Alas! cold is her welcome as she stands with her young son in her arms, and knocks and calls on her love, while 'the wind blaws through her yellow hair, and the rain draps o'er her chin.' A voice, that seems that of Lord Gregory, bids her go hence as 'a witch or a wil' warlock, or a mermaid o' the flood'; and with a woful heart she turns back to the sea and the storm. And when he wakes up from boding dreams to find his true love and his child have been turned from his door, it is too late. His cry to the waves is as vain as Annie's cry to that 'ill woman,' his mother, who has betrayed them:
'"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
O Annie, winna ye bide?"
But aye the mair that he cried Annie,
The braider grew the tide.
"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
Dear Annie, speak to me!"
But aye the louder he cried Annie,
The louder roared the sea.'
The shores and basin of the Forth have also their rowth of ballads; and some of them have, like The Lass of Lochryan, the sound of the waves and the salt smell of the sea mingled with their plaintive music. Gil Morice has been 'placed' by Carronside—Ossian's 'roaring Carra'—a meet setting for the story. Sir Patrick Spens cleaves to the shores of Fife; though some, eager for the honour of the North, have claimed that it is Aberdour in Buchan that is spoken of in the ballad. By the powerful spell of this old rhyme, the king still sits and drinks the blood-red wine in roofless Dunfermline tower; the ladies still haunt the windy headland—Kinghorn or Elie Ness—with 'their kaims intil their hands' waiting in vain the return of their 'good Scots lords'; the wraith of Sir Patrick himself in misty days strides the silver strand under the Hawes Wood, reading the braid letter. Near by is Donibristle; and it keeps the memory of the 'Bonnie Earl of Moray,' slain here, hints the balladist—though history is silent on the point—for pleasing too well the Queen's eye at Holyrood.
Edinburgh, too, draws a good part of its romance from the ballad bard. Mary Hamilton, of the Queen's Maries, rode through the Netherbow Port to the gallows-foot:
'"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she 'll hae but three;
There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beaton,
And Marie Carmichael, and me."'
The Marchioness of Douglas wandered disconsolate on Arthur's Seat and drank of St. Anton's well:
'"O waly, waly, love be bonnie
A little time while it is new,
But when it 's auld it waxes cauld
And fades awa' like morning dew.
But had I wist before I kissed
That love had been so ill to win,
I 'd locked my heart within a kist
And fastened it wi' a siller pin"';
and across the hill lies the 'Wells o' Wearie.' Nowhere else has the wail of forsaken love found such wistful expression—except in The Fause Lover: