“ The wound is deadly; Bewick intreats Graham to fly the country; Graham swears that his vow shall be kept, leaps on his sword and is the first to die. Old Bewick comes up and is disposed to congratulate his son on his victory. Young Bewick begs him to make one grave for both, and to lay young Graham on the sunny side, for he had been the better man. The two fathers indulge in exclamations of grief.
I am persuaded that there was an older and better copy of this ballad than those which are extant. ”

“ Jean, one of the three daughters of the Duke of Gordon (there was no Duke of Gordon before 1684, but that is early enough for our ballad) , falls in love with Captain Ogilvie at Aberdeen. Her father threatens to have the captain hanged, and writes to the king to ask that favor. The king refuses to hang Ogilvie, but reduces him to the ranks, makes him a ‘single’ man. The pair lead a wandering life for three years, and are blessed with as many children. At the end of that time they journey afoot to the Highland hills, and present themselves at Castle Gordon in great destitution. ”

“ When the vagrant who has been made a lady against nature hears some of her tribe singing at the castle-gate, the passion for a roving life returns, and she deserts her noble partner, who pursues her, and, not being able to induce her to return to him, smites her “lily-white” throat with his sword. This little romance, retouched and repaired, is printed as No 50 of Songs and Ballads of the West, now publishing by Baring-Gould and Sheppard. ”

“ No relief from her; she would hang him were he within her bower. Not so, says Lord Thomas; rather he would kill her lord with his broadsword and carry her off. Not so, says Lady Margaret, but you must come in and drink with me. She poisons three bottles of wine, and pretends to be his taster. Lord Thomas drinks away merrily, but soon feels the poison. I am wearied with this drinking, he says. And so was I when you set your hounds at me, she replies; but you shall be buried as if you were one of my own.
B has Clerk Tamas for Lord Thomas, and Fair Annie for Lady Margaret. ”

“ Maisry comes, arrayed, as she had been directed, in noble style. The bride asks the boy who she may be, and is told that she is Thomas’s first love. Maisry asks Thomas why she was sent for: she is to be his wife. The nominal bride asks his will: she is to go home, with the comfort of being sent back in a coach, whereas she came on a hired horse! This ill-used, but not diffident, young woman proposes that Thomas shall give two thirds of his lands to his brother and make him marry her. Thomas refuses to divide his lands for any woman, and has no power over his brother. ”

“ THE NEW-SLAIN KNIGHT
‘The New-Slain Knight,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 197. A knight (who twaddles in the first person at the beginning) finds a maid sleeping under a hedge, wakes her, and tells her that he has seen a dead man in her father’s garden. She asks about the dead man’s hawk, hound, sword. His hawk and hound were gone, his horse was tied to a tree, a bloody sword lay under his head. She asks about his clothes, and receives a description, with the addition that his hair was bonny and new combed. ”

“ Though the portentous pair have a giant’s strength, they are quite too superior to use it like a giant; they tell Johnny that there is no help for him if he has been guilty of a heinous crime. Learning that his only crime is loving a gay lady, they require that his sword shall be given back to him, then go before the king and demand the lady; they have come to her wedding. Take her, says the king. I never thought to see such men. Jock of Noth could have brought a man thrice three times bigger, if he had supposed that his own size would cause such astonishment. ”

“ A maid is beguiled by a shepherd-boy while milking her father’s ewes; the consequences are what might be expected; her mother puts her out of doors, and she ranges the world; a young man who hears her complaint offers to marry her, and go to the North Country with her to milk her father’s ewes. The Scottish ballad could not have been developed from a story of this description. On the other hand, it is scarcely to be believed that the author of the English ditty, if he had known the Scottish ballad, would have dropped all the interesting particulars. ”

“ The Laird of Drum is a wooing gane,
All in a morning early,
And there he spied a weel-far’d may,
She was shearing at her barley.
2
‘Will you fancy me, my bonny may,
And will you fancy me? O
And will you come and be Lady Drum,
And let your shearing a be?’ O
3273
‘It’s I winna fancy you, kind sir,
I winna fancy thee;
For I’m too low to be lady o Drum,
And your whore I would scorn to be.’
4
‘Ye’ll cast aff the robes of gray,
And put on the silk and the scarlet,
And here to you I’ll make a vow
Ye’se neither be whore nor harlot.’ ”

