P. 309. #B.# “The ballad about Lady Livingston appears to be founded on
a truth; her fate is mentioned by Sir R. Gordon. Only her mother, Lady
Huntley, is made a queen; which it was natural enough in a Highland poet
to do.” Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe to Sir Walter Scott, Letters, XV, No
231, Abbotsford, 1825 or 26.
What Sir Robert Gordon says is: “In July 1616 yeirs, Elizabeth Gordoun,
Ladie of Livingstoun (wyff to the Lord Livingstoun, now Earle of
Lithgow), daughter to the Marquis of Huntly, died in chyld-bed, at
Edinburgh, of a son called George, who is now Lord Livingstoun.”
(Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland, p. 335.) The characteristic
particulars are wanting.
#D# is also in Kinloch MSS, V, 363, in the youthful handwriting of J. H.
Burton, and is probably the original copy. The differences from the text
of #D#, p. 314, except spellings, are these:
1^1, it was. 1^3, and me.