Footnote 66:
Col. H. W. Lumsden’s Memorials of the Families of Lumsdaine, etc., p.
59.
Footnote 67:
History of the Earldom of Sutherland, p. 217 f. To the same effect,
Johnstone, Historia Rerum Britannicarum, Amsterdam, 1655, p. 160 f,
under the year 1591, and Spotiswood, p. 390, of the editions of 1655,
1666, 1668, under the year 1592. “The History of the Feuds,” etc., p.
67, ed. 1764, merely repeats Sir Robert Gordon. William Gordon’s
History of the Family of Gordon, cites Sir Robert Gordon and
Johnstone, and calls Gordon of Brackley Alexander.
Still another “Gordon, Baron of Brackley in Deeside,” is said to have
been murdered by the country people about him in or near 1540: The
Genealogy of the Grants, in Macfarlane’s Genealogical Collections, I,
168, and An Account of the Rise and Offspring of the Name of Grant,
printed for Sir Archibald Grant, Bart., of Monymusk, 1876, p. 30 ff,
where the date is put (perhaps through a misprint) before 1480. A
horrible revenge was said to have been taken by the Earl of Huntly and
James Grant: see the well-known story of the orphans fed at a trough,
in Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather, chap. xxxix.
Footnote 68:
See the Memorandum for Farquharson in “Fourth Report,” as above, p.
534.
Footnote 69:
Pointed out to me by Mr. Macmath, who, in making this and other
communications relating to the Gordons of Brackley, suggested and
urged the hypothesis of a mixture of two events in this ballad.
Footnote 70:
Fraser, The Douglas Book, Edinburgh, 1885, II, 277 f, 449 f. The
contract, being a mutual paper, may not express to the full the
supposed grievances of either party.
Footnote 71:
The Douglas Book, II, 450 f. “Lawrie is mentioned by Lord Fountainhall
as ‘late chamberlain to the Marquis of Douglas, and repute a bad
instrument between him and his lady in their differences.’ Decisions,
I, 196.”
What should prompt Lawrie to malice against the marchioness is
unknown. Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 58, accepting the story
of the old woman from whom he obtained #E#, says: “The Laird of
Blackwood and the Marquis of —— were rivals in the affection of a
lovely and amiable young lady, who, preferring the latter, became his
wife. Blackwood ... vowed revenge,” etc. Chambers, who repeats this
account, Scottish Ballads, p. 150, remarks that Lawrie seems to have
been considerably advanced in life at the time. Lawrie’s son made a
“retour of services” in 1650, and may be supposed then to have been of
age. The Marquis of Douglas was in his twenty-fourth year when he
married, in 1670, and probably Lady Barbara Erskine was not older.
Maidment is surprised that Lawrie, “a man of uncertain lineage,”
should have succeeded with the widow Marion Weir. What is to be
thought of his aspiring, at the age of sixty, or more, to “the
affection of a lovely and amiable young lady” of the family of Mar,
one of the most ancient in Scotland?
Footnote 72:
Kinloch MSS, I, 95 f. For one or two points see Maidment’s Scotish
Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 262 ff., the preface to the ballad there
called ‘Lady Barbara Erskine’s Lament.’
Footnote 73:
“Matthew Crawford, weaver, Howwood, sings ‘Jamie Douglas’ with the
conclusion in which the lady dies after her return and reconciliation
with her lord.” Motherwell’s Note-Book, p. 56.
“I was informed by A. Lile that she has heard a longer set of the
ballad in which, while Lady Douglas is continuing her lament, she
observes a troop of gentlemen coming to her father’s, and she
expresses a wish that these should be sent by her lord to bring her
home. They happen to be sent for that purpose, and she accompanies
them. On her meeting, however, with her lord, and while putting a cup
of wine to her lips, her heart breaks, and she drops down dead at his
feet.” Motherwell, note to #G#, MS., p. 347.
