+The Text+ is taken from Motherwell's MS., which contains two versions;
Motherwell printed a third in his _Minstrelsy_,--_Babylon; or, The
Bonnie Banks o' Fordie_. Kinloch called the ballad the _Duke of Perth's
Three Daughters_. As the following text has no title, I have ventured to
give it one. 'Outlyer' is, of course, simply 'a banished man.'
+The Story+ is much more familiar in all the branches of the
Scandinavian race than in England or Scotland. In Denmark it appears as
_Herr Truels' Daughters_ or _Herr Thor's Children_; in Sweden as _Herr
Torës' Daughters_. Iceland and Faroe give the name as Torkild or
Thorkell.
The incidents related in this ballad took place (i) in Scotland on the
bonnie banks o' Fordie, near Dunkeld; (ii) in Sweden in five or six
different places; and (iii) in eight different localities in Denmark.