+The Text+ is from Alexander Laing's _Scarce Ancient Ballads_ (1822).
A similar version occurs in Buchan's _Gleanings_ (1825). Professor
Gummere, in printing the first text, omits six stanzas, on the
assumption that they represent part of a second ballad imperfectly
incorporated. But I think the ballad can be read as it stands below,
though doubtless 'his ladie's' remark, st. 11, is out of place.
+The Story+ seems to be a combination of at least two. An old Baron of
Brackley, 'an honest aged man,' was slain in 1592 by 'caterans' or
freebooters who had been entertained hospitably by him. In 1666 John
Gordon of Brackley began a feud with John Farquharson of Inverey by
seizing some cattle or horses--accounts differ--by way of fines due for
taking fish out of season. This eventually led to the slaying of
Brackley and certain of his adherents.
Professor Child suspects a commixture of the two episodes in the one
ballad, or more probably, a grafting of a later ballad on to an earlier
one. The character of the Baron as revealed in the ballad more closely
resembles that of the 1592 episode, while the details of the fray are in
keeping with the later story.
'Peggy,' the Baron's wife, was Margaret Burnet, cousin to Gilbert,
Bishop of Salisbury. After Brackley's death she married again, but not
her husband's murderer, as the end of our ballad scandalously suggests.
Brackley is near Ballater, about forty miles west of Aberdeen.