The main points of the story of this ballad are the same in all the copies. The king of Scotland, C, F, of France, H, I, has been away from home a considerable time, in Spain, A, C, F, G, a prisoner, A, F, a-hunting, C, H, I, and during his absence his daughter has be come with child by William or Thomas of Winsbury. The father threatens to hang the young man, but on seeing him is so struck with his beauty that he exonerates his daughter, and offers her in marriage to her lover, with a large dowry. Winsbury accepts the lady, but declines gold and land, having enough of his own. In H he says he shall be king when he goes back to Scotland; in the other copies he appears to be only a man of very good estate. From the hero turning out to be a royal person from Scotland, in H, Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 89, is led to imagine that the ballad may relate to James V of Scotland, who married a daughter of Francis I. His reasons are, first, that James disguised himself when he went to inspect the Duke of Vendôme's daughter (to whom he was in a way betrothed), so as not to be known to her or to her parents. Secondly, that when James, not fancying this lady, passed on, it was at a hunting-party that he met the French princess, who became so enamored of him that she would have no other husband. That the poor princess had long been sick, and "was not able to travel out of the realm to no other countrie" (on a milk-white steed, C 13), and that she died about six months after her marriage, does not come into the ballad.[foot-note] Buchan thinks Winsbury's rank to be fixed by his version, G, as that of a chamberlain, and therefore cannot admit the plausibility of a disguised James V.
The two English copies, D, B, both imperfect, change the hero's name to Johnnie Barbary ('lately come from Spain,' cf. B 5) or Johnnie Barbour. Motherwell, in a manuscript annotation to Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, mentions that he had obtained from recitation a copy in which the name was Sweet Willie of Salisbury. The change from a king to a lady neat and trim in D 1 is a corruption that one would have hardly looked for "from the spinning-wheel."
The stanza which notes the reluctance of the young man to come at call, C 9, D 6, P 12, occurs in all copies of 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter.'
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