A made-up copy from Scott’s edition of 1833. This ballad has caused a
great deal of controversy. Queen Mary had no Mary Hamilton among her
Four Maries. No Marie was executed for child-murder. But we know, from
Knox, that ballads were recited against the Maries, and that one of the
Mary’s chamberwomen was hanged, with her lover, a pottinger, or
apothecary, for getting rid of her infant. These last facts were
certainly quite basis enough for a ballad, the ballad echoing, not
history, but rumour, and rumour adapted to the popular taste. Thus the
ballad might have passed unchallenged, as a survival, more or less
modified in time, of Queen Mary’s period. But in 1719 a Mary Hamilton, a
Maid of Honour, of Scottish descent, was executed in Russia, for
infanticide. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe conceived that this affair was
the origin of the ballad, and is followed by Mr. Child.
We reply (1) The ballad has almost the largest number of variants on
record. This is a proof of antiquity. Variants so many, differing in
all sorts of points, could not have arisen between 1719, and the age of
Burns, who quotes the poem.
(2) This is especially improbable, because, in 1719, the old vein of
ballad poetry had run dry, popular song had chosen other forms, and no
literary imitator could have written Mary Hamilton in 1719.
(3) There is no example of a popular ballad in which a contemporary
event, interesting just because it is contemporary, is thrown back into a
remote age.
(4) The name, Mary Hamilton, is often _not_ given to the heroine in
variants of the ballad. She is of several names and ranks in the
variants.
(5) As Mr. Child himself remarked, the “pottinger” of the real story of
Queen Mary’s time occurs in one variant. There was no “pottinger” in the
Russian affair.
All these arguments, to which others might be added, seem fatal to the
late date and modern origin of the ballad, and Mr. Child’s own faith in
the hypothesis was shaken, if not overthrown.