+The Text+ is from Motherwell's MS., a copy from tradition in
Renfrewshire in 1825. The ballad exists both in English and Scottish,
and though the English ballad is probably derived from the Scottish, it
was the first in print. It is also called _Johnnie Faa_. Motherwell, in
printing an elaborated version of the following text (_Minstrelsy_,
1827, p. 360), called it _Gypsie Davy_.
+The Story.+--Singers--presumably gipsies--entice Lady Cassillis down to
hear them, and cast glamour on her. She follows their chief, Gipsy Davy,
but finds (stt. 5 and 6) that the conditions are changed. Her lord
misses her, seeks her 'thro' nations many,' and finds her drinking with
the gipsy chief. He asks her to return home with him. At this point the
present version becomes difficult, and the bearing of st. 12 is not
apparent. We may gather that the lady returned home with her husband,
as he proceeded to hang sixteen of the gipsies.
This version calls the lady 'Jeanie Faw,' but the majority call the
gipsy chief Johnnie Faa, which is a well-known name amongst gipsies, and
occurs as early as 1540 as the name of the 'lord and earl of Little
Egypt.' Gipsies being expelled from Scotland by Act of Parliament in
1609, a Captain Johnnë Faa and seven others were hanged in 1624 for
disobeying the ordinance, and this execution is sufficient to account
for the introduction of the name into a ballad of this kind.
The ballad has no certain connection with the Cassillis family, and it
has been suggested that the word is simply a corruption of 'castle,' the
original beginning of the ballad being
'The gipsies came to the castle-gate.'
If this be so, the present form of the ballad illustrates admirably two
methods of corruption by tradition.