“ Christy may make his choice, to fight with young Bewick or with himself. Christy, upon reflection, concludes that it would be a less crime to kill his sworn-brother than to kill his father, but swears that, should it be his lot to kill his friend, he will never come home alive. He arms himself and goes to seek his comrade. Bewick, who has been teaching his five scholars their fence, and apparently also their psalms, is walking in his father’s close, with his sword under his arm, and sees a man in armor riding towards him. Recognizing Graham, he welcomes him affectionately. ”

“ The Committee of Estates, June 12, 1640, gave commission to the Earl of Argyle to rise in arms against certain people, among whom was the Earl of Airlie, as enemies to religion and unnatural to their country, and to pursue them with fire and sword until they should be brought to their duty or else utterly subdued and rooted out. The Earl of Airlie had gone to England, fearing lest he should be pressed to subscribe the Covenant, and had left his house to the keeping of his eldest son, Lord Ogilvie. ”

“ Margaret instantly gets up and goes after Willie, crying to him against the loud wind. She does not stop for the river. No more was ever seen of Willie but his hat, no more of Margaret but her comb and her snood, A, which might end well so, but has lost a few lines. C ends like the preceding ballad: Margaret finds Willie in the deepest pot in Clyde; they shall sleep together in its bed. ”

“ Lord Delamere, upon occasion of the imposition of some new taxes, begs a boon of the king, in the Parliament House; it is that he may have all the poor men in the land down to Cheshire and hang them, since it would be better for them to be hanged than to be starved. A French (Dutch) lord says that Delamere ought to be stabbed for publicly affronting the king. The Duke of Devonshire offers himself to fight for Delamere, and a stage is set up for a duel to the utterance. Devonshire’s sword bends at the first thrust and then breaks. ”

“ Lord Fyvie is passing on one of these occasions, comes in, and urges Mill of Tiftie to yield to his daughter’s inclinations. The father is immovable; she must marry higher than with a trumpeter. Annie is put to bed, with her face towards Fyvie, and dies of a broken heart and of the cruel treatment which she has undergone.
This is a homely ditty, [131] but the gentleness and fidelity of Annie under the brutal behavior of her family are genuinely pathetic, and justify the remarkable popularity which the ballad has enjoyed in the north of Scotland. ”

“ The lady rade, True Thomas ran,
Untill they cam to a water wan;
O it was night, and nae delight,
And Thomas wade aboon the knee.
10
It was dark night, and nae starn-light,
And on they waded lang days three,
And they heard the roaring o a flood,
And Thomas a waefou man was he.
11
Then they rade on, and farther on,
Untill they came to a garden green;
To pu an apple he put up his hand,
For the lack o food he was like to tyne.
12
‘O haud yere hand, Thomas,’ she cried,
‘And let that green flourishing be;
For it’s the very fruit o hell,
Beguiles baith man and woman o yere countrie. ”

“ Lord Maxwell fled the country, but was tried in his absence and sentenced to death, with forfeiture of his estates. He came back to Scotland after four years, was basely betrayed into the power of the government by a kinsman, and was beheaded at Edinburgh May 21, 1613. [17]
“Thus was finally ended,” remarks Sir Walter Scott, “by a salutary example of severity, the ‘foul debate’ betwixt the Maxwells and Johnstones, in the course of which each family lost two chieftains: one dying of a broken heart, one in the field of battle, one by assassination, and one by the sword of the executioner.” ”

“ To boat her oer the ferry.
10
When she cam on to Edinboro town,
The poor stood thick and mony;
She dealt them money roun and roun,
Bade them pray for the life o her Geordie.
11
When she gaed up the tolbooth-stair,
She saw there nobles mony,
And ilka noble stood hat on head,
But hat in hand stood Geordie.
12
Then out it spak an English lord,
And vow, but he spake bonny!
‘If ye pay down ten thousand crouns,
Ye’ll get the life o your Geordie.’
13
Some gae her marks, some gae her crouns,
Some gae her guineas rarely,
Till she paid down ten thousand crouns,
And she got the life o her Geordie. ”

