51. pistol, and.
52. Set.
161. their.
224
THE LADY OF ARNGOSK
Sharpe’s Ballad Book, 1823, p. 99.
“The following fragment,” says Sharpe in his preface (he had not then recovered the second stanza), “I cannot illustrate either from history or tradition.” Very soon after the publication of the Ballad Book, full particulars of the carrying off of the Lady of Arngosk were procured for him by David Webster, the bookseller. Webster addressed himself to Mrs Isobell Dow, otherwise Mrs Mac Leish, of Newburgh, Fife, whose mother, he had learned, was waiting-maid to the lady at the time of the rape. “In my very early years,” he wrote, July 4, 1823, “I have listened with great delight to my mother when she sung me a song the first stanza of which was this:
The Highlandmen are a’ cum down,
They’re a’ cum down almost,
They’ve stowen awa the bonny lass,
The lady of Arngosk.