From Herd's MS.Versions occur in Polish,German,Magyar,Portuguese,Scandinavian,and in French.The ballad is here localised on the Carrick coast,near Girvan.The lady is called a Kennedy of Culzean.Prof.Bugge regards this widely diffused ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes.
If so,the legend is DIABLEMENT CHANGE EN ROUTE.More probably the origin is a MARCHEN of a kind of RAKSHASA fatal to women.Mr.
Child has collected a vast mass of erudition on the subject,and by no means acquiesces in Prof.Bugge's ingenious hypothesis.
JOHNIE FAA
From Pinkerton's Scottish Ballads.The event narrated is a legend of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy),but is wholly unhistorical.
"Sir John Faa,"in the fable,is aided by Gypsies,but,apparently,is not one of the Earls of Egypt,on whom Mr.Crockett's novel,THERAIDERS,may be consulted.The ballad was first printed,as far as is known,in Ramsay's TEA TABLE MISCELLANY.
HOBBIE NOBLE
The hero recurs in JOCK O'THE SIDE,and Jock o'the Mains is an historical character,that is,finds mention in authentic records,as Scott points out.The Armstrongs were deported in great numbers,as "an ill colony,"to Ulster,by James I.Sir Herbert Maxwell's HISTORY OF DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY may be consulted for these and similar reivers.
THE TWA SISTERS
A version of "Binnorie."The ballad here ends abruptly;doubtless the fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady's hair,and a fiddle of her breast-bone,while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty of the sister.Other extant versions are composite or interpolated,so this fragment (Sharpe's)has been preferred in this place.
MARY AMBREE
Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection.The girl warrior is a favourite figure in popular romance.Often she slays a treacherous lover,as in BILLY TAYLOR.Nothing is known of Mary Ambree as an historical personage;she may be as legendary as fair maiden Lilias,of Liliarid's Edge,who "fought upon her stumps."
In that case the local name is demonstrably earlier than the mythical Lilias,who fought with such tenacity.
ALISON GROSS
Jamieson gave this ballad from a manu,altering the spelling in conformity with Scots orthography.Mr.Child prints the manu;here Jamieson's more familiar spelling is retained.
The idea of the romance occurs in a Romaic MARCHEN,but,in place of the Queen of Faery,a more beautiful girl than the sorceress (Nereid in Romaic),restores the youth to his true shape.Mr.
Child regarded the tale as "one of the numerous wild growths"from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.It would be more correct to say that BEAUTYAND THE BEAST is a late,courtly,French adaptation and amplification of the original popular "wild growth"which first appears (in literary form)as CUPID AND PSYCHE,in Apuleius.
Except for the metamorphosis,however,there is little analogy in this case.The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore,but Mr.Child points out that the Nereid Queen,in Greece,is still as kind as Thetis of old,not a sepulchral siren,the shadow of the pagan "Fairy Queen Proserpina,"
as Campion calls her.
THE HEIR OF LYNNE
From Percy's Folio Manu.There is a cognate Greek epigram-[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]
GORDON OF BRACKLEY
This,though probably not the most authentic,is decidedly the most pleasing version;it is from Mackay's collection,perhaps from his pen.
EDWARD
Percy got this piece from Lord Hailes,with pseudo-antiquated spelling.Mr.Swinburne has published a parallel ballad "From the Finnish."There are a number of parallel ballads on Cruel Brothers,and Cruel Sisters,such as SON DAVIE,which may be compared.Fratricides and unconscious incests were motives dear to popular poetry.
YOUNG BENJIE
From the BORDER MINSTRELSY.That corpses MIGHT begin to "thraw,"
if carelessly watched,was a prevalent superstition.Scott gives an example:the following may be added,as less well known.The watchers had left the corpse alone,and were dining in the adjoining room,when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death.None dared enter;the minister was sent for,and passed into the room.He emerged,asked for a pair of tongs,and returned,bearing in the tongs A BLOODY GLOVE,and the noise ceased.He always declined to say what he had witnessed.
Ministers were exorcists in the last century,and the father of James Thomson,the poet,died suddenly in an interview with a guest,in a haunted house.The house was pulled down,as being uninhabitable.