B - The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5) - 312

B

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

. . . . . . .

And the fause, fause Ha’s o Girsenfield,

They’ll never be trowed nor trusted again.

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.

‘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.’

‘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.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.

‘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.’

9². wi me. along with in the margin.

13³. 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.)

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.

These nine sat drinking at the wine,

Sat drinking wine in Yarrow;

They made a vow among themselves

To fight for her in Yarrow.

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.

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.

‘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.’

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.

‘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.’

‘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.’

‘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.’

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.

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.

‘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.’

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.

8¹, 9¹, 12¹. Oh.

R

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.

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?’

* * * * * *

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.

* * * * * *

‘I dreamed . . . .

I wis it prove nae sorrow!

I dreamed I was puing the apples green

In the dowie howms o Yarrow.’

‘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.’

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.

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.”

3¹. The rest torn away.

3³. 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.

‘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?’

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.’

‘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.

‘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.’

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.

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.

‘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.

‘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.’

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.’

‘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.’

‘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.

135 b, P 13². 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 13¹. Read moon.

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

266, B 5³. Read you.

428 b, e. Read 3⁴ for 3¹.

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, 17⁴. Read hee.

b, 23². Read soe.

276 a, line 7. Read queen’s own son.

281 a, 5². 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 12¹]. Read sais. 15². Read mirrie.

376 b, G 2¹. Read great.

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

383 a, line 32. Read pavlovsk.

384 a, 5¹. Read was never.

397, P 1¹. Read father is.

435 a, E 5². Read loon.

448 a, A, heading. Read 1750.

459 a, 7¹. Read Buss. 10². Read o the Dun.

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

473 b, 24⁴. 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 9¹. 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, 13⁴. Read And aye. 18¹. Read o the.

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

IV,

6 a, 8¹. Read whan. (10¹. Gar seek in the early editions, Gae in ed. 1833.)

7 b, 41¹. Read thy kye.

8 a, 46³. Read dare.

18 a, 10³. Read Then. 12⁴. Read [to].

b, 19². Read Whan.

21 b, 17³. 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, 11². Read, perhaps, fathers’: cf. their, in line 3.

45 b, B 7¹. Read he’s.

47 b, 18¹. Read Lady.

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

66 a, B 5¹. Read Gar . . . manteel.

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

69 a, 6³. Read Stincher. 8³. 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 2¹. Read cam.

94 a, B 1⁴. Read wont.

95 b, B 12³. Read I’me. C 6⁴. Read country. 8^1,2. Read well.

96 a, D 3³. 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, 23³. Read feght. b, 28³. 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 3⁴, 4¹. Read Pitbagnet’s.

152 b, 10³. Read showd.

153 b, 9². Read was.

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

157 a, 2². Read nourice.

168 a, 7². Read doon.

201 b, 26³. Read kye.

202 a, K 2². Read It is.

207 a, 20². Read them a’ out.

212 a, 4³. Read sallads.

221 b, 13². Read grey.

224 b, 22¹. Read hes he.

226 a, 6³. Read Lammington.

248 a, 2². Read ladie.

[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,’ 10³, 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.

[2]. Nicolson and Burn, History of Westmorland and Cumberland, p. xxxi.

[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.]

[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.

[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.

[6]. Nicolson and Burn, I, x, xiii, xcii.

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

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[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.”

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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.

[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.)

[22]. Memorials, I, 17 ff., and the Appendix, p. 381 ff.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[28]. Stanza 21 recalls the verses in Hume of Godscroft:

Edinburgh castle, towne, and tower,

God grant thou sink for sinne! etc.

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

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

[31]. Spalding, I, 141, 188, 244.

[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 1³, should be southern, as in A.

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[37]. Napier, Montrose and the Covenanters, 1838, I, 129.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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.

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

[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.’

[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.

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

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

[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.”

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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.”

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

[56]. The remark is made in The Scotsman, September 11, 1886.

[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.

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[64]. See a little further on.

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

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

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[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?

[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.’

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[82]. Russell, as above, p. 464; Wodrow, II, 86.

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

[84]. In Notes and Queries, First Series, V, 249.

[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.

[86]. Such poetical propriety as ‘The second, more alarming still,’ 3²; ‘The words that passd, alas! presaged’ 18³. But really the text was not very much altered. Some verses, here dropped, were added “to give a finish.”

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

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

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[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.

[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.

[95]. Pinkerton reads Loch Lagan. He also reads ‘the Hichts of Lundie,’ in 10⁴, for ‘the gates of London.’ Lundie is in Forfarshire. I suppose both readings to be Pinkerton’s emendations.

[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.

[97]. Sometimes also with sensible prose, as 7², ‘But I find she has deceived me;’ 12³, ‘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.

[98]. It must be noted, however, that in ‘Ye think me an unmeet marrow,’ A 8², 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.

[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.

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

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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 13³, looks like Hamilton 9¹. The ‘dule and sorrow’ of O 4² is a recurring phrase in Hamilton, and ‘slain the comeliest swain,’ O 4³, is in Hamilton 6³.

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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.”

[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.

[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.

[114]. The cane in 18¹ of this copy is a touch of “realism” which we have had in a late copy of Tam Lin; see J 16, III, 505.

[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!

[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.

[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’).

[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.

[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.

[120]. “Caddon bank,” says W. Laidlaw in a letter to Scott, September 28, [a]^[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.)

[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.

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[132]. The Scotsman newspaper, November 16, 1888.

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

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

[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.)

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

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

[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.

[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.

[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.”

[146]. Justifying Thackeray’s ‘Little Billee.’

[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.’

[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.

[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.”

[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.

[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.

[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.
[77]	2¹. wi birk and brume.	Note: The ‘i’ in “birk” appears to have a ring instead of a dot.
[90]	O. ‘Lord Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. v, the last three stanzas. N. ‘Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvii, IX, one stanza.	“N. ‘Lord Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. v, the last three stanzas. O. ‘Jamie Douglas,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvii, IX, one stanza.

Except as noted, all spelling errors were left uncorrected.
All punctuation was left uncorrected, except as follows.
A beginning or ending quote mark was added for obviously unbalanced pairs of quotes.
Full stops and commas were made consistent for the verse & line references, for example, “12¹,” was corrected to “12¹.”
Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.