VI.
SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST.
A SCOTTISH BALLAD.
From Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. The concluding stanza of this piece seems modern.
[In the previous ballad (No. 4) and in Mallet's William and Margaret it is Margaret who appears to William, but in the present one and in some other versions William is made to die first. In Clerk Saunders (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border) Scott has joined two distinct stories, and the second part, in which the spirit of Clerk Saunders appears to May Margaret, closely resembles the present ballad. Besides these there are two other versions. Kinloch's, entitled Sweet William and May Margaret, and Motherwell's William and Marjorie. Dr. Rimbault points out that the chief incidents in Bürger's Leonora resemble those in this ballad.
The last two stanzas are probably Ramsay's own.]
