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THE QUEEN'S MARIE.
Of this affecting ballad different editions have appeared in Scott's Minstrelsy, Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 18, Kinloch's Scottish Ballads, and Motherwell's Minstrelsy. There is also a fragment in Maidment's North Countrie Garland, which has been reprinted in Bu-chan's Gleanings, p. 164, and a very inferior version, with a different catastrophe, in Buchan's larger collection, (ii. 190,) called Warenston and the Duke oj York's Daughter. Kinloch's copy may be found with Maidment's fragment, in the Appendix to this volume: Motherwell's immediately after the present.
Sir Walter Scott conceives the ballad to have had its foundation in an event which took place early in the reign of Mary Stuart, described by Knox as follows : " In the very time of the General Assembly, there comes to public knowledge a haynous mur-ther, committed in the court; yea, not far from the Queen's lap ; for a French woman, that served in the Queen's chamber, had played the whore with the Queen's own apothecary. The woman conceived and bare a childe, whom, with common consent, the father and mother murthered; yet were the cries of a new-
VOL. ill. 8 |
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