This ballad, which appeared in some of the public newspapers in or before the year 1724, came from the pen of David Mallet, Esq. who in the edition of his poems, 3 vols. 1759, informs us that the plan was suggested by the four verses quoted above in page [124], which he supposed to be the beginning of some ballad now lost.
"These lines, says he, naked of ornament and simple, as they are, struck my fancy; and bringing fresh into my mind an unhappy adventure much talked of formerly, gave birth to the following poem, which was written many years ago."
The two introductory lines (and one or two others elsewhere) had originally more of the ballad simplicity, viz.
"When all was wrapt in dark midnight,
And all were fast asleep," &c.
In a late publication, intitled, The Friends, &c. Lond. 1773, 2 vols. 12mo. (in the first volume, p. 71) is inserted a copy of the foregoing ballad, with very great variations, which the editor of that work contends was the original; and that Mallet adopted it for his own and altered it, as here given.—But the superior beauty and simplicity of the present copy, gives it so much more the air of an original, that it will rather be believed that some transcriber altered it from Mallet's, and adapted the lines to his own taste; than which nothing is more common in popular songs and ballads.
[This ballad, more generally known as William and Margaret, is supposed to have been printed for the first time in Aaron Hill's Plain Dealer (No. 36, July 24, 1724), when the author was a very young man. Hill introduced it to the reader as the work of an old poet, and wrote, "I am sorry I am not able to acquaint my readers with his name to whom we owe this melancholy piece of finished poetry under the humble title of a ballad." In the following month the editor announced that "he had discovered the author to be still alive." The verses were probably written in 1723, in the August of which year Mallet left Scotland, for Allan Ramsay, in his Stanzas to Mr. David Mallock on his departure from Scotland, alludes to them:—
"But he that could, in tender strains,
Raise Margaret's plaining shade,
And paints distress that chills the veins,
While William's crimes are red."
The ballad at once became popular, and was printed in several collections, undergoing many alterations for the worse by the way. Sundry attempts were made to rob Mallet of the credit of his song. Besides the one mentioned above by Percy, Captain Thompson, the editor of Andrew Marvell's Works, claimed it for Marvell, but this claim was even more ridiculous than those he set up against Addison and Watts. Although Mallet doubtless knew the ballads Fair Margaret and Sweet William (book ii. No. 4) and Sweet William's Ghost (No. 6), he is said to have founded his own upon a true story which came under his observation. A daughter of Professor James Gregory of St. Andrews, and afterwards of Edinburgh, was seduced by a son of Sir William Sharp of Strathyrum, who had promised to marry her, but heartlessly deserted her.