His lady fair to see;
And for the words the queen had spoke,
Young Waters he did dee.
Now, let the parallel passages be here observed. In verse second, the lady does exactly like the mother of Gil Morrice, of whom it is said:
The lady sat on the castle-wa',
Beheld baith dale and down,
And there she saw Gil Morrice' head
Come trailing to the town.
Dale and down, let it be observed in passing, are words never used in Scotland; they are exotic English terms. The mantle of the hero in verse third recalls that of Gil Morrice, which was 'a' gowd but the hem'—a specialty, we may say, not likely to have occurred to a male mind. What the wily lord does in verse fifth is the exact counterpart of the account of the eldern knight in Sir Patrick Spence:
Up and spak an eldern knight,