26.
And aft she cried, ‘Ohon! alas! alas!
A sair heart’s ill to win;
I wan a sair heart when I married him,
And the day it’s well return’d again.’
GEORDIE
The Text is from Johnson’s Museum, communicated by Robert Burns.
The Story.—Some editors have identified the hero of the ballad with George Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly, but upon what grounds it is difficult to see.
There are two English broadside ballads, of the first and second halves respectively of the seventeenth century, which are either the originals of, or copies from, the Scottish ballad, which exists in many variants. The earlier is concerned with ‘the death of a worthy gentleman named George Stoole,’ ‘to a delicate Scottish tune,’ and the second is called ‘The Life and Death of George of Oxford. To a pleasant tune, called Poor Georgy.’ One of the Scottish versions has a burden resembling that of ‘George Stoole.’