Let the moon shine neer sae bright,
And we’ll gang nae mair a roving.
Motherwell’s MS., p. 124, has a recited copy which seems to be B a as in Herd, 1776, corrupted by oral transmission. It does not seriously differ from the original until we come to the end, where we find an absurd stanza which is derived from B b.
The variations of B b are not the accidents of tradition, but deliberate alterations. ‘The Jovial Beggarman,’ in The Forsaken Lover’s Garland, No 15 of a collection of garlands, British Museum, 11621. e. 1 (“Newcastle? 1750?”), is a rifacimento, and a very inferior piece. Of this Rev. S. Baring-Gould took down a copy from the singing of a laborer on Dartmoor, in 1889.[94]
‘The Jovial Tinker and Farmer’s Daughter,’ British Museum, 1346. m. 7 (31), ‘The Tinker and Farmer’s Daughter’s Garland,’ British Museum, 11621. a. 6 (34), is another rifacimento, with less of the original in it. The tinker, we are told at the outset, is a noble lord disguised.
An English broadside ballad of the second half of the seventeenth century, Pepys, III, 73, No 71, has the same story as the Scottish popular ballad, and may have been the foundation of it, but the Scottish ballad is a far superior piece of work. The English broadside is given, substantially, in the notes.
‘Der Bettelman,’ Hoffmann u. Richter, Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 45, No 24, has a generic resemblance to this ballad.[95] So, more remotely, a Flemish ballad, ‘Ein schöner Krüppel,’ Hoffmann, Niederländische Volkslieder, p. 129 and elsewhere. Again, a very pretty and innocent Portuguese ballad, ‘O Cego,’ Almeida-Garrett, III, 191, No 35, Braga, Romanceiro Geral, p. 147, No 55, and Cantos pop. do Archipelago Açoriano, p. 372, No 76 (all in Hartung, II, 103 ff.), which Almeida-Garrett, quite extravagantly, supposed might be derived from ‘The Gaberlunyie-Man,’ brought home from Scotland by Portuguese sailors. There is an accidental similarity in one or two points with the Spanish ballad ‘Tiempo es, el caballero,’ Duran, I, 163, No 307, Primavera, II, 91, No 158.
‘The Gaberlunyie-Man’ is given in an appendix.