143. His life is but a three days’ lease.
151. was clear, as in A.
196
THE FIRE OF FRENDRAUGHT
A. a. ‘The Fire of Frendraught,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 161, 1827. b. ‘Burning of Frendraught,’ Maidment’s North Countrie Garland, p. 4, 1824.
B. ‘The Burning of Frendraught,’ Kinloch MSS, V, 399.
C. ‘The Fire of Frendraught,’ from a note-book of Dr Joseph Robertson’s.
D. Ritson’s Scotish Songs, II, 35, 1794.
E. Kinloch MSS, VI, 27, one stanza.
A a was communicated to Motherwell by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. (Corrections have here been adopted from Motherwell’s Errata: see also the Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 322*.) A b, says Motherwell, has the “disadvantage of containing a very considerable number of slight verbal and literal inaccuracies.” The implication is, or should be, that these variations are of editorial origin. Some of the readings of b are in themselves better than those of a. b is repeated in Buchan’s Gleanings, p. 165. The copy in Maidment’s Scotish Ballads, 1868, I, 267, is a with a reading or two from b, arbitrary alterations, and some misprints.
Dr Joseph Robertson has, in one of his notebooks, “Adversaria,” p. 63, the two following stanzas, given him by a gentleman of Buchan as belonging to “The Burning of Frendraught House.”