[117]. This phrase, owing to the accidents of tradition, comes in without much pertinency in some places; as in A 11, K 22, where she gars the trumpet sound foul play (altered in J 17, 18, to ‘a weel won play’ and ‘a’ fair play’).
[118]. And in A, as here printed; but in the MS., by misplacement of 3, 5, the lover is absurdly made to omit telling the lass till her wedding-day.
[119]. Four-and-twenty bonnie boys of the bridegroom’s party are in C 13 clad in ‘the simple gray;’ for which Scott reads ‘Johnstone grey,’ ‘the livery of the ancient family of Johnstone.’ This circumstance, says this editor, appears to support J, “which gives Katharine the surname of Johnstone.” But the grey is the livery of Lord ‘Faughanwood’ in C, and the Johnstone seems to be a purely capricious venture of Scott’s.
[120]. “Caddon bank,” says W. Laidlaw in a letter to Scott, September 28, [a][1802]], “is a very difficult pass on Tweedside opposite Innerliethen. The road is now formed through the plantation of firs. The bank is exceedingly steep, and I would not think it difficult even yet with ten clever fellows to give a hundred horsemen a vast of trouble.” Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 74, Abbotsford.—Callien, etc., may be taken to be corruptions of Caden. Foudlin, in the northern K, might be Foudland, Aberdeenshire.
[121]. The heroine of this ballad, an historical lady of high rank, was the third in a regular line to be forcibly carried off by a lover. The date is 1287. Her mother and her grandmother were taken by the strong hand out of a convent in 1245 and about 1210; these much against their will, the other not so reluctantly, according to ballads in which they are celebrated, for curiously enough each has her ballad. See Grundtvig, vol. iii, Nos 138, 155, and No. 181, as above, and his remarks, p. 234, third note, and p. 738 f.
[122]. At the end of the account of the parish of Livingstone, in The Statistical Account of Scotland, XX, 17, 1798, there is this paragraph: “It may also be expected that something should be said of the Bonny Lass of Livingstone, so famed in song; but although this ballad and the air to which it is sung seem to have as little claim to antiquity as they have to merit, yet we cannot give any satisfactory information upon the subject. All we can say is, that we have heard that she kept a public house at a place called the High House of Livingstone, about a mile west of the church; that she was esteemed handsome, and knew how to turn her charms to the best account.” Dr Robertson, at the place above cited, treats this passage as pertaining to the ballad before us. But the reference is certainly to a song known as the “Lass o Livingston,” beginning, ‘The bonie lass o Liviston;’ concerning which see Cromek’s Reliques of Robert Burns, p. 204 of the edition of 1817, and Johnson’s Museum, IV, 18, 1853.
[123]. I will add one more corn to a heap. “Mrs Wharton, who was lately stole, is returned home to her friends, having been married against her consent to Captain Campbell” (November, 1690). Luttrell’s Relation, II, 130. There is partial comfort, but somewhat cold, in the fact that the ravisher was in many cases ultimately unsuccessful in his object, as he is in all the ballads here given.
[124]. I owe the knowledge of these letters to Mr Macmath, who sent me a copy that he was allowed to make by the courtesy of the Messrs Brodie of Edinburgh, in whose possession they now are.
[125]. “Being her guardian as well as waiting-maid, as appointed by old Mrs Gibb when on her death-bed, they being, as the saying is, cousins once removed.” Letter of July 30.
[126]. The jury, in James’s trial, brought in a special verdict with the intent to save his life, but no such effort was made in favor of Rob Oig, though there was a mitigating circumstance in his case. For Jean Key “had informed her friends that, on the night of her being carried off, Robin Oig, moved by her cries and tears, had partly consented to let her return, when James came up, with a pistol in his hand, and asking whether he was such a coward as to relinquish an enterprise in which he had risked everything to procure him a fortune, in a manner compelled his brother to persevere.” It may be remarked, by the way, that Duncan MacGregor had his trial as well, but was found not guilty. (Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” which I have mostly followed, introducing passages from the indictment in James MacGregor’s case when brevity would allow.)