[A]. a, b. 'Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 88. c. The same, Appendix, p. xxii, No XXVI.
[B]. a. Herd's MSS, I, 38, II, 76. b. 'The Banishd Man,' The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 699, evidently derived from Herd.
[C]. Motherwell's MS., p. 172.
[D]. Motherwell's MS., p. 174.
[E]. 'Duke of Perth's Three Daughters,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 212.
B a is from tradition of the latter half of the eighteenth century; the other copies from the earlier part of this.
Three sisters go out (together, A, B, C, successively, D, E) to gather flowers (A, B, E). A banished man (outlyer bold, D, Loudon lord, E) starts up from a hiding-place, and offers them one after the other the choice of being his wife or dying by his hand.
(A.)
'It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,
Or will ye die by my wee penknife?'
(D.)
'Wiltow twinn with thy maidenhead, or thy sweet life?'