Part 70

These eight heads would correspond very neatly to the number of gypsies executed in 1624. But in the circumstantial account given by Chambers we are told that the house belonging to the family at Maybole was fitted for the countess’s reception “by the addition of a fine projecting stair-case, upon which were carved heads representing those of her lover and his band.... The effigies of the gypsies are very minute, being subservient to the decoration of a fine triple window at the top of the stair-case, and stuck upon the tops and bottoms of a series of little pilasters which adorn that part of the building. The head of Johnie Faa himself is distinct from the rest, larger, and more lachrymose in the expression of the features. _Some windows in the upper flat of Cassilis Castle are similarly adorned; but regarding them tradition is silent._”

Footnote 49:

Sharp, in Johnson’s Museum, 1853, IV, 218*; Paterson, in Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, I, 13. It is also clear from these letters that the countess was a sober and religious woman. Some minor difficulties which attend the supposition of this lady’s absconding with Johnny Faa, or any gypsy, are barely worth mentioning. At the time when Johnny Faa was put down, in 1624, the countess was seventeen years old, and yet she is made the mother of two children. If we shift the elopement to the other end of her life, there was then (so severe had been the measures taken with these limmers) perhaps not a gypsy left in Scotland. See Aytoun, 1859, I, 186.

Footnote 50:

John, seventh earl of Cassilis, son of the sixth earl by a second wife, married for his second wife, some time before 1700, Mary Foix (a name also spelt Faux): Crawford’s Peerage, 1716, p. 76, corrected by the Decreets of the Lords of Council and Session, vol. 145, div. 2. May this explain the Faws coming to be associated in the popular mind with a countess of Cassilis? (A suggestion of Mr Macmath’s.) The lady is even called Jeanie Faw in #C# 7, 11, first by the gypsy, then by her husband. The seventh earl had _two_ children by Mary Foix.

Footnote 51:

I have seen this piece only in Elizabeth Cochrane’s Song-Book, MS., p. 38, and in Buchan’s MSS, I, 220. Its contents agree with what is alleged in W. Fuller’s “Brief Discovery of the True Mother of the pretended Prince of Wales, known by the name of Mary Grey,” London, 1696, pp. 5 f, 11, 17 f, and it was probably composed not long after.

Footnote 52:

Afterwards inserted in the first volume of The Tea-Table Miscellany (p. 66 of A New Miscellany of Scots Sangs, London, 1727, p. 68 of T. T. M., Dublin, 1729), from which source it may have been adopted by Sharpe.

Footnote 53:

Here from the original, Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i, from a copy furnished by Mr Macmath.

Footnote 54:

The most of this account, and in nearly the same words, was given in an earlier letter from Major Barry to James Cant, who printed (Perth, 1774) an edition of ‘The Muses Threnodie, by Mr H. Adamson, 1638’ (p. 19). The principal items of the story are repeated from Cant by Pennant, Tour in Scotland, 1772, Part II, London, 1776, p. 112. Pennant cites Cant’s book as the Gabions of Perth. “It seems,” says Mr Macmath, who has extracted for me the passage in Cant, “that Adamson’s work was sometimes known as Gall’s Gabions, the latter being a coined word.”

Footnote 55:

An “old manuscript volume” cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, X, 37; Chambers, Domestic Annals of Scotland, 1858, II, 167.

Footnote 56:

The remark is made in The Scotsman, September 11, 1886.

Footnote 57:

In the manuscript cited in The New Statistical Account of Scotland, p. 37, we are told that, to prevent the spread of infection, “it was thought proper to put those out of the town at some distance who were sick. Accordingly, they went out and builded huts for themselves in different places around the town, particularly in the South Inch [etc.] and the grounds near the river Almond, at the mouth thereof, in all which places there are as yet the remains of their huts which they lodged in.” So, when this same pestilence was raging in the parish of Monivaird, the gentlemen “caused many huts to be built, and ordered all who perceived that they were infected immediately to repair into them:” Porteous, History of the Parishes of Monivaird and Strowan, MS., Communications to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, vol. i, printed in the Transactions, II, 72, 1822.

Footnote 58:

This is Wishart’s account. Another, by Covenanters, makes Montrose to have been more on the alert, and has nothing of the two thousand horse sent to take him in the rear. The royalists are admitted to have maintained their ground with great resolution for almost an hour. The numbers are as given by Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, II, 335 f.

Footnote 59:

T. Craig-Brown, History of Selkirkshire, 1886, I, 188.

Footnote 60:

Not 1829, as put in the reprint of 1869. “Written hurriedly, in supply of the press, in April and May, 1832. J. R.”: Dr J. Robertson’s interleaved copy of the undated first edition. #A c# is reprinted (with some errors) in The Great North of Scotland Railway, A Guide, by W. Ferguson, 1881, p. 163.

Footnote 61:

Jamieson writes to the Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 699: “The Baron of Braikly begins,

O Inverey cam down Dee-side Whistling and playing; He’s landed at Braikly’s yates At the day dawing.

Of this I have got a compleat copy, and the story is very interesting; but I have got a fragment of it from another quarter, which, so far as it goes, is superior.” Etc.

Footnote 62:

A market was established here in 1661 by an act in favor of William Farquharson of Inverey, his heirs, etc. This William had a brother and a son John. William Farquharson of Inverey younger, as “a person of known trust and approven ability,” is appointed to keep a guard “this summer for the sherifdom of Kincardine” against cattle-driving Highlanders, July of the same year. Thomson’s Acts, VII, 18, I, 286: pointed out to me by Mr Macmath.

Footnote 63:

Macfarlane’s Genealogical Collections, MS., in the Advocates’ Library, I, 299 f; already cited by Jamieson, Ballads, I, 108.

Footnote 64:

See a little further on.

Footnote 65:

Gilmour’s Decisions, 1701, p. 43. (Macmath.)

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: