, I’m sure, a wearier bride Rode in your cumpany.’

3 Little wist Marie Hamilton, When she rode on the brown, That she was gawn to Edinborough, And a’ to be put down.

4 When she came to the Council stairs, She ga loud laughters three; But or that she came down again She was condemmd to dee.

5 ‘O ye mariners, mariners, mariners, When ye sail oer the faem, Let never my father nor mother to wit But I’m just coming hame.

6 ‘Let never my father nor mother to wit, Nor my bauld brether[en] three, Or meckle wad be the red, red gowd This day be gien for me.

7 ‘Let never my father or mother to wit, Nor my bauld brethren three, Or meckle war the red, red blude This day wad fa for me.’

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 142, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of James Hogg.

‘Oft hae I kaimd Queen Mary’s head, An oft hae I curld her hair, An now I hae gotten for my reward A gallows to be heir.’

178. Captain Car, or, Edom o Gordon.

P. 426, note *. This history borrows from Sir Robert Gordon. See what he says, p. 166 f., and also previously, p. 164 ff.

428 a. #F#, #G#. “I have a manuscript where the whole scene is transferred to Ayrshire, and the incendiary is called Johnnie Faa.” Note of Sir W. Scott in Sharpe’s Ballad Book, ed. 1880, p. 142.

This copy has not as yet been recovered, but there is another at Abbotsford, a fine fragment, in which Lady Campbell is the heroine. As to Adam McGordon, the c of Mac is often dropped, so that Adam MaGordon and Adam o Gordon are of pretty much the same sound (a remark of Mr Macmath). The Andrew Watty of 13^3 is noted on the last page of the MS. to be “a riding man.”

* * * * *

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 75, Abbotsford. Communicated to Scott November 6, 1803, by Brace Campbell, Sornbeg, Galston, Ayrshire, through David Boyle, Advocate, afterwards Lord Justice General of Scotland.

1 It fell about the Martinmass time, When the wind blew shill and cald, That Adam McGordon said to his men, Where will we get a hall?

2 ‘There is a hall here near by, Well built with lime and stone; There is a lady there within As white as the . . bone.’

3 ‘Seven year and more this lord and I Has had a deadly feud, And now, since her good lord’s frae hame, His place to me she’ll yield.’

4 She looked oer her castle-wall, And so she looked down, And saw Adam McGordon and his men Approaching the wood-end.

5 ‘Steik up, steik up my yett,’ she says, ‘And let my draw-bridge fall; There is meickle treachery Walking about my wall.’

6 She had not the sentence past, Nor yet the word well said, When Adam McGordon and his men About the walls were laid.

7 She looked out at her window, And then she looked down, And then she saw Jack, her own man, Lifting the pavement-stane.

8 ‘Awa, awa, Jack my man! Seven year I paid you meat and fee, And now you lift the pavement-stane To let in the low to me.’

9 ‘I yield, I yield, O lady fair, Seven year ye paid me meat and fee; But now I am Adam McGordon’s man, I must either do or die.’

10 ‘If ye be Adam McGordon’s man, As I true well ye be, Prove true unto your own master, And work your will to me.’

11 ‘Come down, come down, my lady Campbell, Come down into my hand; Ye shall lye all night by my side, And the morn at my command.’

12 ‘I winna come down,’ this lady says, ‘For neither laird nor lown, Nor to no bloody butcher’s son, The Laird of Auchindown.

13 ‘I wald give all my kine,’ she says, ‘So wald I fifty pound, That Andrew Watty he were here; He would charge me my gun.

14 ‘He would charge me my gun, And put in bullets three, That I might shoot that cruel traitor That works his wills on me.’

15 He shot in, and [s]he shot out, The value of an hour, Until the hall Craigie North Was like to be blawn in the air.

16 He fired in, and she fired out, The value of houris three, Until the hall Craigie North The reik went to the sea.

17 ‘O the frost, and ae the frost, The frost that freezes fell! I cannot stay within my bower, The powder it blaws sae bald.’

18 But then spake her oldest son, He was both white and red; ‘O mither dear, yield up your house! We’ll all be burnt to deed.’

19 Out then spake the second son, He was both red and fair; ‘O brother dear, would you yield up your house, And you your father’s heir!’

20 Out then spake the little babe, Stood at the nurse’s knee; ‘O mither dear, yield up your house! The reik will worry me.’

21 Out then speaks the little nurse, The babe upon her knee; ‘O lady, take from me your child! I’ll never crave my fee.’

22 ‘Hold thy tongue, thou little nurse, Of thy prating let me bee; For be it death or be it life, Thou shall take share with me.

23 ‘I wald give a’ my sheep,’ she says, ‘T[hat] . . yon . . s[ha], I had a drink of that wan water That runs down by my wa.’

2^1. hall there.

2^4. An illegible word ending seemingly in hie.

3^1. this lord and I begins the second line.

3^3. has good: has caught from the line above.

3^4. shall altered to she’ll; but she shall is clearly meant.

7^4, 11^4, 15^4, 16^3, 21^1. y^e.

14^1. would: wald, perhaps.

16^2. valuue, or, valaue, or, valuae.

16^3. A preposition seems to be wanting. Hall here and in 15^3 is troublesome. Perhaps the reading should be in 15^3 that all, in 16^3 that through all.

23^2. The paper is folded here, and the line has been so much rubbed as to be illegible.

“An old ballad upon the burning of an old castle of Loudoun by the Kennedys of Auchruglan.” Bruce Campbell.

181. The Bonny Earl of Murray.

P. 447. Add to the citation from Spottiswood: History of the Church of Scotland, 1655, p. 387.

182. The Laird o Logie.

P. 449. #A# was first published in the second edition of Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 243.

#B# was repeated in the first edition of Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 220, 1802, ‘The Laird of Ochiltree.’

452. The following is the original, unimproved copy of #A#. There is a transcript of this, in William Laidlaw’s hand, “Scotch Ballads,” etc., No 23, which is somewhat retouched, but by no means with the freedom exercised by the editor of the Minstrelsy. Some of Laidlaw’s changes were adopted by Scott.

* * * * *

‘The Laird of Logie,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 3 a, Abbotsford. Sent Scott September 11, 1802, by William Laidlaw; received by him from Mr Bartram of Biggar.

1 I will sing, if ye will harken, An ye wad listen unto me; I’ll tell ye of a merry passage Of the wanton laird of Young Logie.

2 Young Logie’s laid in Edin_borough_ chapel, Carmichaell’s keeper of the key; I heard a may lamenting sair, All for the laird of Young Logie.

3 ‘Lament, lament na, May Margret, And o your weeping let me be; For ye maun to the king y_ou_r sell, And ask the life of Young Logie.’

4 May Margaret has kilted her green cleeding, And she’s currld back her yellow hair, And she’s away to the king hersell, And adieu to Scotland for ever mair!

5 When she came before the king, She fell low down on her knee: ‘It’s what’s your will wi me, May Margret, And what makes all this courtesey?’ ‘Naething, naething, my sovreign liege, But grant me the life of Young Logie.’

6 ‘O no, O no, May Margret, No, in sooth it maun na be; For the morn, or I taste meat or drink, Hee hanged shall Young Logie be.’

7 She has stolen the king’s reeding-comb, But an the queen her wedding-knife, And she has sent it to Carmichaell, To cause Young Logie come by life.

8 She sent him a purse of the red gold, Another of the white money, And sent him a pistol into each hand, And bade him shoot when he got fra.

9 When he came to the Tolbooth stair, There he loot his volley flee, Wh_ich_ made the king in his chamber start, Even in the chamber where he lay.

10 ‘Gae out, gae out, my merrie men, And gar Carmichael come speake wi me, For I’ll lay my life the pledge of that, That yon’s the volley of Young Logie.’

11 When Carmichael came before the king, He fell low down on his knee; The very first word that the king spake, ‘How dois the laird o Young Logie?’

12 Carmichael turnd him round about, A wait the salt tear blint his eye: ‘There came a tacken frae the king Has tean the laird awa frae me.’

13 ‘Hast thou playd me that, Carmichael? Hast thou playd me that?’ quo he; ‘The morn the Justice Court’s to stand, And Logie’s place ye maun supply.’

14 Carmichal’s awa to May Margr[e]t’s bower, Een as fast as he may dree: ‘It’s if Young Logie be within, Tell him to come speak to me.’

15 May Margret’s turnd her round about, A wait a loud laughter gae she: ‘The egg is cheeped and the bird is flown, And seek ye the laird of Young Logie.’

16 The one is sheppd at the pier o Leith, The other at the Queen’s Ferry, And she has gotten a father to her bairn, The wanton laird of Young [Logie].

4^2. yer for her.

6^4. Yea for Hee. Hie in Laidlaw’s transcript. Taking into account the apparent yer for her in 4^2, it looks as if hea, her were intended.

8^4. free?

12^2. blint may be blent.

453. #B.# ‘The Winsome Laird of Young Logie,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 137 a, “sung by Lady A. Lindsay,” closely resembles Herd’s version, but in one passage approaches #C#, and Young Logie displaces Ochiltrie. This copy will be treated as #B b#.

* * * * *

#b.#

1^1. O wanting.

1^2. To the tale I tell.

1^8. How the.

1^4. The winsom laird of Young Logie.

2^1. Whan the queen did hear the same.

2^8. Alas for poor Lady Margaret.

3^2, 8^2. as wanting.

3^4. Or never kend.

4^1. Fye, oh no, said: that maunna be wanting.

4^2. Fy, O no, thus (partly altered to this).

4^3. find out some cunning way.

4^4. To loose and let Young Logie free.

Between 5^2 and 5^3: The king he’s risen and taen her up, Says, What means a’ this curtesy. (As 5^{3,4}.)

When you took me to be your queen, You promisd me favours twa or three. (As 6^{1,2}.)[152]

5^{3,4}: The first ane that I ask of yow Is to loose and let Young Logie free. (As 6^{3,4}.)

6^1. O wanting: of me.

6^2. would hae granted.

6^4, 7^4. Winna save.

7^1. queen than she came.

7^2. And she came down.

8^{3–4}: I wish that I had neer been born, Or never kend Young Logie’s name. (As in 3.)

9^1. Fye, oh no, said.

9^2. Fye, O no, this maun ne.

9^3. I ‘ll find out some other.

9^4. To save the life o.

10^1. she triped.

11^1. She gae to.

11^3. And twa.

11^4. And bade him shoot as he gaed by.

12^1. And wanting.

12^3. O peace: our gudely.

13^1. O wanting.

14^1. Gae bring to.

14^2. Gae bring them.

14^3. Before the: by ten.

14^4. they each ane.

15. Wanting.

16^1. Fye, O no, said.

16^2. Fye, O no, this maun ne.

16^3. hang at a’.

17^1. Lady Marg took shiping.

17^2. Young Logie at.

17^8. the lass: her lad. Tune of Logan Water.

183. Willie Macintosh.

P. 456. The account in ‘The History of the Feuds’ is taken from Sir Robert Gordon’s History of Sutherland, p. 217.

Jamieson, writing to Scott, in November, 1804, says: “I have heard a scrap of the rude ballad on the burning of Achindoun, ‘Bonny Willie Mackintosh—You’ve tint a feather frae your cap—By the day dawing,’ etc., or something of this kind, from the Rev^d John Grant of Elgin. The Duchess of Gordon applied to him about it some years ago, but he could never recover it.” (Letters addressed to Sir W. Scott, I, No 117, Abbotsford.)

186. Kinmont Willie.

P. 470 b, at the end of the first paragraph. Strike out 1639. Spottiswood’s account begins at the same page, 413, in the edition of 1655.

188. Archie o Cawfield.

P. 484. #B b# was first printed in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 195.

The following is the copy from which Scott derived the stanzas introduced into this later edition of the ballad. It will be observed that ‘luve of Teviotdale’ is the reading of 4^2, and not a correction of Scott’s, as suggested at 486 b.

‘Archie o Ca’field, Variations,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 90, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of John Leyden.

1 The one unto the other did say, ‘Blythe and merry how can we be, When the night is billie Archie’s lyke-wake, The morn the day that he maun die?’

2 ‘An ye wad be blythe an ye wad be sad, What better wad billie Archie be, Unless I had thirty men to mysell, And a’ to ride in our companie?

3 ‘Ten to had the horses’ heads, And other ten to walk alee, And ten to break up the strang prisoun Where billie Archie he does lie.’

4 Up bespak him mettled John Hall, The luve o Teviotdale ay was he; ‘An I had eleven men to mysell, It’s ay the twalt man I wad be.’

5 Up bespak him coarse Ca’field, I wat and little gude worth was he; ‘Thirty men is few enow, And a’ to ride in our cumpanie.’

6 Then a’ the night thae twal men rade, And ay untill they were a’ wearie, Till they came to the strang prisoun Where billie Archie he did lie.

7 ‘Sleeps thou, wakes thou, billie?’ he said, ‘Or did ye hear whan I did cry? The night it is your lyke-wake night, The morn it is your day to die.’

8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ‘Work ye within and I without, And soon a loose man shall you be.’

9 Dickie pu’d the prisoner on o his back, And down the stair cam merrilie; ‘Now by my sooth,’ quo mettled John Hall, ‘Ye may let a leg o him lean to me.’

10 ‘I have my billie upon my back, I count him lighter than a flee; Gin I were at my little black mare, At Ca’field soon I trust to be.’

11 Then a’ the night these twelve men rade, And aye untill they were a’ wearie, Untill they came to the wan water, And it was gawn like ony see.

12 ‘There lives a smith on the water-side, Sae has he done thirty years and three: . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

13 ‘O I have a crown in my pocket, And I’ll give it every groat to thee . . . . . . . Gin thou shoe my little black mare for me.’

14 ‘The night is mirk, and vera pit-mirk, And wi candle-light I canna weel see; The night it is mirk, and vera pit-mirk, And there’ll never a nail ca right for me.’

15 ‘Shame fa you and your trade baith, Canna beet a gude fallow by your mysterie! But lees me on thee, my little black mare, Thou’s worth thy weight o gowd to me.’

16 Then thay lay down to take a sleep, But ay’ on fit stood noble Dickie, And he’s looked oer his left shoulder, And a’ to see what he could see.

17 ‘Get up, get up, ye drowsy sleepers! Ye dinna see what I do see; For yonder comes the land-lieutenant, Two hunder men in his cumpanie.

18 ‘This night an they lay hands on us, This night, as I think weel it will be, This night sall be our lyke-wake night, The morn like as mony dogs we’ll die.’

19 ‘My mare is young, and vera young, And in o the weel she will drown me;’ ‘But ye’ll take mine, and I’ll take thine, And soon thro the water we sall be.’

20 Then up bespak him coarse Ca’field, I wate and little gude worth was he; ‘We had better lose ane than lose a’ the lave, We’ll leave the prisoner, we’ll gae free.’

21 ‘Shame fa you and your lands baith, Wad ye een your lands to your born billie? But hey! bear up, my little black mare, And yet thro the water we sall be.’

* * * * * *

22 ‘Come thro, come thro now,’ Dickie he said, ‘Come thro, come thro and drink wi me; There’s no be a Saturday in a’ the year But changed sall your garments be.

* * * * * *

23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . While a bit o your iron hads thegether, Barefit sall she never be.’

12^1. Var. other side o the water.

12, 13 are written as one stanza.

VOL. IV.

190. Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead.

P. 4 a. James Hogg, writing to Scott, June 30, [1802?] says: “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s.... ‘Jamie Telfer’ differs in many particulars.” (Letters, I, No. 44.) Scott’s remarks should have been cited from the edition of 1802, I, 91.

5. Mr Andrew Lang has obligingly called my attention to difficulties which attend the assumption that the Dodhead of the ballad is the place of that name in Selkirkshire. Jamie Telfer, st. 7, runs ten miles between Dodhead and Stobs, and this is far enough if help is to be timely; but he would have to run thirty if his Dodhead were in Selkirkshire. With succor not nearer than that, Telfer would soon have been harried out of existence. The distances are too great both for the English and the Scots. But there is a Dod south of the Teviot, not far from Skelfhill, which is some seven miles only from Stobs. (Dodhead is not entered here on the Ordnance map, “but Dodburn is just under Dodrig, and where there is a Dodburn there is ‘tied’ to be a Dodhead in this country.”) Turning from Stobs to Teviot, Telfer would come in due order to Coltherdscleugh, Branxholm, and Borthwick Water, without the loss of time which he would, on the other supposition, incur in passing and returning. (See a note, by Mr Lang, in Mrs G. R. Tomson’s Ballads of the North Countrie, 1888, p. 435.)

Several other matters are not quite clear. Catslockhill, for instance, seems to be misplaced. Mr Lang, a native of Ettrick valley, knows of no Catslack but that in Yarrow. Of this, Mr T. Craig-Brown (Selkirkshire, I, 21), who accepts Scott’s Dodhead, says, “A long ride, if Catslack is in Yarrow.”

191. Hughie Grame.

P. 8. #C.# Substitute for Scott’s Minstrelsy, etc., “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 87, Abbotsford. Add: #H.# ‘Hughie Grame,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 4. #I#. ‘Hughie Graeme,’ Wilkie’s MS., in “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 36.

P. 10 ff. For #C# substitute this, the original copy, as procured for Scott by William Laidlaw.

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 87, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of William Laidlaw. “From Robert Laidlaw.”

1 Gude Lord Scroop’s to the huntin gane; He’s ridden oer monie a moss an muir, An he has grippit Hughie the Græme, For stealin o the bishop’s mare.

2 An they hae grippit Hughie the Græme, An brought him up thro Carlisle town; The lasses an lads they stood by the wa’s, Cryin, Hughie the Græme, thou’s no gae down!

3 They ha chosen a jury o men, The best that were i Coventry, An fifteen o them out a’ at anse, ‘Hughie the Græme, thou art guiltie.’

4 Than up bespak him gude Lord Hume, As he sat at the judge’s knee; ‘Twentie white ousen, my gude lord, If ye’ll grant Hughie the Græme to me.’

5 ‘O no, no, no, my gude Lord Hume, For sooth an so it mauna be; For war there but twae Græms o the name, They sould be hangit a’ for me.’

6 ’Twas up than spak her gude Lady Hume, As she sat by the judge’s knee; ‘A peck o white pennies, my gude lord, If ye’ll grant Hughie the Græme to me.’

7 ‘O no, O no, my gude Lady Hume, For sooth an so it sal na be; For war there but twae Greames of the name, They soud be hangit a’ for me.’

8 ‘If I be guilty,’ said Hughie the Graeme, ‘Of me my friends sal hae nae lack;’ An he has luppen fifteen feet an three, An his hands they war tyed ahint his back.

9 He’s lookit oer his left shouther, To see what he coud see, An there he saw his auld father commin, An he was weepin bitterlie.

10 ‘O had yer tongue, my father,’ he says, ‘An see that ye dinna weep for me, For they may ravish me o my life, But they canna banish me thrae the heavens hie.

11 ‘Fare ye weel, Maggie, my wife; The last time I came oer the muir, It was you berievt me o my life, An wi the bishop playd the w[hore].’

* * * * *

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 4, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of William Laidlaw.

1 Lairds and lords a hounting gane, Out-over hills and valleys clear, And there they met Hughie Grame, Was riding on the bishop’s mare.

2 And they have tied him hand and foot, And they have carried him to Stirling town; The lads and lasses there about Crys, Hughie Grame, you are a lown!

3 ‘If I be a lown,’ says he, ‘I am sure my friends has had bad luck;’ We that he jumpted fifteen foot, With his hands tied behind his back.

4 Out and spoke Laidy Whiteford, As she sat by the bishop’s knee; ‘Four-and-twenty milk-kie I’ll give to thee, If Hughie Grame you will let free.’

5 ‘Hold your tongue, my laidy Whiteford, And of your pleading now lay by; If fifty Grames were in his coat, Upon my honour he shall die.’

6 Out and spoke Lord Whiteford, As he sat by the bishop’s knee; ‘Four-and-twenty stots I’ll give thee, If Hughie Grame you will let free.’

7 ‘Hold your tongue, my lord Whiteford, And of your pleading now lay by; If twenty Grames were in his coat, Upon my honour he shall die.’

8 ‘You may tell to Meg, my wife, The first time she comes through the mu[ir], She was the causer of my death, For with the bishop [she] plaid the whore.

9 ‘You may tell to Meg, my wife, The first time she comes through the town, She was the causer of my death, For with the bishop [she] plaid the lown.’

10 He looked oer his left shoulder, To see what he could spy or see, And there he spied his old father, Was weeping bitterly.

11 ‘Hold your tongue, my dear father, And of your weeping now lay by; They may rub me of my sweet life, But not from me the heavence high.

12 ‘You may give my brother John The sword that’s of the mettle clear, That he may come the morn at four o clock To see me pay the bishop’s mare.

13 ‘You may give my brother James The sword that’s of the mettle brown; Tell him to come the morn at four o clock To see his brother Hugh cut down.’

14 Up and spoke his oldest son, As he sat by his nurse’s knee; ‘If ere I come to be a man, Revenged for my father [’s] death I’ll be.’

* * * * *

“Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 36, Abbotsford, MS. of Thomas Wilkie, 1813–15, p. 9; “from a young girl, a Miss Nancy Brockie, Bemerside, who learned it from an old woman called Maron Miller, Threepwood.” Another copy, in Wilkie’s hand, No 86 of the same.

1 Ye dukes and lords that hunt and go Out-over moors and mountains clear, And they have taen up poor Hughie Græme. For stealing of the bishope’s mare. Fall all the day, fall all the daudy, Fall all the day, fall the daudy O.

2 They hae tied him hand and foot, They hae led him thro the town; The lads and lassies they all met, Cried, Hughie Græme, ye’ve playd the loon!

3 ‘O if that I had playd the loon, My friends of me they hae bad luck;’ With that he jumped fifteen feet, Wi his hands tied fast behind his back.

4 Up then spoke my lady Whiteford, As she sat by the bishope’s knee; ‘Five hundred white pence I’ll give thee, If you let Hughie Græme go free.’

5 ‘I’ll hae nane of your hundred pense, And your presents you may lay by; For if Græme was ten times in his coat, By my honour, Hugh shall die.’

6 Up then spoke my lord Whiteford, As he sat by the bishope’s knee; ‘Five score of good stotts I’ll thee give, If you’ll sett Hughie Græme but free.’

7 ‘I’ll have none of your hundred stotts, And all your presents you may keep to yoursell; ‘For if Græme was ten times in his coat Hugh shall die, and die he shall.’

8 Then they hae tied him hand and foot, And they hae led [him] to the gallows high; The lads and lassies they all met, Cried, Hughie Græme, thou art to die!

9 Now’s he looked oer his left shoulder, All for to see what he could spy, And there he saw his father dear, Stood weeping there most bitterlie.

10 ‘O hold your tongue now, father,’ he said, ‘And of your weeping lai’d now by; For they can rob me of my life, But they cannot rob me of the heavens high.

11 ‘But you must give to my brother John The sword that’s bent in the middle clear, And tell him to come at twelve o clock And see me pay the bishope’s mare.

12 ‘And you may give to my brother James The sword that’s bent in the middle brown, And tell him to come at four o clock And see his brother Hugh cut down.

13 ‘And you may tell to Meg, my wife, The first time she comes thro the town, She was the occasion of my death And wi the bishope playd the loon.

14 ‘And you may tell to Meg, my wife, The first time she comes thro the fair, She was the occasion of my death, And from the bishope stole the mare.’

* * * * *

#A.#

A copy in The Northern Garland, Newcastle Garlands, No 1, Bell Ballads, Abbotsford Library, P. 5, has these readings, some of which appear to be editorial:

2^2. after him for some time.

4^4. shall soon.

11^3. my fault.

16^2. down low.

22^3. cause and the loss.

#H.#

8^3, 9^3. the casurer, the casure. Perhaps we should read occasion: cf. #I# 13^3, 14^3.

9^4. plaid the whore; but cf. #E# 13^4, #I# 13^4.

#I.#

2^3. they (all met) ran in flocks: cf. 8^3.

3^1. Of that: see No 86, below.

5^3. in==his coat==ocent (sic).

10^2. (laid==lay it.)

No 86, the other copy of #I#, has variations which seem to be mostly, if not wholly, editorial.

1^3. taken Hughie Græme.

2^3. lassies ran in flocks.

3^1. O if. 3^2. has had.

3^4. And his.

4^3. I will give.

4^4. ye’ll let.

5^2. And of your.

6^2. at the.

6^4. ye’ll let: go free.

7^1. Above hundred is written five score.

7^2. And of your presents ye may lay by.

7^4. By my honour, Hugh shall die, bracketed with the reading in the text.

8^2. And led him to.

9^1. Now he’s.

9^3. he spied.

10^1. now, father dear: he said wanting.

10^2. laid.

11^1. may give my.

12^1. give my.

13^3, 14^3. That she’s.

193. The Death of Parcy Reed.

P. 24 a. #B.# Telfer sent “the real verses” to Sir Walter Scott. It appears, as might be surmised, that one half of #B# is of his own making. 1–3==#B# 4, 5, 7; 4, 5==#A# 4, 18; 6==#B# 14; 7==#B# 15, #A# 6; 8==#A# 7, #B# 16; 9–14==#B# 18–23; 15==#A# 15; 16==#B# 25; 17–20==#B# 38, 39, 33, 41.

* * * * *

Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, XIII, No 73, Abbotsford. “Parcy Reed, exactly as it is sung by an old woman of the name of Cathrine Hall, living at Fairloans, in the remotest corner of Oxnam parish:” James Telfer, Browndeanlaws, May 18, 1824.

1 O Parcy Reed has Crozer taen, And has deliverd him to the law; But Crozer says he’ll do warse than that, For he’ll gar the tower of the Troughend fa.

2 And Crozer says he will do warse, He will do warse, if warse can be; For he’ll make the bairns a’ fatherless, And then the land it may lie lea.

3 O Parcy Reed has ridden a raid, But he had better have staid at hame; For the three fause Ha’s of Girsenfield Alang with him he has them taen.

4 He’s hunted up, and he’s hunted down, He’s hunted a’ the water of Reed, Till wearydness has on him taen, I the Baitinghope he’s faen asleep.

5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . And the fause, fause Ha’s o Girsenfield, They’ll never be trowed nor trusted again.

6 They’ve taen frae him his powther-bag, And they’ve put water i his lang gun; They’ve put the sword into the sheathe That out again it’ll never come.

7 ‘Awaken ye, awaken ye, Parcy Reed, For I do fear ye’ve slept owre lang; For yonder are the five Crozers, A coming owre by the hinging-stane.’

8 ‘If they be five and we be four, If that ye will stand true to me, If every man ye will take one, Ye surely will leave two to me.

9 ‘O turn, O turn, O Johny Ha, O turn now, man, and fight wi me; If ever ye come to Troughend again, A good black nag I will gie to thee; He cost me twenty pounds o gowd Atween my brother John and me.’

10 ‘I winna turn, I canna turn; I darena turn and fight wi thee; For they will find out Parcy Reed, And then they’ll kill baith thee and me.’

11 ‘O turn, O turn now, Willie Ha, O turn, O man, and fight wi me, And if ever ye come to the Troughend again A yoke of owsen I will gie thee.’

12 ‘I winna turn, I canna turn; I darena turn and fight wi thee; For they will find out Parcy Reed, And they will kill baith thee and me.’

13 ‘O turn, O turn, O Thommy Ha, O turn now, man, and fight wi me; If ever ye come to the Troughend again, My daughter Jean I’ll gie to thee.’

14 ‘I winna turn, I darena turn; I winna turn and fight with thee; For they will find out Parcy Reed, And then they’ll kill baith thee and me.’

15 ‘O woe be to ye, traitors a’! I wish England ye may never win; Ye’ve left me in the field to stand, And in my hand an uncharged gun.

16 ‘Ye’ve taen frae me my powther-bag, And ye’ve put water i my lang gun; Ye’ve put the sword into the sheath That out again it’ll never come.

17 ‘O fare ye weel, my married wife! And fare ye weel, my brother John! That sits into the Troughend ha With heart as black as any stone.

18 ‘O fare ye weel, my married wife! And fare ye weel now, my sons five! For had ye been wi me this day I surely had been man alive.

19 ‘O fare ye weel, my married wife! And fare ye weel now, my sons five! And fare ye weel, my daughter Jean! I loved ye best ye were born alive.

20 ‘O some do ca me Parcy Reed, And some do ca me Laird Troughend, But it’s nae matter what they ca me, My faes have made me ill to ken.

21 ‘The laird o Clennel wears my bow, The laird o Brandon wears my brand; Whae ever rides i the Border side Will mind the laird o the Troughend.’

9^2. wi me. along with in the margin.

13^3. ever I.

“There is,” says Telfer in his letter, “a place in Reed water called Deadwood Haughs, where the country-people still point out a stone where the unshriven soul of Parcy used to frequent in the shape of a blue hawk, and it is only a few years since he disappeared.... The ballad of Parcy Reed has a tune of its own.... It is a very mournfull air.”

196. The Fire of Frendraught.

P. 39. Miscellanea Curiosa, MS., vol. vi, Abbotsford Library, #A.# 3, has for its last piece “The Burning of the Tower of Frendraught, an Historical Ballad,” in forty-eight stanzas. It begins:

O passd ye by the Bog of Gicht? Heard ye the cry of grief and care? Or in the bowers of Rothymay Saw ye the lady tear her hair?

“A Satyre against Frendraught, in which ware burned the Vicount of Melgum, Laird of Rothiemay, and sundrie other gentlemen, in anno 1630,” 218 lines, MS. in a seventeenth-century hand, is No 1 in a volume with the title Scottish Tracts, Abbotsford Library, B. 7. Mr. Macmath suggests that this may be the “flyte” which Sharpe and Sir W. Scott thought of printing.

200. The Gypsy Laddie.

IV, 61 b. ‘Johnnie Faa’ in [Wm Chambers’s] Exploits . . . of the most remarkable Scottish Gypsies or Tinklers, 3d ed., 1823, p. 17, is #B a#. The ballad is not in the second edition, 1821, reprinted in 1886. (W. Macmath.)

201. Bessy Bell and Mary Gray.

P. 75 b., first line. Say: #c.# Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1830, XI, 39, 1833, etc.

203. The Baron of Brackley.

P. 83, note †.

I prefer to say, two or more events. The citations already given in this work may possibly cover four distinct tragedies, and William Anderson, in his Genealogy and Surnames, 1865, p. 104, tells us (but without stating his authority) there was “a line of nine barons, all of whom, in the unruly times in which they lived, died violent deaths.” The ballad may have commenced originally: “Inverawe (==Inner-Aw) cam doun Deeside.” (W. Macmath.)

208. Lord Derwentwater.

P. 117 b. The omen of nose-bleed occurs in the Breton ballad ‘Ervoan Camus,’ Luzel, Soniou, I, 216.

211. Bewick and Graham.

P. 144 a. Scott’s improved copy first appeared in the third edition of the Minstrelsy, 1806, II, 277.

214. The Braes o Yarrow.

P. 164 ff. ‘The Dowie Dens of Yarrow,’ Kidson’s Traditional Tunes, etc., 1891, p. 21. From Mrs Calvert, of Gilnockie, Eskdale; obtained by her on the braes of Yarrow from her grandmother, Tibbie Stuel. (Compare, especially, #J-L#.)

1 There lived a lady in the West, I neer could find her marrow; She was courted by nine gentlemen, And a ploughboy-lad in Yarrow.

2 These nine sat drinking at the wine, Sat drinking wine in Yarrow; They made a vow among themselves To fight for her in Yarrow.

3 She washed his face, she kaimed his hair, As oft she ‘d done before, O, She made him like a knight sae bright, To fight for her in Yarrow.

4 As he walked up yon high, high hill, And down by the holmes of Yarrow, There he saw nine armëd men, Come to fight with him in Yarrow.

5 ‘There ‘s nine of you, there ‘s one of me, It’s an unequal marrow; But I’ll fight you all one by one, On the dowie dens of Yarrow.’

6 Three he slew, and three they flew, And three he wounded sorely, Till her brother John he came in beyond, And pierced his heart most foully.

7 ‘Go home, go home, thou false young man, And tell thy sister Sarah That her true-love John lies dead and gone On the dowie dens of Yarrow.’

8 ‘O father dear, I dreamed a dream, I’m afraid it will bring sorrow; I dreamed I was pulling the heather-bell In the dowie dens of Yarrow.’

9 ‘O daughter dear, I read your dream, I doubt it will prove sorrow; For your true-love John lies dead and gone On the dowie dens of Yarrow.’

10 As she walked up yon high, high hill, And down by the holmes of Yarrow, There she saw her true-love John, Lying pale and dead on Yarrow.

11 Her hair it being three quarters long— The colour it was yellow— She wrapped it round his middle sma, And carried him hame to Yarrow.

12 ‘O father dear, you’ve seven sons, You may wed them a’ tomorrow, But a fairer flower I never saw Than the lad I loved in Yarrow.’

13 The fair maid being great with child, It filled her heart with sorrow; She died within her lover’s arms, Between that day and morrow.

6^{1,2}. Three misprinted there.

8^1, 9^1, 12^1. Oh.

* * * * *

Macmath MS. p. 91. Inserted in a copy of The Scottish Ballads . . . by Robert Chambers, 1829, p. 145, latterly belonging to Rev. Dr James C. Burns, Free Church, Kirkliston.

1 There were three lords drinking at the wine In the Leader Haughs of Yarrow: ‘Shall we go play at cards and dice, As we have done before, O? Or shall we go play at the single sword, In the Leader Haughs of Yarrow?’

* * * * * *

2 Three he wounded, and five he slew, As he had [done] before, O, But an English lord lap from a bush, And he proved all the sorrow; He had a spear three quarters long, And he thrust his body thorogh.

* * * * * *

3 ‘I dreamed . . . . I wis it prove nae sorrow! I dreamed I was puing the apples green In the dowie howms o Yarrow.’

4 ‘O sister, sister, I’ll read your dream, And I’ll read it in sorrow; Ye may gae bring hame your ain true-love, For he’s sleepin sound in Yarrow.’

5 She sought him east, she sought him west, She sought him all the forest thorogh; She found him asleep at the middle yett, In the dowie howms o Yarrow.

6 Her hair it was three quarters lang, And the colour of it was yellow; She’s bound it round his middle waist, And borne him hame from Yarrow.

1^{2,6}. Leader Haughs. “Obviously nonsense, but so my minstreless sung it.”

3^1. The rest torn away.

3^3. apples substituted for heather struck out.

217. The Broom of Cowdenknows.

P. 192. Mrs Greenwood, of London, had heard (presumably at Longnewton, near Jedburgh) “the old Cowdenknows, where, instead of the Laird of the Oakland hills, it is the Laird of the Hawthorn-wide.” Letters addressed to Sir W. Scott, I, No 189, May 27, [1806.]

221. Katharine Jaffray.

P. 216 a. Scott’s ‘Katherine Janfarie’ was printed in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 238.

222. Bonny Baby Livingston.

P. 231 f. “I can get a copy of a ballad the repeating verse of which is:

The Highlands are no for me, The Highlands are no for me; But gin ye wad my favour win Than carry me to Dundee.

His name is sometimes called Glendinnin, and his residence the same: however, I think it is a Highland ballad, from other circumstances.” W. Laidlaw to Sir W. Scott, September 11, 1802: Letters, I, No 73. Compare #D#.

225. Rob Roy.

P. 243. The Harris MS. has one stanza, fol. 27 b, from Mrs Isdale, Dron, ‘Robin Oigg’s Elopement.’

An they hae brocht her to a bed, An they hae laid her doun, An they’ve taen aff her petticoat, An stript her o her goun.

226. Lizie Lindsay.

P. 255. Communicated by Mr Walker, of Aberdeen, as procured October 5, 1891, from George Nutchell, Ground Officer at Edzell Castle, who derived it from his step-grandmother Mrs Lamond (Nelly Low), fifty-eight years ago, she being at the time eighty years old.

1 ‘Will ye gang to the Highlands, Lizzie Lindsay? Will ye gang to the Highlands wi me? Will ye gang to the Highlands, Lizzie Lindsay, My bride an my darling to be?’

2 She turned her round on her heel, And a very loud laugh gaed she: ‘I’d like to ken whaur I’m ganging, An wha I am gaun to gang wi.’

3 ‘My name is Donald Macdonald, I’ll never think shame nor deny; My father he is an old shepherd, My mither she is an old dey.

4 ‘Will ye gang to the Highlands, bonnie Lizzie? Will ye gang to the Highlands wi me? For ye shall get a bed o green rashes, A pillow an a covering o grey.’

5 Upraise then the bonny young lady, An drew till her stockings an sheen, An packd up her claise in fine bundles, An away wi young Donald she’s gaen.

6 When they cam near the end o their journey, To the house o his father’s milk-dey, He said, Stay still there, Lizzie Lindsay, Till I tell my mither o thee.

7 ‘Now mak us a supper, dear mither, The best o yer curds an green whey, An mak up a bed o green rashes, A pillow an covering o grey.

8 ‘Rise up, rise up, Lizzie Lindsay, Ye have lain oer lang i the day; Ye should hae been helping my mither To milk her ewes an her kye.’

9 Out then spak the bonnie young lady, As the saut tears drapt frae her ee, ‘I wish I had bidden at hame; I can neither milk ewes or kye.’

10 ‘Rise up, rise up, Lizzie Lindsay, There is mair ferlies to spy; For yonder’s the castle o Kingussie, An it stands high an dry.’

11 ‘Ye are welcome here, Lizzie Lindsay, The flower o all your kin, For ye shall be lady o Kingussie, An ye shall get Donald my son.’

243. James Harris.

P. 360 a. #B.# There is another, and perhaps slightly earlier, copy of The Rambler’s Garland, British Museum, 11621, c. 2 (64), with a few trifling differences, for better or worse.

251. Lang Johnny More.

P. 396. ‘Bennachie,’ by Alex. Inkson McConnochie, Aberdeen, 1890, has a copy of this ballad, p. 66, longer by a few verses and with some verbal differences. But as this copy has been edited, though “without violence having been done,” the variations, in themselves quite immaterial, do not demand registration.

To be Corrected in the Print.

#I,#

135 b, #P# 13^2. Read There’s.

188 b, line 15. Read 207.

200 b, line 6. Read Vidyádharí.

401 b, fourth paragraph, line 3 f. Read No 68, III, 117.

#II,#

10 a, eighth line from below. Read #B# for #C#.

26 b 13^1. Read moon.

84 b, last line of third paragraph. Read #G# 21.

266, #B# 5^3. Read you.

428 b, #e#. Read 3^4 for 3^1.

482 b, third paragraph, last line. Read V, 101.

507 a, Josefs Gedicht. Eighth line, read Den . . . in queme. First line of answer, read De; third, deme; seventh, konde.

#III,#

41 b, third paragraph, second line. Read MS. for Mr.

264 a, 17^4. Read hee. b, 23^2. Read soe.

276 a, line 7. Read queen’s own son.

281 a, 5^2. Read new.

288 a, line 4 of the first paragraph. Read William Lord Douglas. b, line 16. Read wail.

306 a, note *, fourth line. Read Minstrelsy, II, 325, ed. 1802.

348 b, [#A# 12^1]. Read sais. 15^2. Read mirrie.

376 b, #G# 2^1. Read g_rea_t.

379 a, 173, #A a#, first line. Read Sharpe’s.

383 a, line 32. Read pavlovsk.

384 a, 5^1. Read was never.

397, #P# 1^1. Read father is.

435 a, #E# 5^2. Read loon.

448 a, #A#, heading. Read 1750.

459 a, 7^1. Read Buss. 10^2. Read o the Dun.

463 a, first line of citation from Maitland. Read spuilzie.

473 b, 24^4. Read never.

475 b, citation from Maitland, line 5. Read ane guyd.

477 b, third paragraph, line 2. Read moss-trooper.

485 b, first paragraph, line 9 from the end. Read would.

489 b, #B# 9^1. Read, There (==There are) six.

499 a, #9#, line 8 f. Read Vuk, II, 376, No 64.

504 a, third line from the bottom. Read #O# for #J#.

504 b, third line. Read Rae.

505 a, 13^4. Read And aye. 18^1. Read o the.

510 b. The note to p. 215 belongs under No 76.

#IV#,

6 a, 8^1. Read whan. (10^1. Gar seek in the early editions, Gae in ed. 1833.)

7 b, 41^1. Read thy kye.

8 a, 46^3. Read dare.

18 a, 10^3. Read Then. 12^4. Read [to]. b, 19^2. Read Whan.

21 b, 17^3. Read grey.

23 a, #A a#, fourth line. Read former [#B#].

28 a. Title of 194 #B#, Laird o Waristoun, in the MS. copy; Laird of Wariestoun, in the printed.

34 b, #B#. Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight is the title in Scott’s Minstrelsy. It is Lord Maxwell’s Farewell in the Table of Contents of Glenriddell.

36 a, preface, last line but two, and b, line 3. Read Lord Maxwell for Lord John.

38 a, 11^2. Read, perhaps, fathers’: cf. their, in line 3.

45 b, #B# 7^1. Read he’s.

47 b, 18^1. Read Lady.

54 a, No 199, #B#. Insert the title: ‘Bonny House of Airly.’

66 a, #B# 5^1. Read Gar . . . manteel.

68 a, #D#, third line. Read Corse for Cragievar.

69 a, 6^3. Read Stincher. 8^3. Read kill.

75 a, ninth line of preface. Read in his Poems.

76 a, fifth line. Read Beauchie.

81 b, seventeenth and twenty-fourth lines. Read Abergeldy.

82 b, note, first line. Read Brachally in Dee Water Side.

90 a, #E#. Insert ‘Laird of Blackwood,’ as the title of the printed copy.

91 a, tenth line of the second paragraph. Read after the birth of his son for after that event. note *. Read IV, 277 f, II, 449 f.

92 a, second line. Read #A#, #C#.

93 b, #A# 2^1. Read cam.

94 a, #B# 1^4. Read wont.

95 b, #B# 12^3. Read I’me. #C# 6^4. Read country. 8^{1,2}. Read well.

96 a, #D# 3^3. Read fire-boams.

105 a, sixth line of Appendix. Read Broadside.

110 b, No 207, #D#, third line. Read p. 135.

123 b, #I b#. Strike out (Lord?) #K.# Read p. 370.

124 b, fifth paragraph, last line but four. Read Pitbagnet’s.

129 a, 23^3. Read feght. b, 28^3. Read burd. #C b.# Read in Wilkie’s hand, dropping what follows.

138 b, #C b# 12^{1,2}. Read Wanting, for A man spoke loud.

139 a, #I b# 3^4, 4^1. Read Pitbagnet’s.

152 b, 10^3. Read showd.

153 b, 9^2. Read was.

155 a, second line after title. After library, insert P. 6.

157 a, 2^2. Read nourice.

168 a, 7^2. Read doon.

201 b, 26^3. Read kye.

202 a, #K# 2^2. Read It is.

207 a, 20^2. Read them a’ out.

212 a, 4^3. Read sallads.

221 b, 13^2. Read grey.

224 b, 22^1. Read hes he.

226 a, 6^3. Read Lammington.

248 a, 2^2. Read ladie.

-----

Footnote 1:

The brother is Peter o Whitfield. ‘Jock o the Side,’ #A#, begins, ‘Peeter a Whifeild he hath slaine, and John a Side he is tane.’ ‘The great Earl of Whitfield,’ 10^3, seemed to Scott a corruption, and he suggested ‘the great Ralph’ Whitfield; but Surtees gave him information (which has not transpired) that led him to think that the reading ‘Earl’ might be right. Whitfield, in Northumberland, is a few miles southwest of Hexham, and about twenty-five, in a straight line, from Kershope, or the border.

Footnote 2:

Nicolson and Burn, History of Westmorland and Cumberland, p. xxxi.

Footnote 3:

[I have received, too late for present use, three traditional copies of ‘Hughie Grame’ from Abbotsford, two of which are varieties of #B#, the third the original of #C#. #C# 2–5, 16, were taken from Ritson, not without changes. One of the varieties of #B# has #E# 15 in a form very near to No 169, #B b#, #c#.]

Footnote 4:

I do not know whether the document cited is extant or accessible, or whether it was examined by Mr T. J. Carlyle for his paper on the Debateable Land; he mentions no Hugh Grame, p. 13 f.

Though Grames are numerous (in 1592 they were considered the greatest surname on the west border of England, R. B. Armstrong), I have found only one Hugh out of the ballad. Hugh’s Francie, that is Hugh’s son Francie, is in the list of the Grames transported to Ireland in 1607. Nicolson and Burn, History of Westmorland and Cumberland, I, cxx.

Footnote 5:

Nicolson and Burn, I, lxxxi, II, 279 f. As for Bishop Aldridge’s character, his being a trimmer does not make him a “limmer.” Ecclesiastics are not infrequently accused in ballads, but no man is to lose his reputation without better evidence than that.

Footnote 6:

Nicolson and Burn, I, x, xiii, xcii.

Footnote 7:

Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, 1st Series, p. 50.

Footnote 8:

See also a paper by Dr Arthur Mitchell in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, XII, 260, June 11, 1877. Dr Mitchell was with Mr Murray when he visited Sarah Rae, and he supplies the date 1866. The last stanza of the ballad and the burden are cited in this paper.

Footnote 9:

The innocent comments of certain editors must not be lost. “The whole incident surely implies a very early and primitive system of manners, not to speak of the circumstance of the court being held at Carlisle, which never was the case in any late period of English history.” (Chambers’s Scottish Ballads, p. 306.) “In our version [#E#] the scene of the theft is laid at London, but Carlisle, we are inclined to think, is the true reading. The great distance between Scotland and London, and the nature of the roads in times of old, would render the event an improbable, if not altogether an impossible, one to have occurred; and we can easily imagine, when the court was at Carlisle, that such a good practical joke was planned and carried into execution by some waggish courtiers.” (Dixon, p. 93 f.)

Footnote 10:

So the Memorial referred to in the next note, p. VI. Sharpe, in his preface, p. iv, says nineteen. #B# 9 is of course quite wrong as to the duration of her married life.

Footnote 11:

A Memorial of the Conversion of Jean Livingston, Lady Waristoun, etc., printed from the manuscript by C. K. Sharpe, Edinburgh, 1827. An Epitaphium Janetæ Livingstoune is subjoined. The record of Weir’s trial is given in the preface: see also Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, II, 445 ff. The Memorial is powerfully interesting, but, in Sharpe’s words, would have been a mischievous present to the world, whatever one may think of the change of heart in this “dear saint of God,” as she is therein repeatedly called. It may be noted that Jean Livingston, when it was supposed her last hour had come, called for a drink and drank to all her friends. Memorial, p. XIII: cf. “Mary Hamilton.”

Footnote 12:

Rolling in a spiked barrel is well known as a popular form of punishment. For some examples later than Regulus, see Grundtvig, II, 174, No 58; Grundtvig, II, 547, No 101, A-D, Prior, I, 349, Afzelius, No 3 (two copies), Wolff, Halle der Völker, II, 161; Grundtvig, III, 700, No 178, A-D, Prior, II, 160, Arwidsson, II, 62, No 80, and Grundtvig, ib. p. 698; Hoffmann, Niederländische Volkslieder, 1856, p. 19, No 3, Le Jeune, p. 87, No 3, Prior, II, 238; Pidal, Asturian Romances, p. 163, No 36; Grimms, K.-u. H. märchen, Nos 13, 89, 135; Asbjørnsen og Moe, p. 464. Sharpe, in his preface to the Memorial, p. v, gives #B# 8 in this form, “partly from tradition:”

Up spak the laird o Dunypace, Sat at the king’s right knee; ‘Gar nail her in a tar-barrel And hurl her in the sea.’

Footnote 13:

The day before the execution Lady Wariston desired to see her infant son. The minister feared lest the sight of him should make her wae to leave him, but she assured that the contrair should be seen, took the child in her arms, kissed him, blessed him, and recommended him to the Lord’s care, and sent him away again without taking of any sorrow. Memorial, p. IX.

Footnote 14:

Fraser, The Book of Carlaverock, I, 300. “John, ninth Lord Maxwell, was born about the year 1586.” He was married in 1601, and imprisoned for his papistical propensity in the same year. Either the date is too late, or Maxwell was one of those avenging children who mature so very fast: see ‘Jellon Grame,’ II, 303, 513.

