And he omits the verse in which Sir Patrick says:
The king's daughter of Noroway,
'Tis we must fetch her hame.
Thus making the ballad referrible to the expedition in 1281 for taking Alexander's daughter to be married to the king of Norway. But I apprehend such liberties with an old ballad are wholly unwarrantable.
[ ] [ [9] ] Notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, 1839.
[ ] [ [10] ] Professor Aytoun says: 'It is true that the name [of Sir Patrick Spence] ... is not mentioned in history: but I am able to state that tradition has preserved it. In the little island of Papa Stronsay, one of the Orcadian group, lying over against Norway, there is a large grave or tumulus, which has been known to the inhabitants from time immemorial as "The grave of Sir Patrick Spence." The Scottish ballads were not early current in Orkney, a Scandinavian country; to it is very unlikely that the poem could have originated the name.' I demur to this unlikelihood, and would require some proof to convince me that the grave of Sir Patrick Spence in Papa Stronsay is not a parallel geographical phenomenon to the island of Ellen Douglas in Loch Katrine.
[ ] [ [11] ] Playfair's Brit. Fam. Antiquity, viii., 170, lxviii.
[ ] [ [12] ] Ancient Scottish Poems, 2 vols. (1786), i. p. cxxvii.
[ ] [ [13] ] It is rather remarkable that Percy was not informed of these particulars in 1765; but in 1767—Sir John Hope Bruce having died in the interval (June 1766)—they were communicated to him. It looks as if the secret had hung on the life of this venerable gentleman.