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

by Unknown

290

THE WYLIE WIFE OF THE HIE TOUN HIE

A. ‘My lady ye shall be,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” Thomas Wilkie’s MS., p. 74, Abbotsford.

B. John Struthers, The British Minstrel, 1821, I, XXV.

C. ‘The Bonnie Lass o the Hie Toun End.’ Communicated by Mr David Louden, of Morham, Haddington, 1873.

D. ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh,’ Gibb MS., No 14, p. 57.

This ballad, which Motherwell pronounces to be “of some antiquity and of considerable popularity,” is of the same pernicious tenor as ‘The Broom o Cowdenknows,’ with the aggravation of treachery. The dénoûment is similar in ‘The Dainty Downby,’ Herd’s MSS, I, 45, printed in his Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 232, ‘The Laird o the Dainty Downby,’ Kinloch MSS, V, 145, and in ‘The Laird o Keltie,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 363, ‘The Young Laird o Keltie,’ III, 107, Motherwell MS., p. 21, both of one pattern, and that quite trashy.