P
Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 196, the seventh and tenth stanzas; sent by Burns to William Tytler in 1790.
1
‘Get up, get up now, sister Ann,
I fear we’ve wrought you sorrow;
Get up, ye’ll find your true love slain,
Among the banks of Yarrow.’
2
‘I made my love a suit of clothes,
I clad him all in tartan,
But ere the morning sun arose,
He was a’ bluid to the gartan.’
A.
The words in ’ ’ are so distinguished in the MS., and are of course emendations. ‘Than,’ 91, is obviously an insertion; ‘Now Douglas,’ 111, is entirely unauthorized, and, as before said, is taken from Hamilton’s ballad; ‘wiped,’ 143, is probably substituted for drank, cf. 123, etc.; and ‘her,’ 153, is very likely to have been his.
B.
121. Var. O father dear, I pray forbear.
C.
71. He.
73. SHe, originally He.
91,3. a in came is not closed; possibly cume. A few changes were, as usual, made by Motherwell in printing.
D.
14. Wha is blotted.
E. b.
A minute collation of a copy constructed by Scott would be useless and deceptive, and therefore only the larger variations will be noted.
12. And ere they paid the lawing.
51. As he gaed up the Tennies bank.
61,2.
O come ye here to part your land,
The bonnie forest thorough.
71,2.
I come not here to part my land,
And neither to beg nor borrow.
After 7:
If I see all, ye’re nine to ane, (Cf. F 41.)
And that’s an unequal marrow; (Cf. G 32.)
Yet will I fight while lasts my brand, (Cf. F 43, G 33.)
On the bonny banks of Yarrow. (Cf. E a 64.)
104. Wi my true love, on Yarrow. (Cf. O 14.)
After 10, two stanzas which are nearly O 3, 4.
113. ten slain men. (Cf. F 93.)
122,3.
She searchd his wounds all thorough;
She kissd them till her lips grew red.
132. For a’ this breeds but sorrow. (Cf. F 132.)
142. Ye mind me but of sorrow.
143,4.
A fairer rose did never bloom
Than now lies croppd on Yarrow.
(Cf. M 113,4.)
Scott gives in a note, III, 79, 1803, “the last stanza, as (since?) it occurs in most copies.” (Cf. F, G, H.)
That lady, being big with child,
And full of consternation,
She swooned in her father’s arms,
Amidst that stubborn nation.
F.
23. browns, and so again G 13. A derivation from bruny, mail-coat, is scarcely to be thought of. Apparently a corruption of brand, (cf. E 43); but brand occurs in F 43, G 33.
G.
12. before him. 13. and his noble brouns.
103. shalt.
H.
3, 4. The stubborn lord in 33 is the wife’s father, and the race, or family, is stubborn according to 10. Stubborn folk think opposers stubborn, no doubt; still the epithet is unlikely in 43. Lad I suppose to refer to the man who in the other versions stabs from behind.
53. dern for den. The nine men must be dead, as in E 11, F 9, G 6. The well armd belongs to an earlier (lost) stanza, corresponding to E 5, F 3, G 2.
I. Variations in Buchan’s printed copy:
11. Ten lords. The lords in my copy of the MS., but, as Dixon has also Ten, I presume The to be an error. Otherwise I should have read Th[re]e, as in B, C, D.
42. As aft he’d.
74. thrust him thro body and mell, O.
83. mother to. 144. ower his.
J.
The first copy seems to be the earlier, and that which was transcribed into the MS. to have been slightly edited, but the variations are few, mostly spellings. The first copy has no title. The title of the second is altered from The Braes of Yarrow to The Dowie Glens of Yarrow. At the end of the second is this note: This song I took down from Marion Miller in Threepwood, in the Parish of Melrose. The air was plaintive and extremely wild. I consider this song more valuable on account that Mern had never sung it to any but myself for fifteen years, and she had almost said, or rather promised, that she would never sing it to another.
Thoro, 11, etc., is spelt Thorough, Thorrough, in the first copy, Thorough, Thorrough, Thorro, Thoro, in the second; but in the latter ugh is struck out wherever it occurs.
43. thrusty, in both; i.e., trusty.
113. the (birks) heather green, in both.
First. 52, 171, 181. oh, Oh.
Second. 52. What she had neer done before, O.
62, 192. was filled wi.
91. Five he. 92. nae. 93. steed.
122. to your.
182. wi for in.
K.
33. far far should probably be forth, as in J; possibly forth for.
L.
123,4, 131,2. Compare Logan’s Braes of Yarrow.
