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LORD JAMIE DOUGLAS. |
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From the appendix to Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. v. An imperfect copy of this ballad was printed in Einlay's collection, vol. ii. p. 4; another, called the Laird of Blackwood, in Kinloch's, p. 60. Both of them may be seen at the end of this Yolume. Chambers has compiled a ballad in four parts from these three versions, another in manuscript, furnished by Kinloch, and the verses just given from Ramsay's Miscellany; and Aytoun, more recently, has made up a ballad from two copies obtained from recitation by Kinloch, and called it The Marchioness of Douglas. Ballads of Scotland, 2d ed. i. 135.
The circumstances which gave rise to the ballad are thus stated by Chambers: u James, second Marquis of Douglas, when aged twenty-four, married at Edinburgh, on the 7th of SePYEmber, 1670, Lady Barbara Erskine, eldest daughter of John, ninth Earl of Mar. This lady is said to have been previously wooed, without success, by a gentleman of the name of Lowrie, who on account of his afterwards marrying Mariotte Weir, heiress of Blackwood, in Lanarkshire, was commonly called, according to the custom of Scotland, the Tutor, and sometimes the Laird, of Blackwood. Lowrie, who seems to have been considerably advanced in life at the time, was chamberlain or factor to the Marquis of Douglas; a circumstance which gave him peculiar facilities for executing an atrocious scheme of vengeance he had projected against the lady. By a train of proceedings somewhat similar to those of |
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