Word has come to Young Tolquhon,
In his chamber where he lay,
That Sophia Hay, his first fair love,
Was wedded and away.
‘Sophia Hay, Sophia Hay,
My love, Sophia Hay,
I wish her anes as sair a heart
As she’s gien me the day.
‘She thinks she has done me great wrang,
But I don’t think it so;
I hope to live in quietness
When she shall live in woe.
‘She’ll live a discontented life
Since she is gone from me;
Ower seen, ower seen, a wood o green
Will shortly cover me.
‘When I am dead and in my grave,
Cause write upon me so:
“Here lies a lad who died for love,
And who can blame my woe.”’
Mr Sutherland wrote: This fragment I took down from the recitation
of my mother, twenty or twenty-five years ago. She was born in
1790, and her great-grandmother was a servant of the last Forbes
of Tolquhon. She had a tradition that Sophia Hay was one of the
Errol family, and married Lord John Gordon, who was burned at
Frendraught. Mr Clyne remarked: The Young Tolquhon at the time
of this marriage, about 1628, was Alexander Forbes, eldest son
of William Forbes of Tolquhon. Alexander is recorded to have
died without issue, and the following additional particulars,
singularly suggestive of a determination on the unfortunate
lover’s part to renounce the world, have been communicated to me
by Dr John Stuart. In 1631 William Forbes granted a charter of
the lands of Tolquhon to his second son Walter and his heirs
male, and in 1632 another deed of the same sort to Walter, with
the express consent of Alexander, his elder brother. In 1641
Alexander is supposed to have been dead, as Walter is then
styled “of Tolquhon.” The lady’s somewhat enigmatical
exclamation,
‘I wan a sair heart when I married him,
And the day it’s well returned again,’
may have its explanation in the words of Young Tolquhon,
‘I wish her anes as sair a heart
As she’s gien me the day.’
Mr Clyne did not fail to observe that Father Blakhal has recorded
of Lady Melgum that he had often heard her say that she had
never loved anybody but her husband, and never would love
another (Narration, p. 92). This testimony, if not decisive, may
be considered not less cogent as to the matter of fact than
anything in ‘Young Tolquhon’ to the contrary. But it may be that
stanza 24 became attached to the Frendraught ballad in
consequence of the coexistence of this or some similar ballad of
Young Tolquhon.
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