Lawrie came near losing his head in 1683 for political reasons, but he
survived the revolution of 1688, “got all the proceedings against him
annulled, and a complete rehabilitation.” Wodrow, II, 295; Maidment,
1868, II, 268.
Footnote 74:
All but #E# have #b# 4: #E# has #a# 4. All but #A#, #D#, #E#, #L#, #M#
have 1. #A#, #C#, #E# have 10; #J# has 2, 3; #A# has 8; #F# has 9.
Footnote 75:
It must be said, however, that stanza 8, ‘When we came in by Glasgow
town,’ etc., hardly suits the song, and would be entirely appropriate
to the ballad (as it is in #A# 2). It may have been taken up from this
ballad (which must date from the last quarter of the seventeenth
century), or from some other.
Footnote 76:
#a# is followed in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, III, 144, Herd, Ancient and
Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 196; #b#, in the Musical Museum, p. 166,
No 158; with slight variations in each copy.
Footnote 77:
Scottish Psalter, 1566, Wood’s MSS, Bassus, Laing’s MSS, University of
Edinburgh, MS. Books, 483, III, p. 209. The medley is by a different
and later hand: Laing in the Musical Museum, 1853, I, xxviii f., IV,
440*. It is printed in the second edition of Forbes’s Cantus,
Aberdeen, 1666.
There was a much older stave, or proverb, to the same purport, as we
see by Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, vv. 855, 57.
But sooth is seyd, algate I fynde it trewe,
Loue is noght old as whan that it is newe.
Footnote 78:
“Public worship was begun by Mr Douglas, when the accounts came to
them that Claverhouse and his men were coming upon them, and had Mr
King and others their friends prisoners. Upon this, finding evil was
determined against them, all who had arms drew out from the rest of
the meeting, and resolved to go and meet the soldiers and prevent
their dismissing the meeting, and, if possible, relieve Mr King and
the other prisoners.” Wodrow’s History, 1722, II, 46.
Footnote 79:
(_Postscript_: “My lord, I am so wearied and so sleepy that I have
written this very confusedly.”) See Russell, in the Appendix to C. K.
Sharpe’s edition of Kirkton’s Secret and True History of the Church of
Scotland, p. 438 ff.; Napier’s Memorials and Letters of John Graham of
Claverhouse, II, 219–223. There is a good account of the affair in
Mowbray Morris’s “Claverhouse,” ch. iv.
Footnote 80:
Napier interprets the cornet to be Mr Crafford (Crawford), who, in the
preceding February, was a corporal in the troop: Memorials, II, 191.
But Creichton, in his Memoirs, mentions “the loss of Cornet Robert
Graham” at Drumclog. Russell speaks of a Graham killed at Drumclog,
and, like Creichton, tells a story of the disfigurement of his face
(which he attributes to the cornet’s own dog). Lawrie of Blackwood,
Lord Jamie Douglas’s Jago, was indicted and tried, Nov. 24, 1682–Feb.
7. 1683, for (among other things) countenancing John Aulston, who “in
the late rebellion” murdered Cornet Graham: Wodrow, II, 293, 295.
Guild, in his Bellum Bothuellianum, cited by Scott, has “signifer,
trajectus globulo, Græmus.”
Napier will know only of a William Graham as cornet to Claverhouse,
“and certainly not killed at Drumclog.” William Graham is referred to
in a dispatch of Claverhouse’s, March (?) 1679, as commanding a small
garrison: Napier II, 201. A Cornet Graham in Claverhouse’s troop
captured a rebel in March, 1682: R. Law’s Memorials, ed. Sharpe, p.
222. A William Graham was “cornet to Claverhouse,” January 3, 1684:
Wodrow, II, 338. (See “Clavers, The Despot’s Champion, by a Southern,”
London, 1889, p. 48 f., a careful and impartial book, to which I owe a
couple of points that I had not myself noticed.)
C. K. Sharpe calls Robert Graham Claverhouse’s cousin, Napier, I, 271,
but probably would not wish the title to be taken strictly.
