And I’ll go seek him through the world that is so wide.
Hey, nonny, nonny, nonny
The Complaynt of Scotland, 1549, gives two lines of a song on the murder, in 1517, of the Sieur de la Bastie, a distinguished knight in the service of the Regent, Duke of Albany. The song may, or may not, have been a ballad.
God sen the Duc hed byddin in France,
And Delabautë hed neuyr cum hame.
ed. Leyden, p. 100.
The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, written by Master David Hume of Godscroft, p. 155, Edinburgh, 1644.
Of the treacherous execution of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, at the castle of Edinburgh, in 1440, Hume of Godscroft says: “It is sure the people did abhorre it, execrating the very place where it was done; in detestation of the fact of which the memory remaineth yet to our dayes in these words.” Since Hume mentions no ballad, it is not likely that he knew of more than this single stanza, or that more existed. (Sir Walter Scott, however, confidently assumes that there was a ballad. Minstrelsy, 1833, I, 221 f.)