+The Text+ is from Herd's MSS., two copies showing a difference of one
word and a few spellings. Stt. 3 and 5 are interchanged for the sake of
the sense.
Many copies of this ballad exist (Child prints a dozen), but this one is
both the shortest and simplest.
+The Story.+--In _The Cruel Brother_ (First Series, p. 76) it was shown
that a lover must 'speak to the brother' of his lady. Here the lesson,
it seems, is that he must 'tell the lass herself' before her
wedding-day. Katharine, however, not only proves her faith to her first
lover (her 'grass-green' dress, 10.2, shows an ill-omened marriage), but
prefers the Scot to the Southron. This lesson the ballad drives home in
the last two verses.
Presumably Scott founded _Young Lochinvar_ on the story of this ballad,
as in six versions the Scots laird bears that name.