Footnote 15:

Some sort of “agreement” had been made in 1605, as we see by the “Summons” referred to further on, and Lord Maxwell mentions this agreement in a conversation with Sir Robert Maxwell. Pitcairn’s Trials, III, 36, 44.

Footnote 16:

In the indictment (“Summons, etc., against John, Lord Maxwell”), it is said that Johnstone was shot through the shoulder with two poisoned bullets. If there was evidence as to this aggravating circumstance, it has not been made accessible. In his “Offers of Submission,” etc., by which Lord Maxwell hoped to avoid the extreme penalty of the law, he makes oath on his salvation and damnation that the unhappy slaughter was nowise committed upon forethought felony or set purpose; and on the scaffold, while declaring that he had justly deserved his death and asking forgiveness of the Johnstone family, he protested that his act had been without dishonor or infamy; meaning, of course, perfidy.

Footnote 17:

Spotiswood’s History, ed. 1655, pp. 338 f., 400 f., 504 f.; Historie of King James the Sext, pp. 209 f., 297–99; Moysie’s Memoirs, p. 109 f.; Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, III, 31–40, 43–47, 51–53; Fraser, The Book of Carlaverock, 1873, pp. 300 f., 314, 321; Taylor, The Great Historic Families of Scotland, 1887, II, 10, 14–25.

Footnote 18:

In a petition presented to the Privy Council by Robert Maxwell in behalf of his brother, the ‘sometime’ Lord Maxwell, by his attorney, craves “forgiveness of his offence done to the Marquís of Hamilton [his wife’s brother] and his friends.” Pitcairn, III, 52. Whether this was penitence or policy, it shows that great offence had been taken. Some verses inserted by Scott in his edition of the ballad, in which his lady urges Maxwell to go with her to her brother’s stately tower, where “Hamiltons and Douglas baith shall rise to succour thee,” are quite misplaced.

Footnote 19:

Frendraught is in the parish of Forgue, Aberdeenshire, Rothiemay in Banffshire; they lie on opposite sides of the Deveron.

Footnote 20:

A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, 1813, pp. 412, 416 ff. Sir Robert Gordon’s book stops before the (inconclusive) legal and judicial proceedings were finished. He seems to share the suspicion of the “most part,” that the Leslies and Meldrum set the fire.

Footnote 21:

See Spalding, Memorialls of the Trubles in Scotland and in England, 1624–1645, Spalding Club, I, 45–51, 420–23, 430–35, and the continuator of Sir Robert Gordon, p. 474 f. Frendraught is generally represented to have been utterly ruined in his estate, but that is probably an exaggeration. His sufferings are thus depicted in the Charges against the Marquis of Huntly and others anent the disorders in the North (Spalding, I, 420): “Forasmuch as the Lords of Secret Council are informed that great numbers of sorners and broken men of the clan Gregor, clan Lachlan (etc.), as also divers of the name of Gordon ... have this long time, and now lately very grievously, infested his Majesty’s loyal subjects in the north parts, especially the laird of Frendraught and his tenants, by frequent slaughters, herships, and barbarous cruelties committed upon them, and by a late treasonable fireraising within the said laird of Frendraught his bounds, whereby not only is all the gentleman’s lands laid waste, his whole goods and bestial spoiled, slain and maigled, some of his servants killed and cruelly demeaned, but also the whole tenants of his lands and domestics of his house have left his service, and himself, with the hazard of his life, has been forced to steal away under night and have his refuge to his Majesty’s Council, etc.” It was reported that Frendraught obtained a decree against the marquis for 200,000 merks (Scots) for scathe, and another for 100,000 pounds (or merks) for spoliation of tithes, but that he recovered the money does not appear. (Spalding, I, 71, 115.) In 1636, through the exertions of Sir Robert Gordon, Huntly and Frendraught were brought to submit all differences on either side, “and particularly a great action of law prosecuted by Frendraught against the marquis,” to the arbitrament of friends. Huntly died before a decision was reached, but “the Laird of Frendraught retired himself home to his own lands, and there lived peaceably.” (Genealogical History of Sutherland, p. 479.)

Footnote 22:

Memorials, I, 17 ff., and the Appendix, p. 381 ff.

Footnote 23:

So John Gordon, Viscount Melgum, the second son of the Marquis of Huntly, was indifferently called, though the title of Viscount Aboyne belonged to his elder brother, George, and was not conferred upon him until after John’s death. Sir Robert Gordon says that the Marquis of Huntly “ordained” for Melgum the lands of Aboyne, and others. Melgum was married to Sophia Hay, daughter of the Earl of Errol, as appears also in the ballad.

Footnote 24:

What manner of helping Frendraught could have given Spalding does not “condescend upon.” The way down stairs was barred by fire, the windows were barred with iron. [“But the stairs or monty being in fire, and the windows grated with strong bars of iron, there was no moyen to escape:” Blakhal’s Narration, Spalding Club, p. 125.] Ladders and crowbars occur to us, but a tower with walls ten feet thick was not expected to burn, the servants had not been drilled in managing fires, people smoked from their beds at two in the morning are not apt to have their wits about them, and the combustion was rapid.

Footnote 25:

All the documents will be found in the Appendix to Spalding. Dr John Hill Burton, in Narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland, 1852, I, 202 ff, leans hard against Frendraught. “With pretty abundant materials, it is impossible, even at the present day, entirely to clear up the mystery, but we can see by what machinations inquiry was baffled.” “It will be seen that no evidence against him was received, that it was considered an offence to accuse him.” “Frendraught, though he had with a high hand averted even the pretence of inquiry on the part of the government, did not go unpunished, whether he was guilty or not.” Dr Burton speaks with more reserve in his History of Scotland, VI, 209; little more is insisted on than a wish of the Court to foster the Crichtons as a balance to the power of the house of Huntly. It is clear that Frendraught had all the consideration and help from the government which he could claim. Mr Charles Rampini, who has discussed the affair in The Scottish Review, X, 143 ff., 1887, concludes favorably to Frendraught’s innocence of the fire.

Footnote 26:

“Many years ago, when the well was cleared out, this tradition was corroborated by their finding the keys: at least, such was the report of the country.” (Finlay, I, xxi, citing a correspondent.) Of course we should have had to believe everything against Lady Frendraught, even that she had been so simple as to throw them in, if keys had been found in the well; but the land-steward of the proprietor of the estate informed the late Mr Norval Clyne that the draw-well was searched, and no keys were found.

Footnote 27:

This is, of course, the style of the kirk. The fifty-third psalm of the Vulgate would not have been out of place for Lord John, who was a Catholic; but no doubt Lord John is taken for a Presbyterian in the ballad, and the ‘three’ is for rhyme. Father Blakhal maintains that Frendraught burnt his tower, not to rid himself of Rothiemay, but out of theological malice to Melgum “for his zeal in defending and protecting the poor Catholics against the tyranny of our puritanical bishops and ministers.” “As he [Melgum] was dying for the defence of the poor Catholics, God did bestow upon him the grace to augment the number at the last hour of his life, persuading the Baron of Rothiemay to abjure the heresy of Calvin, and make the profession of the Catholic faith openly, to the hearing of the traitor and all who were with him in the court. They two being at a window, and whilst their legs were burning, they did sing together Te Deum; which ended, they did tell at the window that their legs being consumed even to their knees, etc.... And so this noble martyr finished this mortal life, at the age of four and twenty years.” A Brief Narration, etc., p. 124 f.

Blakhal, who is far from being a cautious writer, also tells us that “the traitor,” Frendraught, “with his men,in arms, walked all the night in the court,” to kill Gordon and Rothiemay, if they should escape from the fire. There is a passage of the same purport in one of Arthur Johnston’s two poems on the burning of Frendraught, “Querela Sophiæ Hayæ,” etc.:

Cur vigil insuetis noctem traduxit in armis, Cætera cum somno turba sepulta foret?

The other piece ends with a ferocious demand for the use of torture to discover the guilty party. (Delitiæ Poetarum Scotorum, Amsterdam, 1637, pp. 585, 587; or, A. I. Poemata Omnia, Middelburg, 1642, pp. 329, 331.)

Footnote 28:

Stanza 21 recalls the verses in Hume of Godscroft:

Edinburgh castle, towne, and tower, God grant thou sink for sinne! etc.

Footnote 29:

Gordon’s History of Sutherland, p. 414; Spalding’s Memorials, I, 11, 21–23, 29 f., 43 f.

Footnote 30:

Gordon’s History, pp. 481, 460; Spalding, with details, I, 70.

Footnote 31:

Spalding, I, 141, 188, 244.

Footnote 32:

Gordon, History of Scots Affairs, II, 276–80; Spalding, Memorials, I, 209–11. Seton is called a bold, or brave, baron, in #A# 2, #B# 3, not in the mediæval way, but as one of the gentlemen of the king’s party. The Gordons and their associates “at this time were called the Barons, and their actings, by way of derision, the Barons’ Reign.” Gordon, p. 261. “Northern,” #B# 1^3, should be southern, as in #A#.

Footnote 33:

Gordon, II, 274; Spalding, I, 208; Napier’s Montrose and the Covenanters, I, 284 f. The Hieland men, says Baillie, “avowed that they could not abide the musket’s mother, and so fled in troops at the first volley.” Letters, ed. Laing, I, 221.

Footnote 34:

History of Scots Affairs, II, 281, note: see also what is added to that note.

Footnote 35:

“‘The deep, deep den’ referred to in the ballad is the Den of Airlie, celebrated for its fine scenery and romantic beauty. It extends about a mile below the junction of the Isla and the Melgum.” Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, II, 296.

Footnote 36:

Spalding’s Memorials, ed. 1850, I, 290–2; Gordon’s History of Scots Affairs, III, 164 f.; also, II, 234; Gardiner, History of England, 1603–1642, ed., 1884, IX, 167 f. Both Spalding and Gordon say that Montrose besieged Airlie but did not succeed in taking it. Argyle, continues Spalding, “raises an army of about 5,000 men and marches towards Airlie; but the Lord Ogilvie, hearing of his coming with such irresistible forces, resolves to fly and leave the house manless, and so for their own safety they wisely fled. But Argyle most cruelly and inhumanly enters the house of Airlie,” etc. A letter of Argyle’s to one Dugald Campbell (dated July, 1640) would seem to show that he was not there in person during the razing and burning. “You need not let know,” says Argyle, “that ye have directions from me to fire it.” Notes and Queries, Fifth Series, IX, 364; reprinted by Gardiner.

Footnote 37:

Napier, Montrose and the Covenanters, 1838, I, 129.

Footnote 38:

In 18–21 the lady makes her lord not only forgive the abettors of Jockie Faa, whom he was about to hang, but present ten guineas to Jockie, whom he was minded to burn.

Footnote 39:

“Corse field may very possibly be Corse, the ancient seat of the Forbeses of Craigievar, from the close vicinity of which the reciter of this ballad came.” Burton, in Kinloch MSS, V, 334.

Footnote 40:

Recalling Carrick, of which Maybole is the capital. “The family of Cassilis, in early times, had been so powerful that the head of it was generally termed the King of Carrick:” Sharpe. But Garrick may have come in in some other way.

Footnote 41:

#F# 7, if it belongs to the countess, gives her an unlady-like taste for brandy.

Footnote 42:

“There is indeed a stanza of no merit, which, in some copies, concludes the ballad, and states that eight of the gypsies were hanged at Carlisle, and the rest at the Border:” Finlay, II, 43.

Footnote 43:

Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, III, 201, 307 f., 397–9, 559–62, 592–94; Acts of the Parliament of Scotland, IV, 440.

Footnote 44:

Sharpe’s Ballad Book, ed. Laing, 1880, pp. 142, 154. I have unluckily lost my voucher for Johnny Faa’s figuring in ‘The Douglas Tragedy.’

Footnote 45:

Finlay, II, 35; The Scots Magazine, LXXX, 306, and the Musical Museum, 1853, IV, *217, Sharpe; Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 143; The New Statistical Account of Scotland, V, 497; Paterson, The Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, I, 10; Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 179.

Footnote 46:

She had four children according to the Historical Account of the Noble Family of Kennedy, Edinburgh, 1849, p. 44.

