Folk-Lore Society, County Folk-Lore, Printed Extracts: No 2, Suffolk, 1893, collected and edited by the Lady Eveline Camilla Gurdon, p. 139 f. Contributed by “a Suffolk man” to the Suffolk Notes and Queries column of The Ipswich Journal, 1877.
P. 107 a. This has no connection with the story in Wendenmuth, Œsterley, I, 366, p. 402; see Œsterley’s note, V, 60.
Compare the broadside ballad ‘The Devil and the Scold,’ Roxburghe Collection, I, 340, 341; Chappell, Roxburghe Ballads, II, i, 367 ff.; Collier, Book of Roxburghe Ballads, 1847, p. 35 ff.
P. 116. Motherwell sent a copy of C to Sharpe with a letter from Paisley, 8th October, 1825, and printed C in an article on “Scottish Song” in the Paisley Magazine, 1828, p. 621, in both cases with two or three insignificant variations. He mentions in the latter another version in which the hero is called King James, in accordance with the vulgar traditions concerning the Gudeman o Ballengoich.
In Findlay’s MSS, I, 144, there are five unimportant stanzas, nearer to D than to the other versions, and having, like D, the title ‘The Gaberlunzie Laddie.’
P. 137. B. Mr Macmath has a copy of ‘The Goulden Vanitee’ in the handwriting of Peter Scott Fraser which is identical with that printed by Logan except that it has Vanitee for Vanitie in 13 and 92, Countree in 42, they row’d in 61, Oh! in 81, and Eck iddle dee (not du) in the burden. Mr. Macmath notes that B was printed by Mrs. Gordon, in Christopher North, a Memoir of John Wilson, Edinburgh, 1862, II, 317 ff., in a form identical with that in Mr. Fraser’s MS. copy [except for one variation (they’ve row’d for they row’d in 61)].
P. 135. A copy taken down from the lips of an old Suffolk (Monk Soham) laborer was contributed by Archdeacon Robert Hindes Groome to Suffolk Notes and Queries in the Ipswich Journal [1877-78], and is repeated in Two Suffolk Friends, 1895, p. 46. W. Macmath.
P. 156. Mr Macmath has called my attention to a ballad on the story of Child Owlet by William Bennet in The Dumfries Monthly Magazine, II, 402, 1826. This piece, called ‘Young Edward,’ “is founded upon a tradition still current in the district in which Morton Castle is situated.” Its quality is that of the old-magazine ballad.
P. 165. Dugald Gunn, Mr Macmath suggests, may have been a mistaken reading of Scott’s difficult handwriting on the part of the editor of the Ballad Book; as is certainly the case with regard to The Stirrup of Northumberland, V, 207 b, No 9, G.
I unhappily forgot Buchan’s ‘Donald M’Queen’s Flight wi Lizie Menzie,’ Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 117, which, though I think it corrupted at the end, removes the principal verbal difficulties in the Old Lady’s copy. Mr Walker of Aberdeen has reminded me of Buchan’s ballad, and he had previously suggested to me that Dunfermline was proprietor of Fyvie, and this fact had disposed me to read Fyvie where the text already given has farei, farie. Of the rightfulness of this reading there can now be no doubt, though information is desirable as to the tempting cheese of Fyvie, of which I have not found mention elsewhere.
Buchan, II, 319, makes the following note on his copy:—
“Donald M’Queen, the hero of this ballad, was one of the servants of Baron Seaton of Fyvie, who, with his master, had fled to France after the rebellion in 1715. Baron Seaton having died in France, Donald, his man, returned to Fyvie with one of his master’s best horses, and procured a love potion, alias ‘the tempting cheese of Fyvie,’ which had the effect of bewitching, or, in other words, casting the glamour oer his mistress, Lizie Menzie, the Lady of Fyvie. Some years afterwards this lady went through the country as a common pauper, when, being much fatigued, and in a forlorn condition, she fell fast asleep in the mill of Fyvie, whither she had gone to solicit an alms (charity): on her awakening, she declared that she had just now slept as soun a sleep with the meal-pock beneath her head, as ever she had done on the best down-bed of Fyvie. This information I had from James Rankin, an old blind man, who is well acquainted with the traditions of the country.”
Alexander Seaton acquired Fyvie, it is said, in 1596, and in 1606 was created Earl of Dunfermline. Castle and title were forfeited in 1689, and the property was purchased of the crown in 1726 by the Earl of Aberdeen. Dunfermline had no horses for Dugald or Donald to take after 1689. The whole story of Lizie Menzie, Baroness of Seaton, seems to be a fiction as sheer as it is vulgar. Lizie Menzie’s forsaking her husband for a footman is refuted by the well-informed Rankin himself, who tells us that the husband had died in France before his man “returned to Fyvie with one of his master’s best horses.” The conclusion is borrowed mostly from ‘The Gypsy Laddie,’ where even the drinking of one’s own brewage is to be found; but ‘The Gypsy Laddie’ is not to be reproached with the foolish last stanza.
P. 174.
‘The Trooper Lad.’ Communicated by Mr Macmath, with this note: “Received, 21st August, 1895, at Crossmichael, from my aunt, Miss Jane Webster. Learned by her many years ago, at Airds of Kells, from the singing of John Coltart.”
Mr Macmath adds the following stanza, “remembered by Miss Agnes Macmath, 2nd January, 1896, from the singing of her mother.”
P. 186 a. Mr Macmath writes (Dec. 24, 1895) that he has examined two boxes of MSS belonging to the late Mr George Wilson and found not ‘The Song of the Outlaw Murray,’ but ‘The Song of the Rid Square,’ in a transcript (perhaps early rather than late) of the 17th century. He thinks that by a slip of memory on Mr Wilson’s part ‘The Outlaw Murray’ was mentioned instead of this.
P. 202 b, last stanza. Mr Macmath has given me the following variation, communicated (with a story of a wife carried off by fairies) by J. C. to The Scottish Journal, II, 275, 1848.
P. 210 b, to III, 500. Mr Macmath informs me that the manuscript of Motherwell here referred to is the same as that already printed, and correctly printed, at III, 500 f.
[126] All the ballads in Scott’s Minstrelsy, excepting a few pieces, of which only ‘Cospatrick’ and ‘The Bonny Hind’ require mention, were translated in Historische und romantische Balladen der Schottischen Grenzlande, Zwickau, 1826-7, 7 small vols, by Elise von Hohenhausen, Willibald Alexis, and Wilhelm von Lüdemann, a work now rare, which has just come to hand. Registering these translations here, in 53 entries, would require an unwarrantable space.
[127] Mild Mary is an appellation which occurs elsewhere (as in No 91 E), and Mary Hamilton and Mary mild are interchangeable in X. It is barely worth remarking that Myle, Moil, in C, S, are merely varieties of pronunciation, and Miles in W, an ordinary kind of corruption.
[128] In the 18th century we have ‘Derwentwater’ and ‘Rob Roy,’ both of slight value; in the 17th ‘The Fire of Frendraught’ and ‘The Baron of Brackley,’ both fairly good ballads, and others of some merit; but nothing in either to be compared with ‘Mary Hamilton.’
[129] As to the “ballads” about the Maries mentioned by Knox, I conceive that these may mean nothing more than verses of any sort to the discredit of these ladies.