When she was tied to the stake.
FAIR MARY OF WALLINGTON
The Text is from Lovely Jenny’s Garland, as given with emendations by Professor Child. There is also a curiously perverted version in Herd’s manuscript, in which the verses require rearrangement before becoming intelligible.
The Story can be gathered from the version here given without much difficulty. It turns on the marriage of Fair Mary, who is one of seven sisters fated to die of their first child. Fair Mary seems to be a fatalist, and, after vowing never to marry, accepts as her destiny the hand of Sir William Fenwick of Wallington. Three-quarters of a year later she sends to fair Pudlington for her mother. Her mother is much affected at the news (st. 22), and goes to Wallington. Her daughter, in travail, lays the blame on her, cuts open her side to give birth to an heir, and dies.
In a Breton ballad Pontplancoat thrice marries a Marguerite, and each of his three sons costs his mother her life.
In the Scottish ballad, a ‘scope’ is put in Mary’s mouth when the operation takes place. In the Breton ballad it is a silver spoon or a silver ball. ‘Scope,’ or ‘scobs’ as it appears in Herd, means a gag, and was apparently used to prevent her from crying out. But the silver spoon and ball in the Breton ballad would appear to have been used for Marguerite to bite on in her anguish, just as sailors chewed bullets while being flogged.
FAIR MARY OF WALLINGTON
1.