Huntly, as an ally of Bothwell, asked him to
surrender at Donibristle, in Fife; he would not yield to his
private enemy, the house was burned, and Murray was slain, Huntly
gashing his face. "You have spoiled a better face than your own,"
said the dying Earl (1592). James Melville mentions contemporary
ballads on the murder. Ramsay published the ballad in his Tea
Table Miscellany, and it is often sung to this day.
CLERK SAUNDERS
First known as published in Border Minstrelsy (1802). The
apparition of the lover is borrowed from "Sweet Willie's Ghost."
The evasions practised by the lady, and the austerities vowed by
her have many Norse, French, and Spanish parallels in folk-poetry.
Scott's version is "made up" from several sources, but is, in any
case, verse most satisfactory as poetry.
WALY, WALY
From Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany, a curiously composite gathering
of verses. There is a verse, obviously a variant, in a sixteenth
century song, cited by Leyden. St. Anthon's Well is on a hill
slope of Arthur's Seat, near Holyrood. Here Jeanie Deans trysted
with her sister's seducer, in The Heart of Midlothian. The Cairn
of Nichol Mushat, the wife-murderer, is not far off. The ruins of
Anthony's Chapel are still extant.
LOVE GREGOR
There are French and Romaic variants of this ballad. "Lochroyal,"
where the ballad is localized, is in Wigtownshire, but the
localization varies. The "tokens" are as old as the Return of
Odysseus, in the Odyssey: his token is the singular construction
of his bridal bed, attached by him to a living tree-trunk.
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