All the Scottish versions were obtained within the first third of this century, and since then no others have been heard of. It is interesting to find the ballad still in the mouths of children in American cities,—in the mouths of the poorest, whose heritage these old things are.[401] The American versions, though greatly damaged, preserve the names John and William, which all the other copies have.
B and C are considerably corrupted. It need hardly be mentioned that the age of the boys in the first two stanzas of B does not suit the story. According to C 8, 15, the mother had cursed John, before he left home, with a wish that he might never return; and in C 9, John sends word to his true-love that he is in his grave for her dear sake alone. These points seem to have been taken from some copy of 'Willie and May Margaret,' or 'The Drowned Lovers.' The conclusion of both B and C belongs to 'Sweet William's Ghost.' C 18 may be corrected by B 10, though there is an absurd jumble of pipes and harp in the latter. The harp, in a deft hand, effects like wonders in many a ballad: e. g., 'Harpens Kraft,' Grundtvig, II, 65, No 40; even a pipe in C 14-16 of the same.
D, E, F, G supplement the story with more or less of the ballad of 'Edward:' see p. 168.
Jamieson inquires for this ballad in the Scots Magazine for October, 1803, p. 701, at which time he had only the first stanza and the first half of the third. He fills out the imperfect stanza nearly as in the copy which he afterwards printed:
But out an Willie's taen his knife,
And did his brother slay.
Of the five other Scottish versions, all except B make the deadly wound to be the result of accident, and this is, in Motherwell's view, a point essential. The other reading, he says, is at variance with the rest of the story, and "sweeps away the deep impression this simple ballad would otherwise have made upon the feelings: for it is almost unnecessary to mention that its touching interest is made to centre in the boundless sorrow and cureless remorse of him who had been the unintentional cause of his brother's death, and in the solicitude which that high-minded and generous spirit expresses, even in the last agonies of nature, for the safety and fortunes of the truly wretched and unhappy survivor." But the generosity of the dying man is plainly greater if his brother has killed him in an outburst of passion; and what is gained this way will fully offset the loss, if any, which comes from the fratricide having cause for "cureless remorse" as well as boundless sorrow. Motherwell's criticism, in fact, is not quite intelligible. (Minstrelsy, p. 61.)
The variation in the story is the same as that between the English 'Cruel Brother' and the German 'Graf Friedrich:' in the former the bride is killed by her offended brother; in the latter it is the bridegroom's sword slipping from its sheath that inflicts the mortal hurt.
Motherwell was inclined to believe, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe was convinced, that this ballad was founded upon an event that happened near Edinburgh as late as 1589, that of one of the Somervilles having been killed by his brother's pistol accidentally going off. Sharpe afterward found a case of a boy of thirteen killing a young brother in anger at having his hair pulled. This most melancholy story, the particulars of which are given in the last edition of the Ballad Book, p. 130, note xix, dates nearly a hundred years later, 1682. Only the briefest mention need be made of these unusually gratuitous surmises.
Kirkland, in D, was probably suggested by the kirkyard of other versions, assisted, possibly, by a reminiscence of the Kirkley in 'Robin Hood's Death and Burial;' for it will be observed that stanzas 8, 9 of D come pretty near to those in which Robin Hood gives direction for his grave; F 9, 10, B 5, 6 less near.[402]
Cunningham has entitled a romance of his, upon the theme of 'The Two Brothers' (which, once more, he ventures to print nearly in the state in which he once had the pleasure of hearing it sung), 'Fair Annie of Kirkland:' Songs of Scotland, II, 16.