‘Wae’s me that eer I made your bed!
Wae’s me that eer I saw ye!
For now I’ve lost my maidenhead,
And I ken na how they ca ye.’
‘My name is well kent in my ain country,
They ca me The Linking Ladie;
If ye had not been as willing as I,
Shame fa them wad eer hae bade ye!’
‘The Linkin Ladie,’ judging from this fragment (as it may be supposed to be), was much of a fashion with the ballad which we are engaged with, and may have been an earlier form of it. Sir Walter Scott, who cites these verses from memory (Sharpe’s Ballad Book, ed. 1880, p. 162), says that the hero of them was a brother of the celebrated [Thomas] Boston, author of ‘The Fourfold State.’
‘The Baron o Leys’ relates, or purports to relate, to an escapade of one of the Burnetts of Leys, Kincardineshire, Alexander, A, B, George, C. A woman who is with child by him gives him his choice of marriage, death, or the payment of ten thousand crowns. He is a married man; his wife is ready to sell everything, to her silk gowns, to release her husband from his awkward position.