Calderwood gives the following account: “Upon Monday the seventh of August, the king being in Dalkeith, the young laird of Logie and Burlie promised to Bothwell to bring him in before the king to seek his pardon. The king was forewarned, and Bothwell, howbeit brought in quietly within the castle, was conveyed out again. Burlie was accused and confessed; Logie denied, and therefore would have suffered trial. The night before, one of the queen’s dames, Mistress Margaret, a Dutchwoman, came to the guard and desired that he might be suffered to come to the queen, who had something to inquire of him. Two of the guard brought him to the king’s chamber-door, and staid upon his coming forth, but she conveyed him in the mean time out at a window in a pair of sheets.... Logie married the gentlewoman after, when he was received into the king’s favor again.”[[291]] Logie, according to Calderwood, was “a varlet of the king’s chamber.”
Spottiswood says: John Weymis younger of Logie, gentleman of his Majesty’s chamber, and in great favor both with the king and queen, was discovered to have the like dealing with Bothwell, and, being committed to the keeping of the guard, escaped by the policy of one of the Dutch maids, with whom he entertained a secret love. The gentlewoman, named Mistress Margaret Twinslace, coming one night, whilst the king and queen were in bed, to his keepers, shewed that the king called for the prisoner, to ask of him some question. The keepers, suspecting nothing, for they knew her to be the principal maid in the chamber, conveyed him to the door of the bed-chamber, and making a stay without, as they were commanded, the gentlewoman did let him down at a window, by a cord that she had prepared. The keepers, waiting upon his return, staid there till the morning, and then found themselves deceived. This, with the manner of the escape, ministered great occasion of laughter; and not many days after, the king being pacified by the queen’s means, he was pardoned, and took to wife the gentlewoman who had in this sort hazarded her credit for his safety.[[292]]
The lady, called by Calderwood and Spottiswood a Dutchwoman, but rightly by Moysie a Dane, was one of a train of her countrywomen who attended Queen Anne when she came to Scotland in May, 1590. She is called Mistress Margaret Vinstar in a letter of Robert Bowes to Lord Burghley of August 12, 1592;[[293]] Margaret Weiksterne in a charter dated 25th December, 1594.[[294]]
Young Logie cannot have received a complete pardon within a few days of his escape. At a council meeting, September 14, 1592, it is ordered that Wemyss of Logie the younger, having failed to appear this day to answer touching the ‘intercommuning and having intelligence with Francis, sometime Earl Bothwell,’ be denounced rebel.[[295]]
A. Young Logie is a prisoner, in Carmichael’s[[296]] keeping, and May Margaret, who is enamored of him, is weeping for his expected death. The queen can do nothing, and tells her that she must go to the king himself to beg the life of her lover. She goes, accordingly, but gets an ill answer: all the gold in Scotland shall not save Young Logie. In this strait she steals the king’s comb and the queen’s knife, and sends them to Carmichael as tokens that Logie is to be discharged. She provides the young man with money, and gives him a pair of pistols, which he is to fire in sign that he is at liberty. The king hears the ‘volley’ from his bed, and by his peculiar sagacity recognizes the shot of Young Logie. He sends for Carmichael, and learning that the prisoner was set free in virtue of a royal token, says, You will make his place good tomorrow. Carmichael hurries to Margaret, and wants a word with Logie. Margaret, with a laugh, tells him that the bird is flown. The young pair severally take ship and are married.
In B, the queen, instead of referring Margaret to the king as the only resource, herself undertakes to save the young man’s life. She asks it of her consort as her first boon; the king makes her the same answer which he gives Margaret in A, All the gold in Scotland will not buy mercy. Margaret, in desperation, wishes to kill herself, but the queen will put her in a better way to save her lover. The queen steals the prison-keys, and the story proceeds as before. The king threatens to hang all his gaolers, to the number of thirty and three. The gaolers plead that they received the keys (which are also thirty and three) with a strict command to enlarge the prisoner. The queen says that, if the gaolers are to hang, a beginning must be made with her.
B substitutes Ochiltrie for Logie. Andrew Stewart, Lord of Ochiltrie, was an active partisan of Bothwell (see the preceding ballad), and at a council-meeting on May 2, 1594 (the same meeting at which a caution of three hundred merks was required for Young Logie), was ordered to be denounced rebel for not appearing to answer touching his “tressounable attemptattis”; that is, for having been Bothwell’s main helper in the Raid of Leith, April 3 preceding.[[297]] So far his case resembles Young Logie’s, and it may be that the two became confounded in tradition earlier than the middle of the eighteenth century, about which time B was taken down. But an interchange of names is of the commonest occurrence in traditional ballads, and perhaps Ochiltrie’s appearance here no more requires to be accounted for than his figuring, as he does, in one of the versions of ‘The Broom of Cowdenknows.’
Although the queen had no hand in the freeing of Young Logie, and is not known even to have winked at it, she stood by Mistress Margaret, and refused to give her up when requested.[[298]]
C agrees with B as to the part taken by the queen in the rescue. There are but three keepers, and presumably but three keys to steal from under the king’s head, and the queen sends her wedding-ring with the keys, as a warrant to the keepers. In 5, Anne is queen of England as well as queen of Scotland; but we cannot expect that a stall-ballad of this century should be nice about a matter of eleven years.
The offence for which Young Logie is to die in D is the stealing of a kiss “from the queen’s marie,” which shows a high appreciation of the discipline at James’s court. The queen counterfeits the king’s hand and steals his right glove, and sends the forged paper and the glove to “Pitcairn’s walls” as authority for the liberation of the prisoner. The king, looking over his castle-wall, sees Young Logie approaching, and his exclamation at the sight brings the queen to an instantaneous confession of what she has done. The king very good-naturedly overlooks the offence and absolves the lover for whom it was committed.