They sought him east, they sought him west,
They sought him all the forest thorough;
They only saw the cloud of night
They only heard the roar of Yarrow.
O.
“A fragment, to the tune of Leaderhaughs and Yarrow.”
215
RARE WILLIE DROWNED IN YARROW, OR, THE WATER O GAMRIE
A. ‘Willy’s rare and Willy’s fair,’ Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, II, 110, 1733.
B. a. Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 196. b. Stenhouse, Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 464.
C. ‘The Dowie Dens o Yarrow,’ Gibb MS., p. 37.
D. Skene MS., p. 47.
E. ‘Willie’s drowned in Gamery,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 245.
F. ‘The Water o Gamery,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 159. Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 66, Percy Society, vol. xvii.
G. ‘The Water o Ganrie,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 637.
H. ‘The Water o Gemrie,’ Campbell MSS, II, 78.
A was inserted in the fourth volume of The Tea-Table Miscellany, and stands in the edition of 1763 at p. 321, ‘Rare Willie drowned in Yarrow,’ It is given in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 197 (with two or three trifling changes); in Johnson’s Museum, p. 542, No 525. F is epitomized in Christie’s Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 66, “with some changes from the way the editor has heard it sung.”
The fragment in Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 196, sent by Burns in a letter to William Tytler, 1790, belongs, as already said, mostly with ‘The Duke of Athole’s Nurse,’ but has two stanzas of ‘Willie drowned in Yarrow’ (B).
‘The Braes of Yarrow,’ Ritson’s Scotish Song, I, 154, composed upon the story of this ballad by the Rev. John Logan (1748–88), has two of the original lines (nearly):
They sought him east, they sought him west,
They sought him all the forest thorough.
Willie is drowned in Yarrow according to the older (southern) tradition, A; also B, C. In the northern copies, D, E, F, with which G, H, agree, the scene is transferred to Gamrie, on the coast of the Moray Frith, where, as Christie remarks, “there is no water that Willie could have been drowned in but the sea, on his way along the sands to the old kirk.”[[109]] In the ballad which follows this, a western variety of the same story, Willie is drowned in the Clyde.
C 2, 3, 5, 6, belong to the preceding ballad, and 4 is common to that and this.
A 2 would come in better at the end of the story (as it does in C, a copy of slight authority), if it might properly find a place anywhere in the ballad. But this stanza suits only a woman who has been for some time living with her husband. A woman on her wedding-day could have no call to make her bed broad in her mother’s house, whether yestreen or the morrow. I therefore conclude that A 2 does not belong to this ballad.[[110]]
D-H. Rare Willie has promised to marry Meggie, E (also A, C, D). His mother would give her the wale of all her other sons, but not Willie; she will have him only; D, E (cf. G 1). The bridegroom, with a large company, is mounted to ride for the bride; he tells his friends to go forward, he has forgotten to ask his mother’s blessing; D, E, F, H. He receives the blessing, D, F, H; her blessing goes not with him, G; he gets her heavy curse, E; even in F his mother, after giving her blessing, says that he will never see his wedding. (The mother’s curse is the characteristic feature of the next following ballad.) The bridal party come to the river, or burn, of Gamrie; all the others pass the stream safely, but Willie is washed from his saddle, D-H. The rest ride on to the kirk of Gamrie. The bride asks where is the man who was to marry her, and is told that Willie is drowned. She tears the ribbons from her hair and runs to the river, plunges in, and finds Willie in the deepest pot, the middle, the deepest weil. She will make her bed with him in Gamrie; both mothers shall be alike sorry; D-G.
In H, Willie’s horse comes home with an empty saddle. His mother is sure that her son is dead; her daughter tries in vain to persuade her that all is well; Meggie takes her lover’s body from the river and lays it on the grass; she will sleep with him in the same grave at Gamrie.
In A, B, the drowned body is found in the cleft of a rock, the clifting or clintin of a craig; in C 4 neath a buss of brume, that stanza belonging, as most of the copy does, to the preceding ballad; cf. J 14, K 11 of No 214. The bride ties three links of her hair, which is three quarters long, round Willie’s waist, and draws him out of the water, B 2, C 5; for the hair, cf. No 214, where also it is not advantageously used. The bride’s tearing the ribbons from her head, D 12, E 15, F 8, G 7, H 14, is found also in No 214, D 11, I 12, but is inappropriate there. A brother, brother John, whether the man’s or the woman’s, tells the bad news in No 214, A 11, E 9, I 8, L 11, N 9, 10, as here D 11, E 14, F 7, G 6, H 13.
‘Annan Water,’ a ballad in which a lover is drowned on his way to visit his mistress, is given in an appendix.