Footnote 47:

‘We were a’ put down but ane’ first appears in Herd, 1769.

Footnote 48:

These eight heads would correspond very neatly to the number of gypsies executed in 1624. But in the circumstantial account given by Chambers we are told that the house belonging to the family at Maybole was fitted for the countess’s reception “by the addition of a fine projecting stair-case, upon which were carved heads representing those of her lover and his band.... The effigies of the gypsies are very minute, being subservient to the decoration of a fine triple window at the top of the stair-case, and stuck upon the tops and bottoms of a series of little pilasters which adorn that part of the building. The head of Johnie Faa himself is distinct from the rest, larger, and more lachrymose in the expression of the features. Some windows in the upper flat of Cassilis Castle are similarly adorned; but regarding them tradition is silent.”

Footnote 49:

Sharp, in Johnson’s Museum, 1853, IV, 218*; Paterson, in Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, I, 13. It is also clear from these letters that the countess was a sober and religious woman. Some minor difficulties which attend the supposition of this lady’s absconding with Johnny Faa, or any gypsy, are barely worth mentioning. At the time when Johnny Faa was put down, in 1624, the countess was seventeen years old, and yet she is made the mother of two children. If we shift the elopement to the other end of her life, there was then (so severe had been the measures taken with these limmers) perhaps not a gypsy left in Scotland. See Aytoun, 1859, I, 186.

Footnote 50:

John, seventh earl of Cassilis, son of the sixth earl by a second wife, married for his second wife, some time before 1700, Mary Foix (a name also spelt Faux): Crawford’s Peerage, 1716, p. 76, corrected by the Decreets of the Lords of Council and Session, vol. 145, div. 2. May this explain the Faws coming to be associated in the popular mind with a countess of Cassilis? (A suggestion of Mr Macmath’s.) The lady is even called Jeanie Faw in #C# 7, 11, first by the gypsy, then by her husband. The seventh earl had two children by Mary Foix.

Footnote 51:

I have seen this piece only in Elizabeth Cochrane’s Song-Book, MS., p. 38, and in Buchan’s MSS, I, 220. Its contents agree with what is alleged in W. Fuller’s “Brief Discovery of the True Mother of the pretended Prince of Wales, known by the name of Mary Grey,” London, 1696, pp. 5 f, 11, 17 f, and it was probably composed not long after.

Footnote 52:

Afterwards inserted in the first volume of The Tea-Table Miscellany (p. 66 of A New Miscellany of Scots Sangs, London, 1727, p. 68 of T. T. M., Dublin, 1729), from which source it may have been adopted by Sharpe.

Footnote 53:

Here from the original, Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i, from a copy furnished by Mr Macmath.

Footnote 54:

The most of this account, and in nearly the same words, was given in an earlier letter from Major Barry to James Cant, who printed (Perth, 1774) an edition of ‘The Muses Threnodie, by Mr H. Adamson, 1638’ (p. 19). The principal items of the story are repeated from Cant by Pennant, Tour in Scotland, 1772, Part II, London, 1776, p. 112. Pennant cites Cant’s book as the Gabions of Perth. “It seems,” says Mr Macmath, who has extracted for me the passage in Cant, “that Adamson’s work was sometimes known as Gall’s Gabions, the latter being a coined word.”

Footnote 55:

An “old manuscript volume” cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, X, 37; Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, 1858, II, 167.

Footnote 56:

The remark is made in The Scotsman, September 11, 1886.

Footnote 57:

In the manuscript cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, p. 37, we are told that, to prevent the spread of infection, “it was thought proper to put those out of the town at some distance who were sick. Accordingly, they went out and builded huts for themselves in different places around the town, particularly in the South Inch [etc.] and the grounds near the river Almond, at the mouth thereof, in all which places there are as yet the remains of their huts which they lodged in.” So, when this same pestilence was raging in the parish of Monivaird, the gentlemen “caused many huts to be built, and ordered all who perceived that they were infected immediately to repair into them:” Porteous, History of the Parishes of Monivaird and Strowan, MS., Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i, printed in the Transactions, II, 72, 1822.

Footnote 58:

This is Wishart’s account. Another, by Covenanters, makes Montrose to have been more on the alert, and has nothing of the two thousand horse sent to take him in the rear. The royalists are admitted to have maintained their ground with great resolution for almost an hour. The numbers are as given by Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, II, 335 f.

Footnote 59:

T. Craig-Brown, History of Selkirkshire, 1886, I, 188.

Footnote 60:

Not 1829, as put in the reprint of 1869. “Written hurriedly, in supply of the press, in April and May, 1832. J. R.”: Dr J. Robertson’s interleaved copy of the undated first edition. #A c# is reprinted (with some errors) in The Great North of Scotland Railway, A Guide, by W. Ferguson, 1881, p. 163.

Footnote 61:

Jamieson writes to the Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 699: “The Baron of Braikly begins,

O Inverey cam down Dee-side Whistling and playing; He’s landed at Braikly’s yates At the day dawing.

Of this I have got a compleat copy, and the story is very interesting; but I have got a fragment of it from another quarter, which, so far as it goes, is superior.” Etc.

Footnote 62:

A market was established here in 1661 by an act in favor of William Farquharson of Inverey, his heirs, etc. This William had a brother and a son John. William Farquharson of Inverey younger, as “a person of known trust and approven ability,” is appointed to keep a guard “this summer for the sherifdom of Kincardine” against cattle-driving Highlanders, July of the same year. Thomson’s Acts, VII, 18, I, 286: pointed out to me by Mr Macmath.

Footnote 63:

Macfarlane’s Genealogical Collections, MS., in the Advocates’ Library, I, 299 f; already cited by Jamieson, Ballads, I, 108.

Footnote 64:

See a little further on.

Footnote 65:

Gilmour’s Decisions, 1701, p. 43. (Macmath.)

Footnote 66:

Col. H. W. Lumsden’s Memorials of the Families of Lumsdaine, etc., p. 59.

Footnote 67:

History of the Earldom of Sutherland, p. 217 f. To the same effect, Johnstone, Historia Rerum Britannicarum, Amsterdam, 1655, p. 160 f, under the year 1591, and Spotiswood, p. 390, of the editions of 1655, 1666, 1668, under the year 1592. “The History of the Feuds,” etc., p. 67, ed. 1764, merely repeats Sir Robert Gordon. William Gordon’s History of the Family of Gordon, cites Sir Robert Gordon and Johnstone, and calls Gordon of Brackley Alexander.

Still another “Gordon, Baron of Brackley in Deeside,” is said to have been murdered by the country people about him in or near 1540: The Genealogy of the Grants, in Macfarlane’s Genealogical Collections, I, 168, and An Account of the Rise and Offspring of the Name of Grant, printed for Sir Archibald Grant, Bart., of Monymusk, 1876, p. 30 ff, where the date is put (perhaps through a misprint) before 1480. A horrible revenge was said to have been taken by the Earl of Huntly and James Grant: see the well-known story of the orphans fed at a trough, in Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, chap. xxxix.

Footnote 68:

See the Memorandum for Farquharson in “Fourth Report,” as above, p. 534.

Footnote 69:

Pointed out to me by Mr. Macmath, who, in making this and other communications relating to the Gordons of Brackley, suggested and urged the hypothesis of a mixture of two events in this ballad.

Footnote 70:

Fraser, The Douglas Book, Edinburgh, 1885, II, 277 f, 449 f. The contract, being a mutual paper, may not express to the full the supposed grievances of either party.

Footnote 71:

The Douglas Book, II, 450 f. “Lawrie is mentioned by Lord Fountainhall as ‘late chamberlain to the Marquis of Douglas, and repute a bad instrument between him and his lady in their differences.’ Decisions, I, 196.”

What should prompt Lawrie to malice against the marchioness is unknown. Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 58, accepting the story of the old woman from whom he obtained #E#, says: “The Laird of Blackwood and the Marquis of —— were rivals in the affection of a lovely and amiable young lady, who, preferring the latter, became his wife. Blackwood ... vowed revenge,” etc. Chambers, who repeats this account, Scottish Ballads, p. 150, remarks that Lawrie seems to have been considerably advanced in life at the time. Lawrie’s son made a “retour of services” in 1650, and may be supposed then to have been of age. The Marquis of Douglas was in his twenty-fourth year when he married, in 1670, and probably Lady Barbara Erskine was not older. Maidment is surprised that Lawrie, “a man of uncertain lineage,” should have succeeded with the widow Marion Weir. What is to be thought of his aspiring, at the age of sixty, or more, to “the affection of a lovely and amiable young lady” of the family of Mar, one of the most ancient in Scotland?

Footnote 72:

Kinloch MSS, I, 95 f. For one or two points see Maidment’s Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 262 ff., the preface to the ballad there called ‘Lady Barbara Erskine’s Lament.’

Footnote 73:

“Matthew Crawford, weaver, Howwood, sings ‘Jamie Douglas’ with the conclusion in which the lady dies after her return and reconciliation with her lord.” Motherwell’s Note-Book, p. 56.

“I was informed by A. Lile that she has heard a longer set of the ballad in which, while Lady Douglas is continuing her lament, she observes a troop of gentlemen coming to her father’s, and she expresses a wish that these should be sent by her lord to bring her home. They happen to be sent for that purpose, and she accompanies them. On her meeting, however, with her lord, and while putting a cup of wine to her lips, her heart breaks, and she drops down dead at his feet.” Motherwell, note to #G#, MS., p. 347.

Lawrie came near losing his head in 1683 for political reasons, but he survived the revolution of 1688, “got all the proceedings against him annulled, and a complete rehabilitation.” Wodrow, II, 295; Maidment, 1868, II, 268.

Footnote 74:

All but #E# have #b# 4: #E# has #a# 4. All but #A#, #D#, #E#, #L#, #M# have 1. #A#, #C#, #E# have 10; #J# has 2, 3; #A# has 8; #F# has 9.

Footnote 75:

It must be said, however, that stanza 8, ‘When we came in by Glasgow town,’ etc., hardly suits the song, and would be entirely appropriate to the ballad (as it is in #A# 2). It may have been taken up from this ballad (which must date from the last quarter of the seventeenth century), or from some other.

Footnote 76:

#a# is followed in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, III, 144, Herd, Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 196; #b#, in the Musical Museum, p. 166, No 158; with slight variations in each copy.

Footnote 77:

Scottish Psalter, 1566, Wood’s MSS, Bassus, Laing’s MSS, University of Edinburgh, MS. Books, 483, III, p. 209. The medley is by a different and later hand: Laing in the Musical Museum, 1853, I, xxviii f., IV, 440*. It is printed in the second edition of Forbes’s Cantus, Aberdeen, 1666.

There was a much older stave, or proverb, to the same purport, as we see by Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, vv. 855, 57.

But sooth is seyd, algate I fynde it trewe, Loue is noght old as whan that it is newe.

Footnote 78:

“Public worship was begun by Mr Douglas, when the accounts came to them that Claverhouse and his men were coming upon them, and had Mr King and others their friends prisoners. Upon this, finding evil was determined against them, all who had arms drew out from the rest of the meeting, and resolved to go and meet the soldiers and prevent their dismissing the meeting, and, if possible, relieve Mr King and the other prisoners.” Wodrow’s History, 1722, II, 46.

Footnote 79:

(Postscript: “My lord, I am so wearied and so sleepy that I have written this very confusedly.”) See Russell, in the Appendix to C. K. Sharpe’s edition of Kirkton’s Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland, p. 438 ff.; Napier’s Memorials and Letters of John Graham of Claverhouse, II, 219–223. There is a good account of the affair in Mowbray Morris’s “Claverhouse,” ch. iv.

Footnote 80:

Napier interprets the cornet to be Mr Crafford (Crawford), who, in the preceding February, was a corporal in the troop: Memorials, II, 191. But Creichton, in his Memoirs, mentions “the loss of Cornet Robert Graham” at Drumclog. Russell speaks of a Graham killed at Drumclog, and, like Creichton, tells a story of the disfigurement of his face (which he attributes to the cornet’s own dog). Lawrie of Blackwood, Lord Jamie Douglas’s Jago, was indicted and tried, Nov. 24, 1682–Feb. 7. 1683, for (among other things) countenancing John Aulston, who “in the late rebellion” murdered Cornet Graham: Wodrow, II, 293, 295. Guild, in his Bellum Bothuellianum, cited by Scott, has “signifer, trajectus globulo, Græmus.”

