The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 4 (of 5)

by Unknown

14³. War for Were originally.

17⁴. brothered in the MS.

245
YOUNG ALLAN

A. Skene MS., p. 33.

B. ‘Young Allan,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 182.

C. ‘Young Allan,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 11.

D. ‘Young Allan,’ Murison MS., p. 117.

E. ‘Earl Patrick,’ Kinloch MSS, V, 395.

The copy in Christie’s Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 252, is abridged from C, with half a dozen arbitrary and insignificant changes.

Skippers (lords) of Lothain, A, of Scarsburgh, C, of Aberdeen, D, are bragging over their drink: some, absurdly enough, of their hawks and hounds, A-C, some of their ladies, young Allan of his ship, which will outsail all others but three.[^[147]] A boy in A, C, says that his master has a boat (it is a coal-carrier in C) which will take the wind from him. A wager is laid, A, B, C. All the rest go to drinking, ‘to the tows,’ but Allan to his prayers, C 8. They sail; there is a terrible storm, in the course of which the three competitors are ‘rent in nine,’ A 9, or two of them sink, and the topmast of the third ‘gaes in nine,’ E 7–9.