Footnote 81:
Wodrow’s History, 1722, II, 54–67; Creichton’s Memoirs; Russell, in
Sharpe’s ed. of Kirkton, p. 447 ff.
Footnote 82:
Russell, as above, p. 464; Wodrow, II, 86.
Footnote 83:
But see “Clavers, the Despot’s Champion,” p. 72 ff.
Footnote 84:
In Notes and Queries, First Series, V, 249.
Footnote 85:
The Works of the late L. Delamer, 1694, The Case of William, Earl of
Devonshire, p. 563; which is the plea referred to further on.
Footnote 86:
Such poetical propriety as ‘The second, more alarming still,’ 3^2;
‘The words that passd, alas! presaged’ 18^3. But really the text was
not very much altered. Some verses, here dropped, were added “to give
a finish.”
Footnote 87:
See W. S. Gibson, Dilston Hall, etc., 1850, p. 54.
Footnote 88:
Buchanan, Rer. Scot. Hist., fol. 186; Lesley, History of Scotland, p.
251 f.
Footnote 89:
In #J#, which cannot be relied on for smaller points, we read that
Charles Hay has been hanged, for reasons not given: st. 20.
Footnote 90:
This intimation is repeated in #G# 10, with the ludicrous variation of
bloody ‘breeks.’ In #B#, an English lord, whose competency and
interest in the matter are alike difficult to comprehend, declares
that he will have Geordie hanged, will have Geordie’s head, before the
morrow. A Scottish lord rejoins that he will cast off his coat and
fight, will fight in blood up to the knees; and the king adds, there
will be bloody heads among us all, before that happens. Who the
parties to the fight are to be, unless it is the English lord against
Scotland, is not evident. #B# is inflated with superfluous verses.
Footnote 91:
It seems to have been familiar in Aberdeen as early as 1627. Joseph
Haslewood made an entry in his copy of Ritson’s Scotish Song of a
manuscript Lute-Book (presented in 1781 to Dr Charles Burney by Dr
Skene of Marischal College) which contained airs noted and collected
by Robert Gordon, “at Aberdein, in the yeare of our Lord 1627.” Among
some ninety titles of tunes mentioned, there occur ‘Ther wer three
ravns’ and ‘God be with the, Geordie.’ (W. Macmath.)
Footnote 92:
Somebody, perhaps J., the editor of The Common-Place Book of Ancient
and Modern Ballad, etc., Edinburgh, 1824, attempted an improvement of
the later edition of Scott’s ballad. The recension was used by
Loève-Veimars for his translation, and is given in his Popular Ballads
and Songs from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce Editions, Paris,
1825, p. 71. This copy, with variations, is found in the Campbell MSS,
I, 348. The alterations are mostly trivial.
Footnote 93:
‘Sir James the Ross’ was first printed in The Weekly Magazine, or,
Edinburgh Amusement, IX, 371, in 1770 (Grosart, Works of Michael
Bruce, p. 257, the ballad at p. 197), and in the same year in “Poems
on Several Occasions, by Michael Bruce” (p. 30), with differences,
which are attributed to Logan, the editor.
Footnote 94:
“The older ballad, entitled ‘The Young Heir of Baleichan,’ or
Baleighan,... is claimed for this parish [Crimond, Aberdeenshire];
while the same ballad is said to be founded on a traditionary tale of
Baleichan in Forfarshire.” Smith, A New History of Aberdeenshire,
1875, p. 429.
Footnote 95:
Pinkerton reads Loch Lagan. He also reads ‘the Hichts of Lundie,’ in
10^4, for ‘the gates of London.’ Lundie is in Forfarshire. I suppose
both readings to be Pinkerton’s emendations.
Footnote 96:
Logan has a page, and the page may have come from some previously
corrupted version of the popular ballad which #J# may follow. The
first half of the stanza corresponding to #L# 12 in Logan is from the
popular ballad.
Footnote 97:
Sometimes also with sensible prose, as 7^2, ‘But I find she has
deceived me;’ 12^3, ‘I dreamed my luive had lost his life.’
