The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5)

by Unknown

215
RARE WILLIE DROWNED IN YARROW, OR, THE WATER O GAMRIE

A. ‘Willy’s rare and Willy’s fair,’ Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, II, 110, 1733.

B. a. Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 196. b. Stenhouse, Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 464.

C. ‘The Dowie Dens o Yarrow,’ Gibb MS., p. 37.

D. Skene MS., p. 47.

E. ‘Willie’s drowned in Gamery,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 245.

F. ‘The Water o Gamery,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 159. Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 66, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

G. ‘The Water o Ganrie,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 637.

H. ‘The Water o Gemrie,’ Campbell MSS, II, 78.

A was inserted in the fourth volume of The Tea-Table Miscellany, and stands in the edition of 1763 at p. 321, ‘Rare Willie drowned in Yarrow,’ It is given in Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 197 (with two or three trifling changes); in Johnson’s Museum, p. 542, No 525. F is epitomized in Christie’s Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 66, “with some changes from the way the editor has heard it sung.”