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THE GYPSIE LADDIE. |
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This ballad first appeared in print in the Tea-Table Miscellany, (ii. 282,) from which it was adoPYEd into Herd's and Pinkerton's collections, Johnson's Museum, and Eitson's Scottish Songs. The version here selected, that of Finlay, (Scottish Ballads, ii. 39,) is nearly the same, but has two more stanzas, the third and the fourth. Different copies are given in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 360, Smith's Scottish Minstrel, iii. 90, The Songs of England and Scotland, (by Peter Cunningham,) ii. 346, and Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 329, (see our Appendix;) others, which we have not seen, in Mactaggart's Gal-lovidian Dictionary, Chambers's Scottish Gypsies, and The Scot's Magazine for November, 1817.
There is a popular tradition, possessing, we believe, no foundation in fact, that the incidents of this ballad belong to the history of the noble family of Cassilis. The Lady Jean Hamilton, daughter of the Earl of Waddington, is said to have been constrained to marry a grim Covenanter, John, Earl of Cassilis, though her affections were already engaged to Sir John Faa of |
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