The strings he framed of her yellow hair,
Whose notes made sad the listening air.’
Stanzas 20-25, therefore, have been supplied from the Jamieson-Brown MS., which after this point does not descend from the high level of ballad-poetry.
The Story.—This is a very old and a very popular story. An early broadside exists, dated 1656, and the same version is printed in Wit Restor’d, 1658. Of Scandinavian ballads on the same subject, nine are Danish, two Icelandic, twelve Norwegian, four Färöe, and eight or nine Swedish.
THE TWA SISTERS O’ BINNORIE
1.
There were twa sisters sat in a bour,
Binnorie, O Binnorie!
There came a knight to be their wooer,
By the bonny mill-dams o’ Binnorie.