The loose, though limited, rhyme in this ballad, in ‘The Bonnie House
of Airlie,’ etc., does not favor exact recollection, and furnishes a
temptation to invention: hence the sparrow in #B# 6, the arrow in #D#
7, the narrow in #I# 12, and, I fear, the harrow in #L# 9, which of
itself is good, while all the others are bad.
Footnote 98:
It must be noted, however, that in ‘Ye think me an unmeet marrow,’ #A#
8^2, Ye is an editorial reading. I may remark that I have included
#M-P# in the second group simply because the hero in these is called
love or true-love. The husband, however, has both titles in #A#.
Footnote 99:
‘Wi a _thrusty_ rapier,’ #J#, which I feel compelled to understand as
the commonplace ‘trusty;’ but, guided by ‘a rusted rapier,’ #K#, we
ought perhaps to read ‘rusty.’ In #L# the lady kisses and combs the
swain, and sets him on her milk-white steed.—Since I suppose lover to
have been substituted for husband in the course of tradition, I shall
not be so precise as to distinguish the two when this would be
inconvenient.
Footnote 100:
Nine is the number also in #H#, as we see from st. 5, compared with
#E#, 5, 11.
Footnote 101:
It will be remembered that green is an unlucky color: see II, 181 f.
Footnote 102:
She tears the ribbons from her head in #D# 11, #I# 12, when she hears
the tidings: but this belongs to the bride in the ballad which
succeeds, No 215.
Footnote 103:
Ten in #F#, to include the lord with his nine foemen. But why only
nine in #E#, #G#, #M#? Is it not because one of the brothers had not
been mortally wounded, the brother who is said to kill the husband
(lover) in #L#, #M#, #N#, and who may reasonably be supposed to do
this in #E#, #F#, #G#? Such a matter would not be left in obscurity in
the original ballad.
Footnote 104:
This is disagreeable, assuredly, and unnatural too. It is ‘drank,’
probably, that is softened to ‘wiped’ in #A# 14. Scott, to avoid
unpleasantness, reads ‘She kissd them (his wounds) till her lips grew
red;’ which would not take long. This is all nicely arranged in #L#:
‘She laid him on her milk-white steed, and bore him home from Yarrow;
she washed his wounds in yon well-strand, and dried him wi the
hollan.’ The washing and drying are done in #J# on the spot, where
there might have been water, but no hollan.
Footnote 105:
The reciters of #A# and #J#, whether they gave what they had received,
or tried to avoid the material difficulties about the hair, graze upon
absurdity. Her hair was three quarters long, she tied it round ‘her’
(for his?) white hause-bane—and died, #A# 15. His hair was three
quarters long, she’s wrapt it round her middle—and brought it home,
#J# 16. The hair comes in again in the next two ballads, and causes
difficulty. Wonderful things are done with hair in ballads and tales:
see #I#, 40 b, and the note at 486 b.
Footnote 106:
#L# 19 is also found only in that copy. It seems to me, but only
because #L# does not strike me as being of an original cast—rather a
ballad improved by reciters,—to be an adaptation of No 215, #A# 2.
Footnote 107:
James Chalmers, in Archæologia Scotica, III, 261, says that Hamilton’s
ballad was contributed to the second volume of the Tea Table
Miscellany in 1724. It is not in the Dublin edition of 1729. It is at
p. 242 of the London edition of 1733; in Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius,
II, 34, of the same year; at p. 46 of the first edition of
[Hamilton’s] Poems on Several Occasions, Glasgow, 1748. The author
died in 1754. The copy in the second edition of Hamilton’s Poems,
1760, p. 67, says Chalmers, is somewhat altered.
In Hamilton’s ballad it is a lover, and not a husband, who is slain,
and he is thrown into the Yarrow. It is a question whether Hamilton’s
ballad did not affect tradition in the case of #J#, #K#, #L#,
particularly #L#. The editorial Douglas in #A# 11 is from Hamilton 24.
