Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wad na have ridden that wan water
For a’ the gowd in Christentie.’
THE LAIRD O’ LOGIE
The Text is that of Scott’s Minstrelsy, which was repeated in Motherwell’s collection, with the insertion of one stanza, obtained from tradition, between Scott’s 2 and 3.
The Story as told in this variant of the ballad is remarkably true to the historical facts.
The Laird was John Wemyss, younger of Logie, a gentleman-in-waiting to King James VI. of Scotland, and an adherent of the notorious Francis Stuart, Earl of Bothwell. After the failure of the two rash attempts of Bothwell upon the King’s person—the former at Holyrood House in 1591 and the second at Falkland in 1592—the Earl persuaded the Laird of Logie and the Laird of Burleigh to join him in a third attempt, which was fixed for the 7th or 9th of August 1592; but the King got wind of the affair, and the two Lairds were seized by the Duke of Lennox and ‘committed to ward within Dalkeith.’
The heroine of the ballad was a Danish maid-of-honour to James’s Queen; her name is variously recorded as Margaret Vinstar, Weiksterne, Twynstoun, or Twinslace. ‘Carmichael’ was Sir John Carmichael, appointed captain of the King’s guard in 1588.
The ballad stops short at the escape of the lovers by ship. But history relates that the young couple were befriended by the Queen, who refused to comply with the King’s demand that May Margaret should be dismissed. Eventually both were received into favour again, though the Laird of Logie was constantly in political trouble. He died in 1599. (See a paper by A. Francis Steuart in The Scots Magazine for October 1899, p. 387.)