[92]. Somebody, perhaps J., the editor of The Common-Place Book of Ancient and Modern Ballad, etc., Edinburgh, 1824, attempted an improvement of the later edition of Scott’s ballad. The recension was used by Loève-Veimars for his translation, and is given in his Popular Ballads and Songs from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Editions, Paris, 1825, p. 71. This copy, with variations, is found in the Campbell MSS, I, 348. The alterations are mostly trivial.
[93]. ‘Sir James the Ross’ was first printed in The Weekly Magazine, or, Edinburgh Amusement, IX, 371, in 1770 (Grosart, Works of Michael Bruce, p. 257, the ballad at p. 197), and in the same year in “Poems on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce” (p. 30), with differences, which are attributed to Logan, the editor.
[94]. “The older ballad, entitled ‘The Young Heir of Baleichan,’ or Baleighan,... is claimed for this parish [Crimond, Aberdeenshire]; while the same ballad is said to be founded on a traditionary tale of Baleichan in Forfarshire.” Smith, A New History of Aberdeenshire, 1875, p. 429.
[95]. Pinkerton reads Loch Lagan. He also reads ‘the Hichts of Lundie,’ in 104, for ‘the gates of London.’ Lundie is in Forfarshire. I suppose both readings to be Pinkerton’s emendations.
[96]. Logan has a page, and the page may have come from some previously corrupted version of the popular ballad which J may follow. The first half of the stanza corresponding to L 12 in Logan is from the popular ballad.
[97]. Sometimes also with sensible prose, as 72, ‘But I find she has deceived me;’ 123, ‘I dreamed my luive had lost his life.’
The loose, though limited, rhyme in this ballad, in ‘The Bonnie House of Airlie,’ etc., does not favor exact recollection, and furnishes a temptation to invention: hence the sparrow in B 6, the arrow in D 7, the narrow in I 12, and, I fear, the harrow in L 9, which of itself is good, while all the others are bad.
[98]. It must be noted, however, that in ‘Ye think me an unmeet marrow,’ A 82, Ye is an editorial reading. I may remark that I have included M-P in the second group simply because the hero in these is called love or true-love. The husband, however, has both titles in A.
[99]. ‘Wi a thrusty rapier,’ J, which I feel compelled to understand as the commonplace ‘trusty;’ but, guided by ‘a rusted rapier,’ K, we ought perhaps to read ‘rusty.’ In L the lady kisses and combs the swain, and sets him on her milk-white steed.—Since I suppose lover to have been substituted for husband in the course of tradition, I shall not be so precise as to distinguish the two when this would be inconvenient.
[100]. Nine is the number also in H, as we see from st. 5, compared with E, 5, 11.