'Lady Jane,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 73, is a combination of B and E, with a good many bad verses of Jamieson's own. A version in Motherwell's MS., p. 477, "from the recitation of an old maid-servant of Mr Alexander, of Southbar," was, as would be inferred from a memorandum at the end of the transcript, derived from a printed book, and is in fact an imperfect recollection of this compounded ballad of Jamieson's.
Grundtvig has attempted a reconstitution of the ballad from versions A, B, D, E, F, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, V, 42.
Annie [Helen, B, Ellen, G, Jane, E] was stolen from home in her childhood, A 15, B 23, C 31, E 9, F 25, I 38, J 50, 51, by a knight from over sea, to whom she has borne seven sons, out of wedlock. Her consort bids her prepare to welcome a bride, with whom he shall get gowd and gear; with her he got none. But she must look like a maid, comb down her yellow locks, braid her hair.[72] Annie meekly assents, for love, she says, in C 12; in I 4, J 15, the welcoming goes against her heart; in F 9 she is told that she is to do it; in H 2 she says the welcome will have to come from him. Annie receives the bride and her train and serves the tables, suppressing her tears and drinking water to keep her cheek from paling. She passes for servant or housekeeper, and in I 23, J 25, uses the word 'master,' not to anger the bride; in C 17 she calls her lord brother, and the knight calls her sister in C 18 and (inconsistently) in J 38. What 'n a lady's that? asks the bride, E 9, J 37, and what means all these bonny boys that follow at her heel? J 37.
When the married pair have gone to their bed-chamber, Annie, in a room near by, bewails her sad lot in song; to the harp or her virginals, E, F, J, I. The bride hears the lament: it is that of a woman who will go mad ere day, B 20, C 26, J 44, 48. The bride goes to Fair Annie's chamber, A, C? to see what gars her greet, inquires her parentage, and discovers that they are sisters; or learns this fact from the song itself, B, E; or recognizes her sister's voice, F, I, J. King Henry was their father, B, F, I; King Easter, C;[73] the Earl of Wemyss, of Richmond, A, E. Queen Easter was their mother, F; Queen Catherine, Elinor [Orvis], B, I. The bride, who had come with many well-loaded ships, gives all or most of them to her sister, A, B, C, F, I, and goes virgin home, A, B, F, I, J; expecting, as B, J add, to encounter derision for going away wife and coming back maid.
In C 27 the bride suspects that the woman who wails so madly is a leman, and urges her husband to get up and pack her down the stairs, though the woods were ne'er so wild. He refuses. A similar scene is elsewhere put earlier, during the bridal entertainment, I 29, 30, J 40: see also G 2, 3, which are partly explained by these passages, and partly by J 36.
There are other variations in the story, and some additional particulars in one or another version: none of these, however, seem to belong to the original ballad. The bride, as soon as she sees Annie, is struck with the resemblance to her lost sister, A 14, E 9, J 29. The bridegroom repents, and rejects the woman he has married, E 19, F 30, J 49. The bridegroom confiscates without ceremony, as tocher for Annie, six of the seven ships which the bride had brought with her, E, J.[74]
The name Lord Thomas in A was probably suggested by '[Lord Thomas and Fair Annet].'
A Danish ballad of Fair Annie has been known to the English for fourscore years through Jamieson's translation. The Scandinavian versions are the following.
Danish.'Skjön Anna,' Grundtvig, No 258, V, 13, eight versions: A, 39 four-line stanzas, B, 34 sts, C, 45 sts, from manuscripts of the sixteenth century; D, 48 sts, E, 41 sts, G, 32 sts, from seventeenth-century manuscripts; F, 41 sts, from broadsides or stall-copies, the earliest dated 1648, from Peder Syv, 1695, and from copies lately taken down which were derived from printed texts; H, 43 sts, a version recently obtained from tradition in Norway. Of these, A, B, C, G are independent texts; D, E, F are derived from some copy of C, or from a version closely akin to C; H is essentially the broadside copy F, but has one stanza of its own. F, Syv, No 17, Danske Viser, IV, 59, No 177, the form through which the Danish ballad has been made known by English translations, is unfortunately an impure and sophisticated text.