The published accounts of the affair of the Russian Mary Hamilton differ to much the same degree as some versions of the Scottish ballad. The subject has fortunately been reviewed in a recent article founded on original and authentic documents.[[249]]

When the Hamiltons first came to Russia does not appear. Artemon Sergheievitch Matveief, a distinguished personage, minister and friend of the father of Peter the Great, married a Hamilton, of a Scottish family settled at Moscow, after which the Hamilton family ranked with the aristocracy. The name of Mary’s father, whether William or Daniel, is uncertain, but it is considered safe to say that she was niece to Andrei Artemonovitch Matveief, son of the Tsar Alexei’s friend. Mary Hamilton was created maid-of-honor to the Empress Catharine chiefly on account of her beauty. Many of Catharine’s attendants were foreigners; not all were of conspicuous families, but Peter required that they should all be remarkably handsome. Mary had enjoyed the special favor of the Tsar, but incurred his anger by setting afloat a report that Catharine had a habit of eating wax, which produced pimples on her face. The empress spoke to her about this slander; Mary denied that she was the author of it; Catharine boxed her ears, and she acknowledged the offence. Mary Hamilton had been having an amour with Ivan Orlof, a handsome aide-de-camp of Tsar Peter, and while she was under the displeasure of her master and mistress, the body of a child was found in a well, wrapped in a court-napkin. Orlof, being sent for by Peter on account of a missing paper, thought that his connection with Mary had been discovered, and in his confusion let words escape him which Peter put to use in tracing the origin of the child. The guilt was laid at Mary’s door; she at first denied the accusation, but afterwards made a confession, exonerating Orlof, however, from all participation in the death of the babe; and indeed it was proved that he had not even known of its birth till the information came to him in the way of court-gossip. Both were sent to the Petropaulovsk fortress, Orlof on April 4, Mary on April 10, 1718. Orlof was afterwards discharged without punishment. Mary, after being twice subjected to torture, under which she confessed to having previously destroyed two children,[[250]] was condemned to death November 27, 1718, and executed on March 14, 1719, the Tsar attending. She had attired herself in white silk, with black ribbons, hoping thereby to touch Peter’s heart. She fell on her knees and implored a pardon. But a law against the murder of illegitimate children had recently been promulgated afresh and in terms of extreme severity. Peter turned aside and whispered something to the executioner; those present thought he meant to show grace, but it was an order to the headsman to do his office. The Tsar picked up Mary’s head and kissed it, made a little discourse on the anatomy of it to the spectators, kissed it again, and threw it down. That beautiful head is said to have been kept in spirits for some sixty years at the Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg.

It will be observed that this adventure at the Russian court presents every material feature in the Scottish ballad, and even some subordinate ones which may or may not have been derived from report, may or may not have been the fancy-work of singers or reciters. We have the very name, Mary Hamilton; she is a maid-of-honor; she has, as some versions run, an intrigue with the king, and has a child, which she destroys; she rolls the child in a napkin and throws it into a well (rolls the child in her handkerchief, apron, and throws it in the sea); she is charged with the fact and denies; according to some versions, search is made and overwhelming proof discovered;[[251]] she is tried and condemned to die; she finds no grace. The appeal to sailors and travellers in the ballad shows that Mary Hamilton dies in a foreign land—not that of her ancestors. The king’s coming by in B 22 (cf. D 22, 23) may possibly be a reminiscence of the Tsar’s presence at the execution, and Mary’s dressing herself in white, etc., to shine through Edinburgh town a transformation of Mary’s dressing herself in white to move the Tsar’s pity at the last moment; but neither of these points need be insisted on.

There is no trace of an admixture of the Russian story with that of the French woman and the queen’s apothecary, and no ballad about the French woman is known to have existed.

We first hear of the Scottish ballad in 1790, when a stanza is quoted in a letter of Robert Burns (see R). So far as I know, but one date can be deduced from the subject-matter of the ballad; the Netherbow Port is standing in G, I, M, and this gate was demolished in 1764. The ballad must therefore have arisen between 1719 and 1764. It is remarkable that one of the very latest of the Scottish popular ballads should be one of the very best.

I a is translated by Gerhard, p. 149; Aytoun’s ballad by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 76, No 24.

A

a. Sharpe’s Ballad Book, 1824, p. 18. b. Communicated by the late John Francis Campbell, as learned from his father about 1840. c. Aungervyle Society’s publications, No V, p. 5 (First Series, p. 85); “taken down early in the present century from the lips of an old lady in Annandale.”

1

Word’s gane to the kitchen,