L
Motherwell’s Note-Book, p. 54. “An old woman (native of Banfshire) sings ‘The Earl of Aboyne,’ beginning:”
The Lord Aboyn’s to London gone,
And his hail court wi him;
Better he had staid at hame,
Or taen his lady wi him.
A.
33. Perhaps bretlher a: not understood by me in either case. clear may be clean.
202. keping. Glossed “meeting” in a note, but the line is not intelligible to me, and does not seem to be consistent with what follows.
B. a.
93. herbs sweet air. Robertson, New Deeside Guide, prints herbs sweet an fair.
126. Robertson prints ony langer.
b.
1.
The Earl o Aboyne he’s courteous an kind,
He’s kind to every woman,
An he has left the castle o Aboyne
An gane to dwell in Lunan;
An sair was the heart his lady had,
Because she wan na wi him.
2.
As she was walking in her garden green,
Alang wi her gentlewoman,
There was a letter brocht to her
That her lord was wed in London.
3. Wanting.
42. saw twa bonny boys.
44. bring ye.
51. ye lady.
52. For the Earl o.
53,4. Wanting.
61. all wanting.
64, 84, 96. Earl for Lord.
7, 82,3, 92–5, 10, 111,2. Wanting.
91. maidens.
115. Gae bring me a pint o the gude red wine.
122. Says, Ye’re welcome hame.
123. welcome, he cried, as.
125. wad hae been.
126. only langer.
131. her about wi a scornfu.
133. suld hae been his.
134. He may kiss his miss in.
141. My merry men a’.
142. I’m wae at heart for.
143. The nicht we’ll licht.
144. An the morn tak.
15, 161,2, 174, 182. Wanting.
181. My merry men a’ now turn.
191. near to bonny Aboyne.
193. the tollin.
a may have been derived from a printed copy, and b learned from the same.
C.
The latter half of the Skene MS. is very carelessly copied. Here, as in other places, stanzas are not separated, lines are improperly divided, and there are omissions which are in no way indicated.
13. man hin | Before to, etc.
D.
44. yonder’s? But yonder may==yonder are.
144. She speed.
G.
7, 8 are 2, 3 in the MS.
H.
74. streeket. MS., perhaps, struket.
I.
11, 34. of is of later insertion.
63. came hame, originally; hame is erased and to town written above.
J.
21. I do not understand turned the honey month.
31. taen from him.
33. as you say: originally written he says.
71. him struck out after the second ask.
236
THE LAIRD O DRUM
A. a. Kinloch MSS, V, 9. b. ‘Laird of Drum,’ Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 199.
B. ‘The Laird of Doune’ [miswritten for Drum], Skene MS., p. 78.
C. MS. copy formerly in the possession of Sir Walter Scott.
D. a. Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 194. b. ‘The Laird of Drum,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 101; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 53, Percy Society, vol. xvii. c. The New Deeside Guide, by James Brown, [1832,] p. 11. d. Gibb MS., p. 21.
E. ‘The Laird of Drum,’ MS., inserted in Dr Joseph Robertson’s interleaved copy of The New Deeside Guide, Aberdeen [1832].
F. a. ‘The Ladye o the Drum,’ Loudon MS., p. 7. b. ‘The Laird o the Drum,’ Macmath MS., p. 13.
First taken into a collection by Kinloch, 1827, who remarks that the ballad had been printed as a broadside in the North, and was extremely popular. B, the oldest version that has been recovered, was written down in 1802–3. There are verbal agreements between B, especially, and a fragment in Herd’s MSS (I, 55, II, 187, Herd’s Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 6), and there has been borrowing from one side or the other. Herd’s fragment belongs to a ballad of a shepherd’s daughter and an earl which is preserved in two copies in Motherwell’s MS. (I, 37, 252). No 397 of The Musical Museum, communicated to Johnson, says Stenhouse, by Burns, [1792,] and probably in a large measure his work, begins with stanzas which may have been suggested by the ballad before us or by the other. See an appendix.
The copy in Christie, I, 24, was epitomized from A b, with some alterations. That in The Deeside Guide, 1889, p. 17, is Aytoun’s, compounded of A b and D a.
Alexander Irvine, the young laird of Drum, says Spalding, was married to the lady Mary Gordon on December 7, 1643: Memorials of the Trubles in Scotland, etc., II, 296. Lady Mary Gordon was fourth daughter to George the second Marquis of Huntly, and niece to the Marquis of Argyll. The Laird of Drum suffered extremely in his worldly fortunes through his fidelity to the cause of the Stuarts. This would have been a natural reason for his declining a peerage offered him at the Restoration, and for his marrying, the second time, to win and not to spend. He took for his second wife Margaret Coutts (A 9), “a woman of inferior birth and manners, which step gave great offence to his relations.” (Kinloch.) He died in 1687. After the death of Irvine of Drum, Margaret Coutts married Irvine of Cults. She died in 1710, at the age of only forty-five.[[137]]
Drum is ten miles west of Aberdeen.[[138]]
For the commonplace in A a 3, B 8, C 5, etc., see II, 181 b.
Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 29, p. 105, translates Allingham’s ballad.