9
He laid his fiddle on a shelf
In that old manor-hall,
It played and sung all by itself,
And thus sung this fiddoll:
10
'There sits the squire, my worthy sire,
A-drinking hisself drunk,' etc., etc.
[N].
Pinkerton tells us, in the Preface to his Ancient Scottish Poems, p. cxxxi, that "Binnorie is one half from tradition, one half by the editor." One fourth and three fourths would have been a more exact apportionment. The remainder of his text, which is wholly of his invention, is as follows:
'Gae saddle to me my swiftest steid;
Her fere, by my fae, for her dethe sall bleid.'
A page cam rinning out owr the lie:
'O heavie tydings I bring,' quoth he.
'My luvely lady is far awa gane;
We weit the fairy hae her tane.
Her sister gaed wood wi dule and rage;
Nocht cold we do her mind to suage.
"O Isabel, my sister," she wold cry,
"For thee will I weip, for thee will I die."
Till late yestrene, in an elric hour,
She lap frae aft the hichest touir.'
'Now sleip she in peace,' quoth the gallant squire;
'Her dethe was the maist that I cold require.
But I'll main for the, my Isabel deir,
Full mony a dreiry day, hot weir.'
20. This stanza occurs also in B c (17), and was perhaps borrowed from Pinkerton by the reviser of that copy.
[O]. a.
Buchan's note, II, 320: "I have seen four or five different versions of this ballad, but none in this dress, nor with the same chorus.... The old woman from whose recitation I took it down says she had heard another way of it, quite local, whose burden runs thus:
'Ever into Buchanshire, vari vari O.'"
12. hae courted.