[127]. “Such, at least, was his general character; for when James Mohr [the Big], while perpetrating the violence at Edinbelly, called out, in order to overawe opposition, that Glengyle was lying in the moor with a hundred men to patronise his enterprise, Jean Key told him he lied, since she was confident Glengyle would never countenance so scoundrelly a business.” Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” ed. 1846, p. c.
[128]. “Leezie Lindsay from a maid-servant in Aberdeen, taken down by Professor Scott:” Jamieson to Scott, November, 1804, Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 117, Abbotsford.
[129]. It would have come in earlier (as No 195), had it been discovered in time.
[130]. “It is a received superstition in Scotland,” says Motherwell, “that when friends or lovers part at a bridge they shall never again meet.” Surely, lovers who were of this way of thinking would not appoint a bridge for a meeting.
[131]. But not homely enough while C 2, 42 are retained. The mystical verses with which A and B begin are also not quite artless.
[132]. The Scotsman newspaper, November 16, 1888.
[133]. Buchan, by the Rev. John B. Pratt, 3d ed., 1870, p. 324 f.
[134]. An Aberdeen newspaper of April, 1885, from which I have a cutting.
[135]. Buchan gives the year as 1631, and is followed by Chambers and Aytoun. The original tombstone having become “decayed,” Mr Gordon of Fyvie had it replaced in 1845 with “a fac-simile in every respect.” A headstone in the form of a cross of polished granite was added in 1869, by public subscription. (New Statistical Account of Scotland, XII, 325; Mill o Tifty’s Annie, Peterhead, 1872, p. 4.)
[136]. “I have lately, by rummaging in a by-corner of my memory, found some Aberdeenshire ballads which totally escaped me before. They are of a different class from those I sent you, not near so ancient, but may be about a century ago. I cannot boast much of their poetical merits, but the family incidents upon which they are founded, the local allusions which they contain, may perhaps render them curious and not uninteresting to many people. They are as follows: 1st, ‘The Baron of Braichly’ [No 203]; 2d, ‘The Lass of Philorth [No 239 ?];’ 3d, ‘The Tryal of the Laird of Gycht’ [No 209]; 4th, ‘The Death of the Countess of Aboyne’ [No 235]; 5[th], ‘The Carrying-off of the Heiress of Kinady.’ All these I can recollect pretty exactly. I never saw any of them either in print or manuscript, but have kept them entirely from hearing them sung when a child.” Letter to Alexander Fraser Tytler, December 23, 1800.