“ The Scottish Geordie is no thief, nor even a Johnie Armstrong. There are certain passages in certain versions which give that impression, it is true, but these are incongruous with the story, and have been adopted from some copy of the broadside, the later rather than the earlier. These are, the first two stanzas of F, utterly out of place, where we have the king’s horses stolen and sold in Bohemia, almost exactly as in the ballad of ‘George of Oxford,’ 15; G 7, where the Earl of Cassilis is made to steal geldings and sell them in Balleny ”

“ At this point, especially in A, Allan’s seamanship appears to very little advantage; he is more of a fair-weather yachtsman than of a skeely skipper. If he could get a bonny boy to take the helm and bring the ship in safe, the boy should have a liberal share of his gold and land, and a daughter Ann besides, whom one is surprised that Young Allan should have to offer. In A and D the bonny boy evidently takes command of the ship, although in A 18 the sailors ascribe their safety, under God, to their good master. The ballad indeed suffers almost as grievously as the comely cog. ”

“ The present Mr George Murray wrote to me on 12th January, 1883: “I may add that I have heard her sing the ballad myself, to a very simple but particularly plaintive lilt—more like a rapid chant than an ordinary song—which rings in my ear yet, although I only heard it once, when a lad.” [8]
A-C. A harper of Lochmaben (blind, A, B) who means to steal the Wanton Brown, a horse of King Henry’s, consults with his wife before setting about the business, and gets a few valuable hints; among them, to leave his mare’s foal at home. ”

“ He now promises to bring her home after the demise of his parents, and in the mean while builds her a gold and silver bower (which for a reason inscrutable is ‘strawn round wi sand’) . Father and mother die; Patrick takes no step to fulfil his engagement, and Isabel asks why. Patrick wishes that a hundred evils may enter him, and he ‘fa oure the brim,’ if ever he marries another; nevertheless he weds a duke’s daughter. His bride has a fancy to see his son, and Patrick sends his aunt (or his grand-aunt, or his great-grand-aunt) to fetch the boy. Isabel dares any woman to take the bairn away. ”

“ His brother John tries to dissuade him; he himself would scorn a hand without a heart; but Glenlion has long loved her, and is resolved to keep her, nevertheless. Glenlion’s three sisters receive Baby kindly, and the youngest begs her to disclose the cause of her grief. Baby tells the sympathetic Jean that she has been stolen from her friends and from her lover, and obtains not only the means of writing a letter to Johny Hay, the lover, but a swift-footed boy to carry it to Dundee. Johny Hay, with a band of armed men, makes all speed to Glenlion’s castle. ”

“ All that we know of him is so much as we are told in that ballad and in this. He attached himself, after his expulsion from England, to the laird of Mangerton, who gives him the praise ‘Thy coat is blue, thou has been true.’
Sim o the Mains, an Armstrong of the Whithaugh branch (the most important after that of Mangerton) , undertakes to betray Hobie to the English land-sergeant. A tryst is set at Kershope-foot, the junction of that stream with the Liddel; and Hobie, who lives a little way up the Liddel, rides eagerly down the water to keep it. ”

“ Toward the end of the last century we begin to hear that the people in Ayrshire make the wife of the Earl of Cassilis the heroine of the ballad. This name, under the instruction of Burns, was adopted into the copy in Johnson’s Museum (which, as to the rest, is Ramsay’s) , and in the index to the second volume of the Museum, 1788, we read, “neighboring tradition strongly vouches for the truth of this story.” After this we get the tradition in full, of course with considerable variety in the details, and sometimes with criticism, sometimes without. ”

“ Sir Walter Scott makes the Covenanters plant “the scarlet and blue colors of the Scottish covenant” on the keep of Tillietudlem. Whether he had other authority than this ballad for the scarlet, I have not been able to ascertain. All the flags of the covenant may not have been alike, but all would probably have a ground of blue, which is known to have been the Covenanters’ color. One flag, which belonged to a Covenanter who figured at Drumclog and Bothwell Bridge, has fortunately been preserved. ”