The king in the third line is James the Sixth of Scotland and the First of England—the king, according to the old waggery, "who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one." But see Green. The "wanton laird of young Logie" is John Wemyss who plotted against him with the Earl of Bothwell in 1592. His bold, crafty and merry young wife, May Margaret, says Mr. Sidgwick, had one of these four delectable maiden names—Vinstar, Weiksterne, Twynstoun, or Twinslace. It is dubious which.
All ladies in those old days carried knives at their girdles. The one in stanza 8 was clearly a wedding gift. And to judge from the ballads, doughty uses they sometimes put them to.
[423]. "Fair Annie."
In the margins of Mr. Nahum's copy of this ballad, two exquisite damosels were painted in green, blue and amethyst on gold (as in a monk's work), and between their fingers hung a linen napkin seemingly broidered with pearls and in the midst of it a sleeping dove. Whatever he may have meant by this, I confess that at first reading I fell in love with both these ladies. My feelings for the "noble knight" who ransomed fair Annie, then wearied of her, were different. It was strange to find a noble knight so hard a gentleman, not so much because he wearied of her (since to weary of one so true, intelligent and tender was even more of a punishment than a misfortune) but most particularly, with regard to his craving for "gowd and gear." He reminds me of a similar piece of humanity described in three short stanzas which were found by Mr. Macmath written on the fly-leaf of a little volume printed at Edinburgh about 1670, and which I found in Child's Ballads:
"He steps full statly on the street,
He hads the charters of him sell,
In to his cloathing he is complete,
In Craford's mure he bears the bell....
"I wish I had died my own fair death,
In tender age, when I was young;