Stanzas 19–21 of a, b, and their representatives in d, e, recall ‘The Gypsy Laddie.’
Lizzie Baillie, of Castle Gary, Stirlingshire, while paying a visit to a sister at Gartartan, Perthshire, makes an excursion to Inchmahome, an island in Loch Menteith. Here she meets Duncan Graham, who, against the opposition of her parents, persuades her to prefer a Highland husband to any Lowland or English match.
“The heroine of this song,” says Sharpe, “was a daughter of Baillie of Castle Carey, and sister, as it is said, to the wife of Macfarlane of Gartartan.” The Baillies, as Maidment has shown, acquired Castle Gary “at a comparatively recent date,” and that editor must be nearly, or quite, right in declaring the ballad to be not older than the commencement of the last century. Buchan has a bit of pseudo-history anent Lizie Baillie in his notes, at II, 326.
The story is told in a somewhat disorderly way even in a, and we may believe that we have not attained the original yet, though this copy is much older than any that has appeared in previous collections.
1
It fell about the Lambmass tide,
When the leaves were fresh and green,
Lizie Bailie is to Gartartain [gane],
To see her sister Jean.