Napier will know only of a William Graham as cornet to Claverhouse, “and certainly not killed at Drumclog.” William Graham is referred to in a dispatch of Claverhouse’s, March (?) 1679, as commanding a small garrison: Napier II, 201. A Cornet Graham in Claverhouse’s troop captured a rebel in March, 1682: R. Law’s Memorials, ed. Sharpe, p. 222. A William Graham was “cornet to Claverhouse,” January 3, 1684: Wodrow, II, 338. (See “Clavers, The Despot’s Champion, by a Southern,” London, 1889, p. 48 f., a careful and impartial book, to which I owe a couple of points that I had not myself noticed.)

C. K. Sharpe calls Robert Graham Claverhouse’s cousin, Napier, I, 271, but probably would not wish the title to be taken strictly.

Footnote 81:

Wodrow’s History, 1722, II, 54–67; Creichton’s Memoirs; Russell, in Sharpe’s ed. of Kirkton, p. 447 ff.

Footnote 82:

Russell, as above, p. 464; Wodrow, II, 86.

Footnote 83:

But see “Clavers, the Despot’s Champion,” p. 72 ff.

Footnote 84:

In Notes and Queries, First Series, V, 249.

Footnote 85:

The Works of the late L. Delamer, 1694, The Case of William, Earl of Devonshire, p. 563; which is the plea referred to further on.

Footnote 86:

Such poetical propriety as ‘The second, more alarming still,’ 3^2; ‘The words that passd, alas! presaged’ 18^3. But really the text was not very much altered. Some verses, here dropped, were added “to give a finish.”

Footnote 87:

See W. S. Gibson, Dilston Hall, etc., 1850, p. 54.

Footnote 88:

Buchanan, Rer. Scot. Hist., fol. 186; Lesley, History of Scotland, p. 251 f.

Footnote 89:

In #J#, which cannot be relied on for smaller points, we read that Charles Hay has been hanged, for reasons not given: st. 20.

Footnote 90:

This intimation is repeated in #G# 10, with the ludicrous variation of bloody ‘breeks.’ In #B#, an English lord, whose competency and interest in the matter are alike difficult to comprehend, declares that he will have Geordie hanged, will have Geordie’s head, before the morrow. A Scottish lord rejoins that he will cast off his coat and fight, will fight in blood up to the knees; and the king adds, there will be bloody heads among us all, before that happens. Who the parties to the fight are to be, unless it is the English lord against Scotland, is not evident. #B# is inflated with superfluous verses.

Footnote 91:

It seems to have been familiar in Aberdeen as early as 1627. Joseph Haslewood made an entry in his copy of Ritson’s Scotish Song of a manuscript Lute-Book (presented in 1781 to Dr Charles Burney by Dr Skene of Marischal College) which contained airs noted and collected by Robert Gordon, “at Aberdein, in the yeare of our Lord 1627.” Among some ninety titles of tunes mentioned, there occur ‘Ther wer three ravns’ and ‘God be with the, Geordie.’ (W. Macmath.)

Footnote 92:

Somebody, perhaps J., the editor of The Common-Place Book of Ancient and Modern Ballad, etc., Edinburgh, 1824, attempted an improvement of the later edition of Scott’s ballad. The recension was used by Loève-Veimars for his translation, and is given in his Popular Ballads and Songs from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Editions, Paris, 1825, p. 71. This copy, with variations, is found in the Campbell MSS, I, 348. The alterations are mostly trivial.

Footnote 93:

‘Sir James the Ross’ was first printed in The Weekly Magazine, or, Edinburgh Amusement, IX, 371, in 1770 (Grosart, Works of Michael Bruce, p. 257, the ballad at p. 197), and in the same year in “Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce” (p. 30), with differences, which are attributed to Logan, the editor.

Footnote 94:

“The older ballad, entitled ‘The Young Heir of Baleichan,’ or Baleighan,... is claimed for this parish [Crimond, Aberdeenshire]; while the same ballad is said to be founded on a traditionary tale of Baleichan in Forfarshire.” Smith, A New History of Aberdeenshire, 1875, p. 429.

Footnote 95:

Pinkerton reads Loch Lagan. He also reads ‘the Hichts of Lundie,’ in 10^4, for ‘the gates of London.’ Lundie is in Forfarshire. I suppose both readings to be Pinkerton’s emendations.

Footnote 96:

Logan has a page, and the page may have come from some previously corrupted version of the popular ballad which #J# may follow. The first half of the stanza corresponding to #L# 12 in Logan is from the popular ballad.

Footnote 97:

Sometimes also with sensible prose, as 7^2, ‘But I find she has deceived me;’ 12^3, ‘I dreamed my luive had lost his life.’

The loose, though limited, rhyme in this ballad, in ‘The Bonnie House of Airlie,’ etc., does not favor exact recollection, and furnishes a temptation to invention: hence the sparrow in #B# 6, the arrow in #D# 7, the narrow in #I# 12, and, I fear, the harrow in #L# 9, which of itself is good, while all the others are bad.

Footnote 98:

It must be noted, however, that in ‘Ye think me an unmeet marrow,’ #A# 8^2, Ye is an editorial reading. I may remark that I have included #M-P# in the second group simply because the hero in these is called love or true-love. The husband, however, has both titles in #A#.

Footnote 99:

‘Wi a thrusty rapier,’ #J#, which I feel compelled to understand as the commonplace ‘trusty;’ but, guided by ‘a rusted rapier,’ #K#, we ought perhaps to read ‘rusty.’ In #L# the lady kisses and combs the swain, and sets him on her milk-white steed.—Since I suppose lover to have been substituted for husband in the course of tradition, I shall not be so precise as to distinguish the two when this would be inconvenient.

Footnote 100:

Nine is the number also in #H#, as we see from st. 5, compared with #E#, 5, 11.

Footnote 101:

It will be remembered that green is an unlucky color: see II, 181 f.

Footnote 102:

She tears the ribbons from her head in #D# 11, #I# 12, when she hears the tidings: but this belongs to the bride in the ballad which succeeds, No 215.

Footnote 103:

Ten in #F#, to include the lord with his nine foemen. But why only nine in #E#, #G#, #M#? Is it not because one of the brothers had not been mortally wounded, the brother who is said to kill the husband (lover) in #L#, #M#, #N#, and who may reasonably be supposed to do this in #E#, #F#, #G#? Such a matter would not be left in obscurity in the original ballad.

Footnote 104:

This is disagreeable, assuredly, and unnatural too. It is ‘drank,’ probably, that is softened to ‘wiped’ in #A# 14. Scott, to avoid unpleasantness, reads ‘She kissd them (his wounds) till her lips grew red;’ which would not take long. This is all nicely arranged in #L#: ‘She laid him on her milk-white steed, and bore him home from Yarrow; she washed his wounds in yon well-strand, and dried him wi the hollan.’ The washing and drying are done in #J# on the spot, where there might have been water, but no hollan.

Footnote 105:

The reciters of #A# and #J#, whether they gave what they had received, or tried to avoid the material difficulties about the hair, graze upon absurdity. Her hair was three quarters long, she tied it round ‘her’ (for his?) white hause-bane—and died, #A# 15. His hair was three quarters long, she’s wrapt it round her middle—and brought it home, #J# 16. The hair comes in again in the next two ballads, and causes difficulty. Wonderful things are done with hair in ballads and tales: see #I#, 40 b, and the note at 486 b.

Footnote 106:

#L# 19 is also found only in that copy. It seems to me, but only because #L# does not strike me as being of an original cast—rather a ballad improved by reciters,—to be an adaptation of No 215, #A# 2.

Footnote 107:

James Chalmers, in Archæologia Scotica, III, 261, says that Hamilton’s ballad was contributed to the second volume of the Tea Table Miscellany in 1724. It is not in the Dublin edition of 1729. It is at p. 242 of the London edition of 1733; in Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, II, 34, of the same year; at p. 46 of the first edition of [Hamilton’s] Poems on Several Occasions, Glasgow, 1748. The author died in 1754. The copy in the second edition of Hamilton’s Poems, 1760, p. 67, says Chalmers, is somewhat altered.

In Hamilton’s ballad it is a lover, and not a husband, who is slain, and he is thrown into the Yarrow. It is a question whether Hamilton’s ballad did not affect tradition in the case of #J#, #K#, #L#, particularly #L#. The editorial Douglas in #A# 11 is from Hamilton 24. ‘Wi her tears she bathed his wounds,’ #I# 13^3, looks like Hamilton 9^1. The ‘dule and sorrow’ of #O# 4^2 is a recurring phrase in Hamilton, and ‘slain the comeliest swain,’ #O# 4^3, is in Hamilton 6^3.

In Hamilton’s ballad the slayer of the lover endeavors to induce the lady to marry him, as is done in the Icelandic ballad spoken of under No 89, II, 297 f.

A song by Ramsay, T. T. M., Dublin, 1729, p. 139, has nearly the same first four lines as Hamilton’s ballad, and these have been thought to be traditional.

Footnote 108:

Minstrelsy, 1833, III, 144. For a criticism of Sir Walter Scott’s remarks and a correction of some errors, with much new information, see Mr T. Craig-Brown’s History of Selkirkshire, Edinburgh, 1886, I, 14–16, 311–15, of which work grateful use is here made.

Footnote 109:

Buchan’s note to #E# is, for a wonder, to the purpose. With his usual simplicity, he informs us that “the unfortunate hero of this ballad was a factor to the laird of Kinmundy.” He then goes on to say: “As the young woman to whom he was to be united in connubial wedlock resided in Gamery, a small fishing-town on the east coast of the Murray Frith, the marriage was to be solemnized in the church of that parish; to which he was on his way when overtaken by some of the breakers which overflow a part of the road he had to pass, and dash with impetuous fury against the lofty and adamantine rocks with which it is skirted.” I, 315.

Footnote 110:

Professor Veitch has remarked on the incongruousness of this stanza in Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1890, p. 739 ff. Something like it, but adjusted to the circumstances of a maid, occurs in the ballad which he there prints as the “Original Ballad of the Dowie Dens.” See No 214, p. 174, #L# 19.

Footnote 111:

Mr Macmath informs me that in “A Collection of Old Ballads, etc., printed at Edinburgh between the years 1660 and 1720,” No 7228 of the catalogue issued by John Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1827, there is this item: “Be valiant still, etc., a new song much in request; also Logan Water, or, A Lover in Captivity.”

Footnote 112:

“Hire a horse,” in an “old fragment”?—Cunningham gives the first two stanzas of the ballad, with variations in the first, in his edition of Burns, 1834, V, 107.

Footnote 113:

This volume came in 1836 into the hands of Motherwell’s friend, Mr P. A. Ramsay. The entries have been communicated to me by Mr Macmath.

Footnote 114:

The cane in 18^1 of this copy is a touch of “realism” which we have had in a late copy of Tam Lin; see #J# 16, III, 505.

Footnote 115:

The attempt to lessen the disproportion of the match seems to me a decidedly modern trait. In #H# 27, 28, this goes so far that the maid has twenty ploughs and three against the laird’s thirty and three. In #M# 3–5, the maid’s father was once a landed laird, but gambles away his estate, and then both father and mother take to drinking!

Footnote 116:

Of #D#, W. Laidlaw writes as follows, September 11, 1802: “I had the surprise of a visit from my crack-brained acquaintance Mr Bartram of Biggar, the other day. He brought me a copy of the ‘Laird of Laminton,’ which has greatly disappointed my expectations. It is composed of those you have and some nonsense. But it overturns the tradition of this country, for it makes the wedding and battle to have been at Lauchinwar.” Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 73, Abbotsford.

For the particulars of the compilation of the copies in the Minstrelsy, see the notes to #B#, #C#.

Footnote 117:

This phrase, owing to the accidents of tradition, comes in without much pertinency in some places; as in #A# 11, #K# 22, where she gars the trumpet sound foul play (altered in #J# 17, 18, to ‘a weel won play’ and ‘a’ fair play’).

Footnote 118:

And in #A#, as here printed; but in the MS., by misplacement of 3, 5, the lover is absurdly made to omit telling the lass till her wedding-day.

