[B]. 'Willie and Lady Maisry,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I. 155.
'Willie and Lady Maisry' has much in common with '[Clerk Saunders].' The chief point of difference is that of Willie's killing Maisry's brother and the guard, B 22-24. Here the ballad has probably been affected by another, now represented in English only by a very corrupt version, '[The Bent sae Brown],' which immediately follows.
A
Motherwell's MS., p. 498; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 370. From the recitation of Mrs Notman, then far advanced in years, with whose grandmother it was a favorite: September 9, 1826.
1 Willie was a widow's son,
And he wore a milk-white weed, O
And weel could Willie read and write,
Far better ride on steed. O
2 Lady Margerie was the first lady
That drank to him the wine,
And aye as the healths gade round and round,
'Laddy, your love is mine.'
3 Lady Margerie was the first ladye
That drank to him the beer,
And aye as the healths gade round and round,
'Laddy, you're welcome here.'
4 'You must come into my bower
When the evening bells do ring,
And you must come into my bower
When the evening mass doth sing.'
5 He's taen four and twenty braid arrows,
And laced them in a whang,
And he's awa to Lady Margerie's bower,
As fast as he can gang.
6 He set ae foot on the wall,
And the other on a stane,
And he's killed a' the king's life-guards,
And he's killed them every man.