EARL ROTHES
‘Earl Rothes,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 333.
Lady Ann has an adulterous connection with Earl Rothes, and her youthful brother seeks to sunder it. He offers to pay a tocher for her if she will forsake the earl’s company; to keep her in his castle till she is safely brought to bed, and make her a marquis’s lady; she rejects all his offers with scorn. The boy declares that when he is old enough to wear a sword he will thrust it through Earl Rothes for using his sister so badly.
1
‘O Earl Rothes, an thou wert mine,
And I were to be thy ladie,
I wad drink at the beer, and tipple at the wine,
And be my bottle with any.’
2
‘Hold thy tongue, sister Ann,’ he says,