‘Wi her tears she bathed his wounds,’ #I# 13^3, looks like Hamilton
9^1. The ‘dule and sorrow’ of #O# 4^2 is a recurring phrase in
Hamilton, and ‘slain the comeliest swain,’ #O# 4^3, is in Hamilton
6^3.
In Hamilton’s ballad the slayer of the lover endeavors to induce the
lady to marry _him_, as is done in the Icelandic ballad spoken of
under No 89, II, 297 f.
A song by Ramsay, T. T. M., Dublin, 1729, p. 139, has nearly the same
first four lines as Hamilton’s ballad, and these have been thought to
be traditional.
Footnote 108:
Minstrelsy, 1833, III, 144. For a criticism of Sir Walter Scott’s
remarks and a correction of some errors, with much new information,
see Mr T. Craig-Brown’s History of Selkirkshire, Edinburgh, 1886, I,
14–16, 311–15, of which work grateful use is here made.
Footnote 109:
Buchan’s note to #E# is, for a wonder, to the purpose. With his usual
simplicity, he informs us that “the unfortunate hero of this ballad
was a factor to the laird of Kinmundy.” He then goes on to say: “As
the young woman to whom he was to be united in connubial wedlock
resided in Gamery, a small fishing-town on the east coast of the
Murray Frith, the marriage was to be solemnized in the church of that
parish; to which he was on his way when overtaken by some of the
breakers which overflow a part of the road he had to pass, and dash
with impetuous fury against the lofty and adamantine rocks with which
it is skirted.” I, 315.
Footnote 110:
Professor Veitch has remarked on the incongruousness of this stanza in
Blackwood’s Magazine, June, 1890, p. 739 ff. Something like it, but
adjusted to the circumstances of a maid, occurs in the ballad which he
there prints as the “Original Ballad of the Dowie Dens.” See No 214,
p. 174, #L# 19.
Footnote 111:
Mr Macmath informs me that in “A Collection of Old Ballads, etc.,
printed at Edinburgh between the years 1660 and 1720,” No 7228 of the
catalogue issued by John Stevenson, Edinburgh, 1827, there is this
item: “Be valiant still, etc., a new song much in request; also Logan
Water, or, A Lover in Captivity.”
Footnote 112:
“Hire a horse,” in an “old fragment”?—Cunningham gives the first two
stanzas of the ballad, with variations in the first, in his edition of
Burns, 1834, V, 107.
Footnote 113:
This volume came in 1836 into the hands of Motherwell’s friend, Mr P.
A. Ramsay. The entries have been communicated to me by Mr Macmath.
Footnote 114:
The cane in 18^1 of this copy is a touch of “realism” which we have
had in a late copy of Tam Lin; see #J# 16, III, 505.
Footnote 115:
The attempt to lessen the disproportion of the match seems to me a
decidedly modern trait. In #H# 27, 28, this goes so far that the maid
has twenty ploughs and three against the laird’s thirty and three. In
#M# 3–5, the maid’s father was once a landed laird, but gambles away
his estate, and then both father and mother take to drinking!
Footnote 116:
Of #D#, W. Laidlaw writes as follows, September 11, 1802: “I had the
surprise of a visit from my crack-brained acquaintance Mr Bartram of
Biggar, the other day. He brought me a copy of the ‘Laird of
Laminton,’ which has greatly disappointed my expectations. It is
composed of those you have and some nonsense. But it overturns the
tradition of this country, for it makes the wedding and battle to have
been at Lauchinwar.” Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 73,
Abbotsford.
For the particulars of the compilation of the copies in the
Minstrelsy, see the notes to #B#, #C#.
Footnote 117:
This phrase, owing to the accidents of tradition, comes in without
much pertinency in some places; as in #A# 11, #K# 22, where _she_ gars
the trumpet sound foul play (altered in #J# 17, 18, to ‘a weel won
play’ and ‘a’ fair play’).
Footnote 118:
And in #A#, as here printed; but in the MS., by misplacement of 3, 5,
the _lover_ is absurdly made to omit telling the lass till her
wedding-day.
