[Up spak the son on the nourices knee,]
"Gin I live to be a man revenged Ile be."
Ther's dool i the kitchin, an mirth i the ha,
The Baronne o Braikley is dead an awa.
[81]. See Johnie Armstrang, p. [45].
GILDEROY.
Gilderoy (properly Gilleroy) signifies in Gaelic "the red-haired lad." The person thus denoted was, according to tradition, one Patrick of the proscribed clan Gregor. The following account of him is taken from the Scot's Musical Museum, p. 71, vol. iv. ed. of 1853.
"Gilderoy was a notorious freebooter in the highlands of Perthshire, who, with his gang, for a considerable time infested the country, committing the most barbarous outrages on the inhabitants. Some of these
ruffians, however, were at length apprehended through the vigilance and activity of the Stewarts of Athol, and conducted to Edinburgh, where they were tried, condemned, and executed, in February, 1638. Gilderoy, seeing his accomplices taken and hanged, went up, and in revenge burned several houses belonging to the Stewarts in Athol. This new act of atrocity was the prelude to his ruin. A proclamation was issued offering £1,000 for his apprehension. The inhabitants rose en masse, and pursued him from place to place, till at length he, with five more of his associates, was overtaken and secured. They were next carried to Edinburgh, where after trial and conviction, they expiated their offences on the gallows, in the month of July, 1638."
In the vulgar story-books, Gilderoy, besides committing various monstrous and unnatural crimes, enjoys the credit of having picked Cardinal Richelieu's pocket in the King's presence, robbed Oliver Cromwell, and hanged a judge.
The ballad is said to have been composed not long after the death of Gilderoy, "by a young woman of no mean talent, who unfortunately became attached to this daring robber, and had cohabited with him for some time before his being apprehended." A blackletter copy printed in England as early as 1650 has been preserved. Another, with "some slight variations," is contained "in Playford's Wit and Mirth, first edition of vol. iii., printed in 1703." The piece is next found in Pills to purge Melancholy, v. 39, and, with one different stanza, in Old Ballads, i. 271. In the second volume (p. 106) of Thomson's Orpheus Caledonius (1733), it appears with considerable al
terations. Lady Elizabeth Wardlaw (née Halket) undertook a revision of the ballad, and by expunging two worthless stanzas and adding three (those enclosed in brackets), produced the version here given, which is taken from Ritson's Scotish Songs, ii. 24. Percy's copy (Reliques, i. 335) is the same, with the omission of the ninth stanza, and Herd and Pinkerton have followed Percy.