There is nothing to show whether the lost copy was recovered, unless it be the fact that Jamieson prints about twice as many stanzas as there are in a. But Jamieson was not always precise in the account he gave of the changes he made in his texts.
In his preface to B, Kinloch remarks that the ballad is very popular in the North, “and few milk-maids in that quarter but can chaunt it, to a very pleasant tune. Lizie Lindsay,” he adds, “according to the tradition of Mearnsshire, is said to have been a daughter of Lindsay of Edzell; but I have searched in vain for genealogical confirmation of the tradition.” Kinloch gave Aytoun a copy of this version, changing a few phrases, and inserting st. 20 of C.
The following stanza, printed as No 434 of the Musical Museum, was sent with the air to Johnson by Burns, who intended to communicate something more. (Museum, 1853, IV, 382):
Will ye go to the Highlands, Leezie Lindsay?
Will ye go to the Highlands wi me?
Will ye go to the Highlands, Leezie Lindsay,
My pride and my darling to be?
Robert Allan added three stanzas to this, Smith’s Scotish Minstrel, II, 100, and again, p. 101 of the same, others (in which Lizie Lindsay is, without authority, made ‘a puir lassie’). The second stanza of the second “set” is traditional (cf. B 8, C 6, D 6, E 8):
To gang to the Hielands wi you, sir,
I dinna ken how that may be,