Prof. Aytoun points out that vv. 51-58 of Percy's copy, which are now placed within brackets, are taken from Lady Maisry, a ballad obtained from recitation and printed by Jamieson (vol. i. p. 73).
"O whan he came to broken briggs
He bent his bow and swam,
And whan he came to the green grass growin'
He slack'd his shoon and ran.
And whan he came to Lord William's yeats
He badena to chap or ca',
But set his bent bow to his breast
And lightly lap the wa'."
It is however only fair to Percy to say that he printed Gil Morice before Lady Maisry was published.
Gray wrote to a friend, "I have got the old Scotch ballad on which Douglas was founded; it is divine, and as long as from hence [Cambridge] to Aston."
Jamieson says, on the authority of Sir Walter Scott, that after the appearance of Home's Douglas six additional stanzas, beginning—
"She heard him speak, but fell despair
Sat rooted in her heart
She heard him, and she heard nae mair
Though sair she rued the smart,"
were written to complete the ballad, and in accordance with the final catastrophe of the tragedy Lord Barnard rushes into the thickest of the fight—
"and meets the death he sought."
When the play was produced in Edinburgh in 1756 the heroine was named Lady Barnard, and the alteration to Lady Randolph was made on its appearance in England in the following year.