[H]. 'Burd Alone,' Motherwell's MS., p. 277.
[I]. Communicated by Dr Davidson, derived from Old Deer, Aberdeenshire.
[J]. 'Burd Helen,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 30.
A was printed in Percy's Reliques, III, 58, ed. 1765, with comparatively few changes. B a was published by Jamieson, from Mrs Brown's manuscript, in his Popular Ballads, I, 113, with some slight variation from the text, many acknowledged interpolations, and the addition of three sentimental stanzas to make Burd Ellen die just as her enduring all things is to be rewarded. In this tragic close, Jamieson was anticipated by Mrs Hampden Pye, in her 'Earl Walter,' 1771, Evans's Old Ballads, II, 208, 1777. C is given as it appears in Kinloch's annotated copy of his Ancient Scottish Ballads, where ten stanzas are inserted to enlarge and complete the copy published in 1827. This enlarged copy was communicated to Chambers, and seven of the supplementary stanzas were introduced into his compilation, The Scottish Ballads, p. 193. These supplementary stanzas, some of them certainly, and we may suppose all, belonged to a copy of which only the concluding portion, here given as D, is elsewhere preserved.
The variations in the several versions of this charming ballad, which has perhaps no superior in English, and if not in English perhaps nowhere,[82] are not material, and the story may therefore be given as it runs in A, the oldest copy. Fair Ellen comes to Child Waters, and tells him that her gown, which was too wide, is now too narrow. He bids her be content and take two shires of land; she would rather have one kiss from his mouth than Cheshire and Lancashire both. He must ride far into the North the next day; she asks to be his foot-page. This she may be if she will shorten her gown and clip her locks, so as not to be known for a woman. He rides hard all day, and she keeps up with him barefoot. They come to a broad piece of salt water; he lets her get through as she can, but Our Lady bears up her chin. Then he points out a splendid hall, where are four and twenty ladies, and the fairest is his love and wife. God give both good! is all she says. Arrived there, Ellen takes his horse to the stable. At bed-time he sends her to the town, to bring him the fairest lady that can be found, to sleep in his arms, and to bring this lady in her arms, for filing of her feet. Ellen lies at the foot of the bed, for want of other place, and before dawn is roused by Child Waters to feed his horse. The pains of travail come on her in the stable; Child Waters' mother hears her moans, and bids him get up. He stands at the stable-door and listens. Ellen sings:
Lullaby, dear child, dear!
I would thy father were a king,
Thy mother laid on a bier!
This moves even his sturdy heart; he tells Ellen to be of good cheer, for the bridal and the churching shall both be on one day.
In B, C, E, G, I, J the man relents so far as, when they are in the water, to ask her to ride. She will not, C, E, I; he takes her on at a stone which stands in the middle of the stream, B, G, J. The stream is Clyde in B, C, E, G, J; the Tay in I. In C, E, F, H he tells her after they have passed the water, that it is three and thirty miles to his house; a (poetically) superfluous and meddling parrot says it is but three. In C, G he tells her that she will have a serving-man for a husband, and in H that he has already wife and bairns.
One stroke in A, the sending of Ellen to fetch a woman from the town, is wanting in the other versions, decidedly to their advantage. This exaggeration of insult, submitting to which only degrades the woman, is paralleled, though not quite reached, by the paramour in the forest in the otherwise exquisitely refined tale of The Nut-Brown Maid. As for the ballad, the disagreeable passage may be an insertion of some unlucky singer, and the perfect truth to nature and remarkably high taste of The Nut-Brown Maid, in every other particular, would almost drive us to assume an interpolation in this case too.
E 1, 2, 16, F 2, 3 show contact with the ballad of 'Lizzie Lindsay;' the passing of the water, particularly in E 8-12, with ['The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter];' and again, H 21.