Footnote 119:
Four-and-twenty bonnie boys of the bridegroom’s party are in #C# 13
clad in ‘the simple gray;’ for which Scott reads ‘Johnstone grey,’
‘the livery of the ancient family of Johnstone.’ This circumstance,
says this editor, appears to support #J#, “which gives Katharine the
surname of Johnstone.” But the grey is the livery of Lord
‘Faughanwood’ in #C#, and the Johnstone seems to be a purely
capricious venture of Scott’s.
Footnote 120:
“Caddon bank,” says W. Laidlaw in a letter to Scott, September 28,
[1802], “is a very difficult pass on Tweedside opposite Innerliethen.
The road is now formed through the plantation of firs. The bank is
exceedingly steep, and I would not think it difficult even yet with
ten clever fellows to give a hundred horsemen a vast of trouble.”
Letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 74, Abbotsford.—Callien,
etc., may be taken to be corruptions of Caden. Foudlin, in the
northern #K#, might be Foudland, Aberdeenshire.
Footnote 121:
The heroine of this ballad, an historical lady of high rank, was the
third in a regular line to be forcibly carried off by a lover. The
date is 1287. Her mother and her grandmother were taken by the strong
hand out of a convent in 1245 and about 1210; these much against their
will, the other not so reluctantly, according to ballads in which they
are celebrated, for curiously enough each has her ballad. See
Grundtvig, vol. iii, Nos 138, 155, and No. 181, as above, and his
remarks, p. 234, third note, and p. 738 f.
Footnote 122:
At the end of the account of the parish of Livingstone, in The
Statistical Account of Scotland, XX, 17, 1798, there is this
paragraph: “It may also be expected that something should be said of
the Bonny Lass of Livingstone, so famed in song; but although this
ballad and the air to which it is sung seem to have as little claim to
antiquity as they have to merit, yet we cannot give any satisfactory
information upon the subject. All we can say is, that we have heard
that she kept a public house at a place called the High House of
Livingstone, about a mile west of the church; that she was esteemed
handsome, and knew how to turn her charms to the best account.” Dr
Robertson, at the place above cited, treats this passage as pertaining
to the ballad before us. But the reference is certainly to a song
known as the “Lass o Livingston,” beginning, ‘The bonie lass o
Liviston;’ concerning which see Cromek’s Reliques of Robert Burns, p.
204 of the edition of 1817, and Johnson’s Museum, IV, 18, 1853.
Footnote 123:
I will add one more corn to a heap. “Mrs Wharton, who was lately
stole, is returned home to her friends, having been married against
her consent to Captain Campbell” (November, 1690). Luttrell’s
Relation, II, 130. There is partial comfort, but somewhat cold, in the
fact that the ravisher was in many cases ultimately unsuccessful in
his object, as he is in all the ballads here given.
Footnote 124:
I owe the knowledge of these letters to Mr Macmath, who sent me a copy
that he was allowed to make by the courtesy of the Messrs Brodie of
Edinburgh, in whose possession they now are.
Footnote 125:
“Being her guardian as well as waiting-maid, as appointed by old Mrs
Gibb when on her death-bed, they being, as the saying is, cousins once
removed.” Letter of July 30.
Footnote 126:
The jury, in James’s trial, brought in a special verdict with the
intent to save his life, but no such effort was made in favor of Rob
Oig, though there was a mitigating circumstance in his case. For Jean
Key “had informed her friends that, on the night of her being carried
off, Robin Oig, moved by her cries and tears, had partly consented to
let her return, when James came up, with a pistol in his hand, and
asking whether he was such a coward as to relinquish an enterprise in
which he had risked everything to procure him a fortune, in a manner
compelled his brother to persevere.” It may be remarked, by the way,
that Duncan MacGregor had his trial as well, but was found not guilty.
(Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” which I have mostly followed,
introducing passages from the indictment in James MacGregor’s case
when brevity would allow.)
