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nUGIIIE GRAHAM. 51 |
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HUGHIE GRAHAM.
Of the two editions of this ballad which follow, the first is taken from The Scots Musical Museum (p. 312), to which it was contributed by Burns. Burns states that he obtained his copy from oral tradition in Ayrshire, but he had certainly retouched several stanzas (the ninth and tenth, says Cromek), and the third and eighth are entirely of his composition.
The other copy is from the Border Minstrelsy, and consists of a version " long current in Selkirkshire " (procured for Scott by Mr. William Laidlaw), which also has been slightly improved by the pen of the' editor.
In the Appendix we have placed the story as it occurs in Durfey's Pills to purge Melancholy, and in Ritson's Ancient Songs. The seventeenth volume of the Percy Society Publications furnishes us with a Scottish version in which Sir Hugh is rescued and sent over the sea: Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 73. These, we believe, are all the published forms of this ballad, unless we mention Mr. Allan Cunningham's richauffe of Burns, in his Songs of Scotland, i. 327.
" According to tradition," says Mr. Stenhouse, " Robert Aldridge, Bishop of Carlisle, about the year 1560, seduced the wife of Hugh Graham, one of those bold and predatory chiefs who so long inhabited what was called the Debatable Land, on the English and |
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