One of many ballads on fratricide,
instigated by the mother: or inquired into by her, as the case may
be. "Edward" is another example of this gloomy situation.
THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
Here
"The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,"
having a middle rhyme, can scarcely be of extreme antiquity.
Probably, in the original poem, the dead return to rebuke the
extreme grief of the Mother, but the poem is perhaps really more
affecting in the absence of a didactic motive. Scott obtained it
from an old woman in West Lothian. Probably the reading "fashes,"
(troubles), "in the flood" is correct, not "fishes," or "freshes."
The mother desires that the sea may never cease to be troubled till
her sons return (verse 4, line 2). The peculiar doom of women dead
in child-bearing occurs even in Aztec mythology.
THE TWA CORBIES
From the third volume of Border Minstrelsy, derived by Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe from a traditional version. The English
version, "Three Ravens," was published in Melismata, by T.
Ravensworth (1611). In Scots, the lady "has ta'en another mate"
his hawk and hound have deserted the dead knight. In the English
song, the hounds watch by him, the hawks keep off carrion birds, as
for the lady--
"She buried him before the prime,
She was dead herselfe ere evensong time."
Probably the English is the earlier version.
THE BONNIE EARL OF MURRAY
Huntly had a commission to apprehend the Earl, who was in the
disgrace of James VI.
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