Footnote 127:
“Such, at least, was his general character; for when James Mohr [the
Big], while perpetrating the violence at Edinbelly, called out, in
order to overawe opposition, that Glengyle was lying in the moor with
a hundred men to patronise his enterprise, Jean Key told him he lied,
since she was confident Glengyle would never countenance so
scoundrelly a business.” Scott, Introduction to “Rob Roy,” ed. 1846,
p. c.
Footnote 128:
“Leezie Lindsay from a maid-servant in Aberdeen, taken down by
Professor Scott:” Jamieson to Scott, November, 1804, Letters addressed
to Sir Walter Scott, I, No 117, Abbotsford.
Footnote 129:
It would have come in earlier (as No 195), had it been discovered in
time.
Footnote 130:
“It is a received superstition in Scotland,” says Motherwell, “that
when friends or lovers part at a bridge they shall never again meet.”
Surely, lovers who were of this way of thinking would not appoint a
bridge for a meeting.
Footnote 131:
But not homely enough while #C# 2, 42 are retained. The mystical
verses with which #A# and #B# begin are also not quite artless.
Footnote 132:
The Scotsman newspaper, November 16, 1888.
Footnote 133:
Buchan, by the Rev. John B. Pratt, 3d ed., 1870, p. 324 f.
Footnote 134:
An Aberdeen newspaper of April, 1885, from which I have a cutting.
Footnote 135:
Buchan gives the year as 1631, and is followed by Chambers and Aytoun.
The original tombstone having become “decayed,” Mr Gordon of Fyvie had
it replaced in 1845 with “a fac-simile in every respect.” A headstone
in the form of a cross of polished granite was added in 1869, by
public subscription. (New Statistical Account of Scotland, XII, 325;
Mill o Tifty’s Annie, Peterhead, 1872, p. 4.)
Footnote 136:
“I have lately, by rummaging in a by-corner of my memory, found some
Aberdeenshire ballads which totally escaped me before. They are of a
different class from those I sent you, not near so ancient, but may be
about a century ago. I cannot boast much of their poetical merits, but
the family incidents upon which they are founded, the local allusions
which they contain, may perhaps render them curious and not
uninteresting to many people. They are as follows: 1st, ‘The Baron of
Braichly’ [No 203]; 2d, ‘The Lass of Philorth [No 239 ?];’ 3d, ‘The
Tryal of the Laird of Gycht’ [No 209]; 4th, ‘The Death of the Countess
of Aboyne’ [No 235]; 5[th], ‘The Carrying-off of the Heiress of
Kinady.’ All these I can recollect pretty exactly. I never saw any of
them either in print or manuscript, but have kept them entirely from
hearing them sung when a child.” Letter to Alexander Fraser Tytler,
December 23, 1800.
‘Charlie MacPherson’ should have been put with Nos 221–5.
Footnote 137:
Epitaphs and Inscriptions . . . in the North East of Scotland, by
Andrew Jervise, 1875, I, 17. (W. Macmath.)
Footnote 138:
The House of Drum is a well-known mansion in Liberton, near Edinburgh,
and there is a note to #F a# importing (wrongly) that the ballad
refers to this place.
Footnote 139:
Lady Jean Gordon was divorced from the Earl of Bothwell in 1567,
“being then twenty years of age,” says Sir Robert Gordon. His
continuator puts her death at 1629, in her eighty-fourth year.
Genealogy of the Earls of Sutherland, pp. 143, 145, 169, 469.
Footnote 140:
There is, to tell the whole truth, an allusion in #A#, #H# to Jean’s
portion, or tocher, as not being sufficient to justify the breaking of
a previous engagement. One would wish to think that ‘portion’ in #A# 5
is a corruption of ‘fortune,’ and that what is meant is that her luck
is hard. But tocher in #H# 3 is not easily disposed of.
Footnote 141:
The gross and uncalled-for language of father and mother in #A# 7, 10,
has slipped in by a mere trick of memory, I am convinced, from ‘Lady
Maisry,’ No 65, #B#, #C#. See again the ballad which follows this.
