[236]. Scott remarks that the “common people of the high parts of Teviotdale, Liddesdale, and the country adjacent, hold the memory of Johnie Armstrong in very high respect.” “They affirm, also,” he adds, “that one of his attendants broke through the king’s guard, and carried to Gilnockie Tower the news of the bloody catastrophe:” but that is in the English ballad, B 20.
[237]. Dr Hill Burton has made a slight slip here, III, 146, ed. 1863; compare Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, I, 154.
[238]. He lived in the West March, if that helps to an explanation.
[239]. Found also in one copy of Hugh the Græme, Buchan’s MSS, I, 63, st. 15. Borrowed by Sir Walter Scott in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I, ix.
[240]. See many cases in Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 210 f, to which may be added: Milà, Romancerillo, No 243, pp. 219–21; Briz, II, 222; Amador de los Rios, Historia de la Lit. Esp., VII, 449; El Folk-Lore Andaluz, 1882, pp. 41, 77; Almeida-Garrett, II, 56, note; Nigra, C. P. del Piemonte, No I, E-I, N, O; ‘Le serpent vert,’ Poésies p. de la France, MS., III, fol. 126, 508, now printed by Rolland, III, 10; Kolberg, Pieśni ludu polskiego, No 18, p. 208; Luzel, I, 81, II, 357, 515; Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, pp. 205, 355 f.; Gaidoz, and others, Mélusine, IV, 228 ff., 272 ff., 298, 323 f., 405.
[241]. Grundtvig, No 84, ‘Hustru og Mands Moder,’ is not so good a case, though a boy just born announces that he will revenge his mother, because the boy is born nine years old; II, 412, D 30, E 18. This again in Kristensen, I, 202 f, No 74, B 12, C 11, and II, 113 ff, No 35, A 18, B 14, C 11. The stanza cited by Dr Prior, I, 37, from ‘Hammen von Reystett,’ Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 179, is hardly to the purpose.
[242]. Jamieson cites the first two verses in The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, and says: Of this affecting composition I have two copies, both imperfect, but they will make a pretty good and consistent whole between them.
[243]. Burnet; Rapin-Thoyras, 1724, V, 401.
[244]. W. Patten, The Expedicion into Scotlande, etc., reprinted in Dalyell’s Fragments of Scottish History, pp. 51, 66.
[245]. Deceivin, Abbey, are of course savin misunderstood. One of the reciters of D (42) gave ‘saving.’