‘He is either himsell a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch maun be;
I wad na have ridden that wan water
For a’the gowd in Christentie.’
187
JOCK O THE SIDE
A. ‘John a Side,’ Percy MS., p. 254; Hales and Furnivall, II, 203.
B. ‘Jock o the Side.’ a. Caw’s Poetical Museum, 1784, p. 145. b. Campbell, Albyn’s Anthology, II, 28, 1818.
C. ‘John o the Side,’ Percy Papers, as collected from the memory of an old person in 1775.
D. Percy Papers, fragment from recitation, 1774.
The copy in Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1802, I, 154, 1833, II, 76, is B b, with the insertion of three stanzas (6, 7, 23) from B a. Neither Campbell nor Scott has the last stanza of B a. Campbell says, in a note to his copy: The melody and particularly the words of this Liddesdale song were taken down by the editor from the singing and recitation of Mr Thomas Shortreed, who learnt it from his father. As to the words (except in the omission of four stanzas), b does not differ significantly from a, and it may, with little hesitation, be said to have been derived from a. Campbell seems to have given this copy to Scott, who published it sixteen years before it appeared in the Anthology, with the addition already mentioned.[[317]] The copy in the Campbell MSS, I, 220, is B a.