[102] Buchan 1, 2=B 1, 2; 3-9=A 3-9; 11=A 10; 12=B 11; 15 is made from A 12; 16=B 16; 17=A 15; 23-25=A 21, 22, 20; 26-29 are made from A 24-26, 23. The fatuity of 132, 142 is such as is found nowhere out of Buchan.
The stanza given in the Appendix to Motherwell's Minstrelsy, xix, XVI, is Scott's 13.
[103] We may suppose that all the three versions, two of them fragmentary, which Jamieson combined, contained the passage which furnishes the link: but it would be much more satisfactory if Jamieson had given us all three as he received them.
[104] Icelandic A-C have an introductory incident not found in E-H. There is a trace of this in D, and it occurs also in two other ballads, I, K, of the same series, which lack the feature that A-H and English F have in common. A king finds a young child that has been left on or in the cleft of a rock, takes it with him, and rides to his daughter's bower. He asks his daughter who the fair swain is that he has found, and how it comes to have her eyes. She feigns ignorance and indifference: many a man is like another. Then come the questions found in the other versions.
[105] "Goes brain," perhaps, as the editors suggest, like Lady Maisry in 'Lord Ingram,' and others in Scottish ballads.
[106] These are translated by Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 424, Prior, II, 378; W. and M. Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 261.
[107] Fernan Caballero had another Andalusian version besides this.
[70]
WILLIE AND LADY MAISRY
[A]. 'Willie, the Widow's Son,' Motherwell's MS., p. 498; 'Sweet Willie and Lady Margerie,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 370.