The Scotch version, Gil Morrice, was printed by Percy in the Reliques in preference to the version of his Folio. He notes that the ballad ‘has lately run through two editions in Scotland: the second was printed at Glasgow in 1755.’ Thanks to an advertisement prefixed to these Scottish editions, sixteen additional verses were obtained and added by Percy, who thought that they were ‘perhaps after all only an ingenious interpolation.’ Gil Morrice introduces ‘Lord Barnard’ in place of ‘John Steward,’ adopted, perhaps, from Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard. Motherwell’s versions were variously called Child Noryce, Bob Norice, Gill Morice, Chield Morice. Certainly the Folio ballad is unsurpassed for its vigorous, objective style, and forcible, vivid pictures.
The Story of this ballad gave rise to Home’s Douglas, a tragedy, produced in the Concert Hall, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1756 (on which occasion the heroine’s name was given as ‘Lady Barnard’), and transferred to Covent Garden Theatre, in London, in 1757, the heroine’s name being altered to ‘Lady Randolph.’
Perhaps in the same year in which the play was produced in London, the poet Gray wrote from Cambridge:— ‘I have got the old Scotch ballad on which Douglas was founded; it is divine, and as long as from hence to Aston. Aristotle’s best rules are observed in it in a manner which shows the author never had heard of Aristotle. It begins in the fifth act of the play. You may read it two-thirds through without guessing what it is about; and yet, when you come to the end, it is impossible not to understand the whole story.’
CHILD MAURICE
1.
1.1 ‘siluer’: the Folio gives siluen.
Child Maurice hunted ithe siluer wood,
He hunted itt round about,
And noebodye that he ffound therin,