Norwegian versions of this ballad have been obtained from tradition, but none as yet have been published.
"The mains and burn of Fordie, the banks of which are very beautiful," says Aytoun (I, 159), "lie about six miles to the east of Dunkeld." Tradition has connected the story with half a dozen localities in Sweden, and, as Professor Grundtvig informs me, with at least eight places in the different provinces of Denmark. The Kerna church of the Swedish ballads, not far from Linköping (Afzelius), has been popularly supposed to derive its name from a Catharina, Karin, or Karna, killed by her own brother, a wood-robber, near its site. See Afzelius, ed. Bergström, II, 329 ff: Danske Viser, III, 444 f.
A is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 34, p. 216, and, with some slight use of Aytoun, I, 160, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder der Vorzeit, No 18, p. 85. Danish A, by Prior, III, 252.
A.
a. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 88. b. The same. c. The same, Appendix, p. xxii, No XXVI, apparently from South Perthshire.
1
There were three ladies lived in a bower,
Eh vow bonnie
And they went out to pull a flower.
On the bonnie banks o Fordie
2
They hadna pu'ed a flower but ane,
When up started to them a banisht man.
3
He's taen the first sister by her hand,
And he's turned her round and made her stand.