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488 HISTORICAL NOTES |
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whether Burns intended his ballad for that air, or for Cold and raw (see No. J2i). The music of Lull me beyond thee in the text is from Playford's Dancing Master, 1670.
No. 333. When Januar'wind was blawin cauld.' Scots Musical Museum, 1796, No. 448 entitled The bonie lass made the bed to me. The MS. is in the British Museum. A new version of an old ballad written for and printed in the Museum. Stenhonse, and Chambers after himt printed a bowdlerized and unauthorized short version which the former said was corrected by Burns. The Note and two stanzas in Cromek's Reliques, p. 256, connecting the original ballad with Charles II is not in the Interleaved Museum, and must in the future not be regarded as the statement of Burns. The ballad was printed as a broadside in London as early as 1670. A copy is in the Douce collection entitled Cumberland Nelly or the North Country Lovers . . . Tune The lass thai comes to bed to me. The verses and music are in Pills to purge melancholy, 171^, iv. i}}, as The Cumberland Lass. The poetry is very prosaic, and if any one is. curious to see how Burns vivified dull verses, he may compare that in our text with the ballad in the Tills. The English tune The Cumberland Lass is not the same as that in the Museum which Stenhouse affirms was communicated by Burns to the editor of that collection. {Illustrations, p. .707.) • The first two phrases resemble Johnie Cope, and the whole structure is unlike a Scottish melody. It may be remarked that, although the English ballad has a chorus, the tune of four lines does service for both verse and chorus. Dauney states that there is a tune entitled To bed to me in Blaikie's MS. 1693.
No. 334. O, Lady Mary Ann looks o'er the castle wa'.. Scots Musical Museum, 1792, No. .777, entitled Lady Mary Ann. The MS. is in the British Museum. A.fragment of eight lines, where the names of Lady Mary Ann and Charlie Cochrane do not occur, is in the Herd MS. A more complete but fushionless version is in Maidment's North Countrie Garland, 1824, and another is in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, 1827, 86. The story of the ballad is related by Spalding, the following being an abstract:—John Urquhart of Craigston died November, 1634, leaving a young grandson as heir. His guardian, the Laird Innes, coveted the estates, and in order to keep the property in the family, married the boy to his uncomely eldest daughter Elizabeth Innes, who willingly accepted him. The marriage was of short duration, for the young husband died while he was still at school. The last stanza of Maidment's copy explains all that is necessary to be said here:—
'In his twelfth year he was a married man, In his thirteenth year then he got a son ; In his fourteenth year his grave grew green, And that was the end of his growing.'
The verses in the text bear the mark of Burns's hand, and are all his own except the first two stanzas which he very much Improved. He took very little interest in historical and romantic ballads. The incidents in them were too far removed .from actual life. In sending to Mr. Tytler copies of those he recovered, he expresses the listless feeling which he had for them.
The tune was printed for the first time in the Museum. A tune entitled Long a growing is said to be in Guthrie's MS. of the seventeenth century.
* No. 335. There liv'd a man in yonder glen. Scots Musical Museum, 1792, No. j6j. The MS. in Burns's handwriting is in the British Museum. Another holograph version with variations, and not so good, was sold by Mr. Quaritch in August, 1900. This, is the first time that the song is printed as the work of Burns. It has all the national Scottish colour, but the legend is widely extended, and is known in France, Italy, Turkey, and Arabia. Who the Scottish original was is obscure, but the name of Johnie Blunt is on record four hundred years ago, and he is referred to in William Dunbar's Twa mareit wemen, |
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