FOOTNOTES:
[136] C a was most obligingly copied, and C b collated, for me by Professor Skeat with his own hand.
[137] L, one of two copies in Buchan's MSS, would certainly have been but the slightest loss if omitted, as another, MSS II, 152, being a broadside made over for the stalls, has been.
[138] Pagani appellati interdum infantes quorum certis ex causis differebatur baptismus; Ducange, s. v. Pagani, who cites, Infans infirmus et paganus commendatus presbytero, etc. Ethnicus was used in the same way.
[82]
THE BONNY BIRDY
Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 42; Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 162.
Jamieson, in printing this ballad, gave the husband the name Lord Randal, made many changes, and introduced several stanzas, "to fill up chasms." But the chasms, such as they are, are easily leapt by the imagination, and Jamieson's interpolations are mere bridges of carpenter's work. The admirably effective burden is taken into the story at stanza 11. As Jamieson remoulds the ballad, it is no burden, but a part of the dialogue throughout.
The main part of the action is the same as in '[Little Musgrave].' The superior lyrical quality of the Scottish ballad makes up for its inferiority as a story, so that on the whole it cannot be prized much lower than the noble English ballad.