From the third volume of Border Minstrelsy, derived by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe from a traditional version. The English version, “Three Ravens,” was published in Melismata, by T. Ravensworth (1611). In Scots, the lady “has ta’en another mate” his hawk and hound have deserted the dead knight. In the English song, the hounds watch by him, the hawks keep off carrion birds, as for the lady—
“She buried him before the prime,
She was dead herselfe ere evensong time.”
Probably the English is the earlier version.
The Bonnie Earl of Murray.—p. [27]
Huntly had a commission to apprehend the Earl, who was in the disgrace of James VI. Huntly, as an ally of Bothwell, asked him to surrender at Donibristle, in Fife; he would not yield to his private enemy, the house was burned, and Murray was slain, Huntly gashing his face. “You have spoiled a better face than your own,” said the dying Earl (1592). James Melville mentions contemporary ballads on the murder. Ramsay published the ballad in his Tea Table Miscellany, and it is often sung to this day.
Clerk Saunders.—p. [30]
First known as published in Border Minstrelsy (1802). The apparition of the lover is borrowed from “Sweet Willie’s Ghost.” The evasions practised by the lady, and the austerities vowed by her have many Norse, French, and Spanish parallels in folk-poetry. Scott’s version is “made up” from several sources, but is, in any case, verse most satisfactory as poetry.
Waly, Waly.—p. [35]
From Ramsay’s Tea Table Miscellany, a curiously composite gathering of verses. There is a verse, obviously a variant, in a sixteenth century song, cited by Leyden. St. Anthon’s Well is on a hill slope of Arthur’s Seat, near Holyrood. Here Jeanie Deans trysted with her sister’s seducer, in The Heart of Midlothian. The Cairn of Nichol Mushat, the wife-murderer, is not far off. The ruins of Anthony’s Chapel are still extant.