The lover would wish to keep the strong body of men that he had brought with him quite in the background until their cue came. When, therefore, in I 8, 9, the bridegroom’s friends ask him what was that troop of younkers they had seen, he puts them off with the phrase, It must have been the Fairy Court; so in L. In B 5, 6 (where a stanza, and more, has dropped out), when the bridegroom sees this troop from a high window, the bride (from incredulity, it must be, and not because she is in concert with her old lover) says he must have seen the Fairy Court. G 15, 16, where the phrase comes in again, seems to have suffered corruption; any way, the passage is not quite intelligible to me.
Katharine Jaffray (Jamphray, Janfarie) is the lass’s name in A, C-G, K, L; Katharine Johnstone[[119]] in J; in B, H, I, she is nameless.
The lover is Lochinvar in E, F, G, I, K, L (note); Lamington in D, H, J; Lauderdale in A, C; he has no name in B. The bridegroom is Lochinvar in D, H; Lamington in B, Lymington, K; Lauderdale in F, G; Lochinton A, Lamendall E, Limberdale I (obvious mixtures of the preceding); Faughanwood in C; in J he has no name. The bridegroom should be an Englishman, but Lochinvar, Lamington, and Lauderdale are all south-Scottish names. B puts a Scot from the North Country in place of the titular Englishman of the other copies, but this Norland man is laird of Lamington.
The place of the fight is Cadan bank and Cadan brae, C, D; Cowden bank (banks) and Cowden brae (braes), A, H, J, the variation being perhaps due to the very familiar Cowdenknows; Callien, Caylin, Caley bank (buss) and brae, in E, I, F; Foudlin dyke and Foudlin stane in K. No place is named in B, G[[120]]. In I, the lass lives in Bordershellin.
A copy from the recitation of a young Irishwoman living in Taunton, Massachusetts (learned from print, I suppose, and in parts imperfectly remembered), puts the scene of the story at Edenborough town. A squire of high degree had courted a comely country girl. When her father came to hear of this, he was an angry man, and “requested of his daughter dear to suit his company,” or to match within her degree. The only son of a farmer in the east had courted this girl until he thought he had won her, and had got the consent of her father and mother. The girl writes the squire a letter to tell him that she is to be married to the farmer’s son. He writes in answer that she must dress in green at her wedding (a color which no Scots girl would wear, for ill luck), and he will wear a suit of the same, and wed her ‘in spite of all that’s there.’ He mounts eight squire-men on milk-white steeds, and rides ‘to the wedding-house, with the company dressed in green.’ (See the note to L.)
‘O welcome you, fair welcome!
And where have you spent all day?
Or did you see those gentlemen
That rode along this way?’
He looked at her and scoffed at her,