31
‘O I will break my lands,’ he said,
‘And ae third will I gie to thee;
But my brother’s ane o wealth and might,
And he’ll wed nane but he will for me.’
254
LORD WILLIAM, OR, LORD LUNDY
A. Motherwell’s MS., p. 361. ‘Sweet William,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 307.
B. ‘Lord Lundy,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 57.
C. ‘Lord William,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 126; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 57, Percy Society, vol. xvii.
Sweet William (Lord William’s son, or Lord William) and the Baillie’s daughter (Lord Lundy’s daughter) have been lovers: they have in fact been over-sea together, learning “some unco lair.” The young woman’s father recalls her from her studies abroad, and requires her to marry a Southland lord (the young prince of England). She will submit to her father’s will, though she had rather die. In A she sends a letter to William by a bird. The minister has begun the marriage-service, when the lover enters the church with a party of armed men and bids the bridegroom stand back; the bride shall join with him. The father fumes; would shoot William if he had a pistol, A; will give his daughter no dowry, B. William of course cares not the least for dowry; he has what he wants. He tells his ‘foremost man’ to lift his bride on her horse, and sends commendations to her mother.