[667] Castle downe here has been thought to mean the Castle of Downe, a seat belonging to the family of Murray.
XVIII.
YOUNG WATERS.
A Scottish Ballad.
It has been suggested to the Editor, that this ballad covertly alludes to the indiscreet partiality, which Q. Anne of Denmark is said to have shewn for the bonny Earl of Murray; and which is supposed to have influenced the fate of that unhappy nobleman. Let the reader judge for himself.
The following account of the murder is given by a contemporary writer, and a person of credit, Sir James Balfour, knight, Lyon King of Arms, whose MS. of the Annals of Scotland is in the Advocates library at Edinburgh.
"The seventh of Febry, this yeire, 1592, the Earle of Murray was cruelly murthered by the Earle of Huntley at his house in Dunibrissel in Fyffe-shyre, and with him Dumbar, shriffe of Murray. It [was] given out and publickly talked, that the Earle of Huntley was only the instrument of perpetrating this facte, to satisfie the King's jealousie of Murray, quhum the Queine more rashely than wyslie, some few dayes before had commendit in the King's heiringe, with too many epithets of a proper and gallant man. The reasons of these surmises proceidit from proclamatione of the Kings, the 18 of Marche following; inhibiting the younge Earle of Murray to persue the Earle of Huntley, for his father's slaughter, in respect he being wardit [imprisoned] in the castell of Blacknesse for the same murther, was willing to abide his tryall, averring that he had done nothing bot by the King's majesties commissione; and was neither airt nor part of the murther."[668]
The following ballad is here given from a copy printed not long since at Glasgow, in one sheet 8vo. The world was indebted for its publication to the lady Jean Hume, sister to the Earl of Hume, who died at Gibraltar [in 1761].