[In the folio MS. Percy wrote the following note: "This old copy (tho' a very indifferent fragment) I thought deserving of some attention. I have therefore bestowed an entire revisal of the subject for my Reliques, &c." In this revisal, the Bishop swelled out the 125 lines of the original into the 216 of his own version. It has, therefore, been necessary to print a copy of the original at the end of the present ballad. The modern ballad referred to above is the Drunkard's Legacy, printed in J. H. Dixon's Ballads of the Peasantry, but it is only comparatively modern, as it dates back to a period long before Percy's time. The portion which Percy interpolated and took from this ballad, forms the end of the first part and beginning of the second part of the following version.
The incident by which the hidden treasure is discovered occurs in one of the stories of Cinthio's Heccatomithi (Dec. ix. Nov. 8), but the arguments of the two tales are in other respects different. The Scotch claim this ballad as their own. Some suppose the hero to have been an Ayrshire laird, and others that he was from Galloway. Motherwell gives the following verses as the commencement of the traditionary version extant in Scotland:
"The bonnie heir, the weel-faur'd heir,
And the weary heir o' Linne,
Yonder he stands at his father's gate,
And naebody bids him come in,
O see whare he gaup and see whare he stands,
The weary heir o' Linne,
O see whare he stands on the cauld causey,
Some ane wuld ta'en him in.
But if he had been his father's heir,
Or yet the heir o' Linne,
He wadna stand on the cauld causey,
Some ane wuld ta'en him in.">[
Part the First.
Lithe[539] and listen, gentlemen,
To sing a song I will beginne:
It is of a lord of faire Scotlànd,
Which was the unthrifty heire of Linne.
His father was a right good lord, 5
His mother a lady of high degree;
But they, alas! were dead, him froe,
And he lov'd keeping companie.
To spend the daye with merry cheare,
To drinke and revell every night, 10
To card and dice from eve to morne,
It was, I ween, his hearts delighte
To ride, to runne, to rant, to roare,
To alwaye spend and never spare,
I wott, an' it were the king himselfe, 15
Of gold and fee he mote be bare.