J. Kinloch MSS, VI, 11.
K. ‘Maiden o the Cowdenknowes,’ Dr Joseph Robertson’s Journal of Excursions, No 6.
L. ‘The Broom of the Cowden Knowes,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 178.
M. ‘Broom o the Cowdenknowes,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 172.
N. ‘The Laird of Lochinvar,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 145.
This ballad was widely diffused in Scotland. “It would be useless,” says Motherwell, “to enumerate the titles of the different versions which are common among reciters.” “Each district has its own version,” says Kinloch. So it must have done no little mischief in its day. The earliest known copies, A, B, are of the second half of the last century.
There is an English “ditty” (not a traditional ballad) of a northern lass who got harm while milking her father’s ewes, which was printed in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is here given in an appendix. This ditty is “to a pleasant Scotch tune called The broom of Cowden Knowes,” and the burden is:
With, O the broome, the bonny broome,
The broome of Cowden Knowes!
Fain would I be in the North Countrey,