Footnote 119:

Four-and-twenty bonnie boys of the bridegroom’s party are in #C# 13 clad in ‘the simple gray;’ for which Scott reads ‘Johnstone grey,’ ‘the livery of the ancient family of Johnstone.’ This circumstance, says this editor, appears to support #J#, “which gives Katharine the surname of Johnstone.” But the grey is the livery of Lord ‘Faughanwood’ in #C#, and the Johnstone seems to be a purely capricious venture of Scott’s.

Footnote 120:

“Caddon bank,” says W. Laidlaw in a letter to Scott, September 28, [1802], “is a very difficult pass on Tweedside opposite Innerliethen. The road is now formed through the plantation of firs. The bank is exceedingly steep, and I would not think it difficult even yet with ten clever fellows to give a hundred horsemen a vast of trouble.” Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 74, Abbotsford.—Callien, etc., may be taken to be corruptions of Caden. Foudlin, in the northern #K#, might be Foudland, Aberdeenshire.

Footnote 121:

The heroine of this ballad, an historical lady of high rank, was the third in a regular line to be forcibly carried off by a lover. The date is 1287. Her mother and her grandmother were taken by the strong hand out of a convent in 1245 and about 1210; these much against their will, the other not so reluctantly, according to ballads in which they are celebrated, for curiously enough each has her ballad. See Grundtvig, vol. iii, Nos 138, 155, and No. 181, as above, and his remarks, p. 234, third note, and p. 738 f.

Footnote 122:

At the end of the account of the parish of Livingstone, in The Statistical Account of Scotland, XX, 17, 1798, there is this paragraph: “It may also be expected that something should be said of the Bonny Lass of Livingstone, so famed in song; but although this ballad and the air to which it is sung seem to have as little claim to antiquity as they have to merit, yet we cannot give any satisfactory information upon the subject. All we can say is, that we have heard that she kept a public house at a place called the High House of Livingstone, about a mile west of the church; that she was esteemed handsome, and knew how to turn her charms to the best account.” Dr Robertson, at the place above cited, treats this passage as pertaining to the ballad before us. But the reference is certainly to a song known as the “Lass o Livingston,” beginning, ‘The bonie lass o Liviston;’ concerning which see Cromek’s Reliques of Robert Burns, p. 204 of the edition of 1817, and Johnson’s Museum, IV, 18, 1853.

Footnote 123:

I will add one more corn to a heap. “Mrs Wharton, who was lately stole, is returned home to her friends, having been married against her consent to Captain Campbell” (November, 1690). Luttrell’s Relation, II, 130. There is partial comfort, but somewhat cold, in the fact that the ravisher was in many cases ultimately unsuccessful in his object, as he is in all the ballads here given.

Footnote 124:

I owe the knowledge of these letters to Mr Macmath, who sent me a copy that he was allowed to make by the courtesy of the Messrs Brodie of Edinburgh, in whose possession they now are.

Footnote 125:

“Being her guardian as well as waiting-maid, as appointed by old Mrs Gibb when on her death-bed, they being, as the saying is, cousins once removed.” Letter of July 30.

Footnote 126:

The jury, in James’s trial, brought in a special verdict with the intent to save his life, but no such effort was made in favor of Rob Oig, though there was a mitigating circumstance in his case. For Jean Key “had informed her friends that, on the night of her being carried off, Robin Oig, moved by her cries and tears, had partly consented to let her return, when James came up, with a pistol in his hand, and asking whether he was such a coward as to relinquish an enterprise in which he had risked everything to procure him a fortune, in a manner compelled his brother to persevere.” It may be remarked, by the way, that Duncan MacGregor had his trial as well, but was found not guilty. (Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” which I have mostly followed, introducing passages from the indictment in James MacGregor’s case when brevity would allow.)

Footnote 127:

“Such, at least, was his general character; for when James Mohr [the Big], while perpetrating the violence at Edinbelly, called out, in order to overawe opposition, that Glengyle was lying in the moor with a hundred men to patronise his enterprise, Jean Key told him he lied, since she was confident Glengyle would never countenance so scoundrelly a business.” Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” ed. 1846, p. c.

Footnote 128:

“Leezie Lindsay from a maid-servant in Aberdeen, taken down by Professor Scott:” Jamieson to Scott, November, 1804, Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 117, Abbotsford.

Footnote 129:

It would have come in earlier (as No 195), had it been discovered in time.

Footnote 130:

“It is a received superstition in Scotland,” says Motherwell, “that when friends or lovers part at a bridge they shall never again meet.” Surely, lovers who were of this way of thinking would not appoint a bridge for a meeting.

Footnote 131:

But not homely enough while #C# 2, 42 are retained. The mystical verses with which #A# and #B# begin are also not quite artless.

Footnote 132:

The Scotsman newspaper, November 16, 1888.

Footnote 133:

Buchan, by the Rev. John B. Pratt, 3d ed., 1870, p. 324 f.

Footnote 134:

An Aberdeen newspaper of April, 1885, from which I have a cutting.

Footnote 135:

Buchan gives the year as 1631, and is followed by Chambers and Aytoun. The original tombstone having become “decayed,” Mr Gordon of Fyvie had it replaced in 1845 with “a fac-simile in every respect.” A headstone in the form of a cross of polished granite was added in 1869, by public subscription. (New Statistical Account of Scotland, XII, 325; Mill o Tifty’s Annie, Peterhead, 1872, p. 4.)

Footnote 136:

“I have lately, by rummaging in a by-corner of my memory, found some Aberdeenshire ballads which totally escaped me before. They are of a different class from those I sent you, not near so ancient, but may be about a century ago. I cannot boast much of their poetical merits, but the family incidents upon which they are founded, the local allusions which they contain, may perhaps render them curious and not uninteresting to many people. They are as follows: 1st, ‘The Baron of Braichly’ [No 203]; 2d, ‘The Lass of Philorth [No 239 ?];’ 3d, ‘The Tryal of the Laird of Gycht’ [No 209]; 4th, ‘The Death of the Countess of Aboyne’ [No 235]; 5[th], ‘The Carrying-off of the Heiress of Kinady.’ All these I can recollect pretty exactly. I never saw any of them either in print or manuscript, but have kept them entirely from hearing them sung when a child.” Letter to Alexander Fraser Tytler, December 23, 1800.

‘Charlie MacPherson’ should have been put with Nos 221–5.

Footnote 137:

Epitaphs and Inscriptions . . . in the North East of Scotland, by Andrew Jervise, 1875, I, 17. (W. Macmath.)

Footnote 138:

The House of Drum is a well-known mansion in Liberton, near Edinburgh, and there is a note to #F a# importing (wrongly) that the ballad refers to this place.

Footnote 139:

Lady Jean Gordon was divorced from the Earl of Bothwell in 1567, “being then twenty years of age,” says Sir Robert Gordon. His continuator puts her death at 1629, in her eighty-fourth year. Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland, pp. 143, 145, 169, 469.

Footnote 140:

There is, to tell the whole truth, an allusion in #A#, #H# to Jean’s portion, or tocher, as not being sufficient to justify the breaking of a previous engagement. One would wish to think that ‘portion’ in #A# 5 is a corruption of ‘fortune,’ and that what is meant is that her luck is hard. But tocher in #H# 3 is not easily disposed of.

Footnote 141:

The gross and uncalled-for language of father and mother in #A# 7, 10, has slipped in by a mere trick of memory, I am convinced, from ‘Lady Maisry,’ No 65, #B#, #C#. See again the ballad which follows this.

Footnote 142:

I owe the knowledge of Marshall’s and Fittis’s publications to Mr Macmath.

Footnote 143:

Carruthers, Abbotsford Notanda, appended to R. Chambers’s Life of Scott, 1871, p. 122.

In the last edition of Sharpe’s Ballad Book (1880), p. 158, we find this note by Scott: “I remember something of another ballad of diablerie. A man sells himself to the fause thief for a term of years, and the devil comes to claim his forfeit. He implores for mercy, or at least reprieve, and, if granted, promises this:

‘And I will show how the lilies grow On the banks of Italy.’

Satan, being no horticulturist, pays no attention to this proffer.” Scott’s memory seems to have gone quite astray here.

Footnote 144:

Why the ghost should wait four years, and what is meant in st. 18 by his travelling seven years, it is not easy to understand. The author would probably take up the impregnable position that he was simply relating the facts as they occurred.

Footnote 145:

We must not be critical about copies which have been patched by tradition, but #F# 3 is singularly out of place for a “dæmon lover.”

Footnote 146:

Justifying Thackeray’s ‘Little Billee.’

Footnote 147:

Five are named in #C# 3, 4, but that is too many to allow. Probably two versions may have been combined here. #B# has only the three mentioned in #C# 4; the three of #A# 3 are repeated in #A# 9; and there are three only in #E# 7–9. The Black Burgess of #C# 3 occurs in #A# 3, and ‘the smack calld (caud) Twine’ of #C# 3 looks like a corruption of ‘the small (sma’) Cordvine.’

Footnote 148:

In a note at the end of #E# (which he regarded as a variety of ‘Sir Patrick Spens’), Burton says: “There appears to be still lurking in some part of Aberdeenshire a totally different version of this ballad, connected with the localities of the North [that is, not with Dunfermline, with which ‘Young Allan’ has no concern, or with Linn or Lee, which are in Outopia]. A person who remembered having heard it said that it ends happily, with the mariners drinking the bluid-red wine at Aberdeen. It mentions Bennachie, or the Hill of Mist, a celebrated hill in Aberdeenshire, which is seen far out at sea, and seems to have guided the gallant mariner to the shore.” All the copies “end happily” so far as Young Allan is concerned, and this is all that we are supposed to care for.

Footnote 149:

Mr Macmath informs me that all the traditional pieces in “Scottish Songs” are in the hand of Scott, of about 1795. At folio 11 (the top part of which has been torn away), Scott says: “These ballads are all in the Northern dialect, but I recollect several of them as recited in the south of Scotland divested of their Norlandisms, and also varying considerably in other respects. In a few instances where my memory served me, I have adopted either additional verses or better readings than those in Mr Tytler’s collection. Such variations can excite no reasonable surprise in any species of composition which owes preservation to oral tradition only.”

Footnote 150:

‘C,’ safely to be identified with John Wilson Croker, says Colonel W. F. Prideaux, who, in Notes and Queries, VI, xii, 223, has brought together most of the matter pertaining to this ballad. If Colonel Prideaux’s supposition is well founded, ‘The Grey Cock’ was known in Ireland in the last century.

Footnote 151:

Scott suggested that the passage in Knox was the foundation of the ballad, January, 1802, in the first edition of his Minstrelsy, where only three stanzas were given. The Rev. Mr Paxton, however, first saw Scott’s fragment not long before 1804, and then in the second number of the Edinburgh Review, where there is no mention of the apothecary. Thereupon, he says, I “instantly” wrote the enclosed piece from the mouth of my aged mother. There is no room, consequently, for the supposition that either mother or son might have taken a hint from Knox, and put in the pottinger.

Footnote 152:

Compare here ‘Adam Bell,’ V, 28, stanzas 125, 128.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed from Changed to

49 Motherwelll’s MS. Motherwell’s MS.

2^1. wi birk and brume. Note: The ‘i’ in “birk” appears 77 to have a ring instead of a dot.

#O.# ‘Lord Jamie Douglas,’ “#N.# ‘Lord Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. v, the last three Appendix, p. v, the last three 90 stanzas. stanzas. #N.# ‘Jamie Douglas,’ #O.# ‘Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvii, IX, one Appendix, p. xvii, IX, one stanza. stanza.

1. Except as noted, all spelling errors were left uncorrected. 2. All punctuation was left uncorrected, except as follows. 3. A beginning or ending quote mark was added for obviously unbalanced pairs of quotes. 4. Full stops and commas were made consistent for the verse & line references, for example, “12^1,” was corrected to “12^1.” 5. Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter. 6. Enclosed italics font in underscores. 7. Enclosed bold font in #number signs#. 8. Enclosed letter spaced font in double angle quotation marks. 9. Superscripts are denoted by a caret before a single superscript character or a series of superscripted characters enclosed in curly braces, e.g. M^r. or M^{ister}. 10. Superscript letters centered over subscript periods or colons are denoted by [th :].

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The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5) (part 9 of 9)

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The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5) (part 9 of 9)