113. Grant me ae kiss o your fause, fause mouth (improbable reading).
142. she won.
143. most heartily.
56 ff., 488 f., II, 497 f.
The copy of ‘May Collin’ which follows is quite the best of the series C-G. It is written on the same sheet of paper as the “copy of some antiquity” used by Scott in making up his ‘Gay Goss Hawk’ (ed. 1802, II, 7). The sheet is perhaps as old as any in the volume in which it occurs, but may possibly not be the original. ‘May Collin’ is not in the same hand as the other ballad.
According to the preface to a stall-copy spoken of by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. lxx, 24, “the treacherous and murder-minting lover was an ecclesiastic of the monastery of Maybole,” and the preface to D d (see I, 488) makes him a Dominican friar. So, if we were to accept these guides, the ‘Sir’ would be the old ecclesiastical title and equivalent to the ‘Mess’ of the copy now to be given.
‘May Collin,’ “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 146, Abbotsford.
1
May Collin . . . . .
. . . was her father’s heir,