1.
Jack and William was gone to school,
One fine afternoon;
Jack says to William, Will you try a fight?
Do not throw no stones.
2.
Jack took out his little penknife,
The end of it was sharp,
He stuck it through his brother's heart,
And the blood was teeming down.
FOOTNOTES:
[401] Mr Newell says: "I have heard it sung at a picnic, by a whole carful of little girls. The melody is pretty. These children were of the poorest class."
[402] "The house of Inchmurry, formerly called Kirkland, was built of old by the abbot of Holyrood-house for his accommodation when he came to that country, and was formerly the minister's manse." Statistical Account of Scotland, XIII, 506, cited by Jamieson, I, 62. There are still three or four Kirklands in Scotland and the north of England.
[50]
THE BONNY HIND
'The Bonny Hyn,' Herd's MSS, I, 224; II, fol. 65, fol. 83.
This piece is transcribed three times in Herd's manuscripts, with a note prefixed in each instance that it was copied from the mouth of a milkmaid in 1771. An endorsement to the same effect on the last transcript gives the date as 1787, no doubt by mistake. Scott had only MS. I in his hands, which accidentally omits two stanzas (13, 14), and he printed this defective copy with the omission of still another (4): Minstrelsy, II, 298, ed. 1802; III, 309, ed. 1833. Motherwell supplies these omitted stanzas, almost in Herd's very words, in the Introduction to his collection, p. lxxxiv, note 99. He remarks, p. 189, that tales of this kind abound in the traditionary poetry of Scotland. The two ballads which follow, Nos [51], [52], are of the same general description.
In the first half of the story 'The Bonny Hind' comes very near to the fine Scandinavian ballad of 'Margaret,' as yet known to be preserved only in Färöe and Icelandic. The conclusions differ altogether. Margaret in the Färöe ballad, 'Margretu kvæði,' Færöiske Kvæder, Hammershaimb, No 18, is the only daughter of the Norwegian king Magnus, and has been put in a convent. After two or three months she longs to see her father's house again. On her way thither she is assaulted by a young noble with extreme violence: to whom she says,