Footnote 142:
I owe the knowledge of Marshall’s and Fittis’s publications to Mr
Macmath.
Footnote 143:
Carruthers, Abbotsford Notanda, appended to R. Chambers’s Life of
Scott, 1871, p. 122.
In the last edition of Sharpe’s Ballad Book (1880), p. 158, we find
this note by Scott: “I remember something of another ballad of
diablerie. A man sells himself to the fause thief for a term of years,
and the devil comes to claim his forfeit. He implores for mercy, or at
least reprieve, and, if granted, promises this:
‘And I will show how the lilies grow
On the banks of Italy.’
Satan, being no horticulturist, pays no attention to this proffer.”
Scott’s memory seems to have gone quite astray here.
Footnote 144:
Why the ghost should wait four years, and what is meant in st. 18 by
his travelling seven years, it is not easy to understand. The author
would probably take up the impregnable position that he was simply
relating the facts as they occurred.
Footnote 145:
We must not be critical about copies which have been patched by
tradition, but #F# 3 is singularly out of place for a “dæmon lover.”
Footnote 146:
Justifying Thackeray’s ‘Little Billee.’
Footnote 147:
Five are named in #C# 3, 4, but that is too many to allow. Probably
two versions may have been combined here. #B# has only the three
mentioned in #C# 4; the three of #A# 3 are repeated in #A# 9; and
there are three only in #E# 7–9. The Black Burgess of #C# 3 occurs in
#A# 3, and ‘the smack calld (caud) Twine’ of #C# 3 looks like a
corruption of ‘the small (sma’) Cordvine.’
Footnote 148:
In a note at the end of #E# (which he regarded as a variety of ‘Sir
Patrick Spens’), Burton says: “There appears to be still lurking in
some part of Aberdeenshire a totally different version of this ballad,
connected with the localities of the North [that is, not with
Dunfermline, with which ‘Young Allan’ has no concern, or with Linn or
Lee, which are in Outopia]. A person who remembered having heard it
said that it ends happily, with the mariners drinking the bluid-red
wine at Aberdeen. It mentions Bennachie, or the Hill of Mist, a
celebrated hill in Aberdeenshire, which is seen far out at sea, and
seems to have guided the gallant mariner to the shore.” All the copies
“end happily” so far as Young Allan is concerned, and this is all that
we are supposed to care for.
Footnote 149:
Mr Macmath informs me that all the traditional pieces in “Scottish
Songs” are in the hand of Scott, of about 1795. At folio 11 (the top
part of which has been torn away), Scott says: “These ballads are all
in the Northern dialect, but I recollect several of them as recited in
the south of Scotland divested of their Norlandisms, and also varying
considerably in other respects. In a few instances where my memory
served me, I have adopted either additional verses or better readings
than those in Mr Tytler’s collection. Such variations can excite no
reasonable surprise in any species of composition which owes
preservation to oral tradition only.”
Footnote 150:
‘C,’ safely to be identified with John Wilson Croker, says Colonel W.
F. Prideaux, who, in Notes and Queries, VI, xii, 223, has brought
together most of the matter pertaining to this ballad. If Colonel
Prideaux’s supposition is well founded, ‘The Grey Cock’ was known in
Ireland in the last century.
Footnote 151:
Scott suggested that the passage in Knox was the foundation of the
ballad, January, 1802, in the first edition of his Minstrelsy, where
only three stanzas were given. The Rev. Mr Paxton, however, first saw
Scott’s fragment not long before 1804, and then in the second number
of the Edinburgh Review, where there is no mention of the apothecary.
Thereupon, he says, I “instantly” wrote the enclosed piece from the
mouth of my aged mother. There is no room, consequently, for the
supposition that either mother or son might have taken a hint from
Knox, and put in the pottinger.
Footnote 152:
Compare here ‘Adam Bell,’ V, 28, stanzas 125, 128.
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