The English ballad, though derived from the Scottish, may perhaps have been printed earlier. A conjectural date of 1720 is given, with hesitation, to G a, in the catalogue of the British Museum.
The Scottish ballad appears to have been first printed in the fourth volume of the Tea-Table Miscellany, 1740, but no copy of that edition has been recovered. From the Tea-Table Miscellany it was repeated, with variations, some traditional, some arbitrary, in: Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, ‘Gypsie Laddie,’ p. 88, ed. 1776, II, 54; The Fond Mother’s Garland, not dated, but earlier than 1776; Pinkerton’s Select Scotish Ballads, 1783, I, 67; Johnson’s Museum, ‘Johny Faa, or, The Gypsie Laddie,’ No 181, p. 189; Ritson’s Scotish Songs, 1794, II, 176; and in this century, Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 15; Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, 1825, II, 175. A transcript in the Campbell MSS, ‘The Gypsies,’ I, 16, is from Pinkerton.
“The people in Ayrshire begin this song,
‘The gypsies cam to my lord Cassilis’ yett.’
They have a great many more stanzas ... than I ever yet saw in any printed.” Burns, in Cromek’s Reliques, 1809, p. 161. (So Sharpe, in the Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 217, but perhaps repeating Burns.) B, from Galloway, has eight more stanzas than A, and E, also from Galloway, fourteen more, but quite eight of the last are entirely untraditional,[[38]] and the hand of the editor is frequently to be recognized elsewhere.
Finlay, Scottish Ballads, 1808, II, 39, inserted two stanzas after A 2, the first of which is nearly the same as 5, and the second as B 3, C 3. The variations of his text, and others in his notes, are given under A. Kinloch MSS, V, 299; Chambers, Scottish Ballads, 1829, p. 143; Aytoun, 1859, I, 187, repeat Finlay, with a few slight changes. The Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, I, 9, follows Chambers.
The copy in Smith’s Scotish Minstrel, III, 90, is derived from B a, but has readings of other texts, and is of no authority. That in Maidment’s Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 185, is B a with changes. Ten stanzas in a manuscript of Scottish songs and ballads, copied 1840 or 1850 by a granddaughter of Lord Woodhouselee, p. 46, are from B a. This may be true also of B b, which, however, has not Cassilis in 11.
C is from a little further north, from Renfrewshire; D from Aberdeenshire. F is from the north of England, and resembles C. The final stanza of G a is cited by Ritson, Scotish Songs, II, 177, 1794. ‘The Rare Ballad of Johnnie Faa and the Countess o Cassilis,’ Sheldon’s Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 326, which the editor had “heard sung repeatedly by Willie Faa,” and of which he “endeavored to preserve as much as recollection would allow,” has the eleven stanzas of the English broadside, and twelve more of which Sheldon must have been unable to recollect anything. H-K are all varieties of the broadside.
The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has most obligingly sent me a ballad, taken down by him from the singing of an illiterate hedger in North Devon, in which ‘The Gypsy Laddie,’ recomposed (mostly with middle rhyme in the third verse, as in A 1, 8), forms the sequel to a story of an earl marrying a very reluctant gypsy maid. When the vagrant who has been made a lady against nature hears some of her tribe singing at the castle-gate, the passion for a roving life returns, and she deserts her noble partner, who pursues her, and, not being able to induce her to return to him, smites her “lily-white” throat with his sword. This little romance, retouched and repaired, is printed as No 50 of Songs and Ballads of the West, now publishing by Baring-Gould and Sheppard. Mr Baring-Gould has also given me a defective copy of the second part of ‘The Gipsy Countess’ (exhibiting many variations), which he obtained from an old shoemaker of Tiverton.
Among the Percy papers there is a set of ballads made over by the Bishop, which may have been intended for the contemplated extension of his Reliques. ‘The Gipsie Laddie,’ in eighteen stanzas, and not quite finished, is one of these. After seven stanzas of A, not much altered, the husband ineffectually pursues the lady, who adopts the gipsy trade, with her reid cheek stained wi yallow. Seven years pass, during which the laird has taken another wife. At Yule a wretched carline begs charity at his gate, who, upon questioning, reveals that she had been a lady gay, with a comely marrow, but had proved false and ruined herself.