The scene is at the court of Mary Stuart, A-N, Q. The unhappy heroine is one of the queen's Four Maries, A a 18, b 14, c 1, 18, 23, B 19, D 21, F 3, 12, G 16, H 18, I 19, J 8, 10, K 8, M 7, N 1; Mary Hamilton, A a 1, b 2, c 2, B 3, D 8, G 1, H 4, I 1, J 6; Lady Mary, F 5, 6; Mary Mild, Myle, C 5, M 1, N 1, also A c 6, Moil, O, but Lady Maisry, E 6. She gangs wi bairn; it is to the highest Stewart of a', A a 1, A c 2, B 3, C 5; cf. D 3, G 1-3, I 1-6, L 9, P 1. She goes to the garden to pull the leaf off the tree, in a vain hope to be free of the babe, C 3; it is the savin-tree, D 4, the deceivin-tree, N 3, the Abbey-tree (and pulled by the king), I 6.[foot-note] She rolls the bairn in her apron, handkerchief, and throws it in the sea, A a 3, A b 3, A c 4, C 4, D 5, 9, I 7, K 2, 4, L 5 (inconsistently), O 3; cf. B 7. The queen asks where the babe is that she has heard greet, A a 4, b 4, c 6, B 4, 6, C 6, D 6, 8, B 6, 7, F 6, G 5, H 5, I 9, J 3, L 1, M 1; there is no babe, it was a stitch in the side, colic, A a 5, b 5, c 7, B 5, C 7, D 7, E 8, F 7, G 6, H 6, I 10, J 4, L 2, M 2; search is made and the child found in the bed, dead, B 9, F 9, H 7, J 5, L 4, M 4 (and A c 8 inconsistently). The queen bids Mary make ready to go to Edinburgh (i.e., from Holyrood), A a 6, A b 6, A c 10, C 8, D 11, E 10, F 12, H 8, I 11. The purpose is concealed in A, a, b, c, and for the best effect should be concealed, or at least simulated, as in B, D, G, I, where a wedding is the pretence, Mary Hamilton's own wedding in D. The queen directs Mary to put on black or brown, A a 6, A b 6, A c 10; she will not put on black or brown, but white, gold, red, to shine through Edinburgh town, A a 7, A b 7, A c 11, B 9, C 9, D 13, E 11, H 10, K 6, N 5, O 5. When she went up the Canongate, A a 8, b 8, c 13, L 6, up the Parliament stair, A a 9, b 9, c 14, D 16, up the Tolbooth stair, C 12, B 14, H 15, I 17, came to the Netherbow Port, G 10, I 18, M 6, she laughed loudly or lightly, A a 8, b 8, c 13, D 16, E 14, G 10, H 15, I 18, L 6, M 6; the heel, lap, came off her shoe, A a 9, b 9, c 14, C 12, the corks from her heels did flee, I 17; but ere she came down again she was condemned to die, A a 9, b 9, c 14, C 12, D 16, E 14, H 15, I 17; but when she reached the gallows-foot, G 10, I 18, M 6, ere she came to the Cowgate Head, L 6, when she came down the Canongate, A a 8, b 8, c 13, the tears blinded her eyes. She calls for a bottle of wine, that she may drink to her well-wishers and they may drink to her, A a 12, b 10, c 17, B 14; cf. D 19, 20, G 13. She adjures sailors, travellers, not to let her father and mother get wit what death she is to die, A a 14, b 12, c 19, B 15, C 13, D 20, F 15, G 13, H 21, I 23, L 7, M 8, or know but that she is coming home, A a 13, b 11, B 16, C 14, D 19, E 15, F 16, G 14, H 20, I 22, L 8. Little did her mother think when she cradled her (brought her from home, F 18) what lands she would travel and what end she would come to, A a 15, c 21, B 17, 18, C 15, D 17, G 15, I 25, J 9, N 9, B; as little her father, when he held her up, A a 16, c 22, C 16, brought her over the sea, F 17. Yestreen the queen had four Maries, to-night she'll have but three (see above); yestreen she washed Queen Mary's feet, etc., and the gallows is her reward to-day, A a 17, b 13, B 20, C 17, G 11, 12, H 19, I 20, 21, N 8.
It is impossible to weave all the versions into an intelligible and harmonious story. In B 10, F 12, H 8 the intention to bring Mary to trial is avowed, and in A c 9, B 85,6, F 10, K 5, M 5 she is threatened with death. In D 12, H 9, J 7, N 4, the queen is made to favor, and not inhibit, gay colors. Mary may laugh when she goes up the Parliament stair, but not when she goes up the Tolbooth stair. She goes up the Canongate to the Parliament House to be tried, but she would not go down the Canongate again, the Tolbooth being in the High Street, an extension of the Canongate, and the Parliament House in the rear. The tears and alaces and ohones as Mary goes by, A a 10, c 15, B 10, C 10, D 14, E 12, F 13, H 11, I 16, are a sufficiently effective incident as long as Mary is represented to be unsuspicious of her doom, as she is in D 15, G 9, I 15, 16; but in A a 11, c 16, B 11, C 11, H 12, 22, she forbids condolement, because she deserves to die for killing her babe, which reduces this passage to commonplace. Much better, if properly introduced, would be the desperate ejaculation, Seek never grace at a graceless face! which we find in E 13, F 14, H 13, N 7.
At the end of B the king tells Mary Hamilton to come down from the scaffold, but she scorns life after having been put to public shame. So in D, with queen for king.
In A a 4, b 4, 13, G 5 the queen is "the auld queen," and yet Mary Stuart.
E, from 16, F, from 19, are borrowed from No 95, 'The Maid Freed From the Gallows:' see II, 346. G 8 (and I 13, taken from G) is derived from 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' D a 11, e 10, g 11: see II, 187, 196, 197. The rejection of black and brown, A 7, C 9, D 13, etc., or of green, K 6, is found in the same ballad, C 10, E 16, F 12, 15, etc., B 20. B 21 is perhaps from 'The Laird of Waristoun:' see further on, A 9, B 10, C 4. I 12, 14 look like a souvenir of 'Fair Janet,' No 64.
There are not a few spurious passages. Among these are the extravagance of the queen's bursting in the door, F 8; the platitude, of menial stamp, that the child, if saved, might have been an honor to the mother, D 10, L 3, O 4; the sentimentality of H 3, 16.
Allan Cunningham has put the essential incidents of the story into a rational order, that of A, for example, with less than usual of his glistering and saccharine phraseology: Songs of Scotland, I, 348. Aytoun's language is not quite definite with regard to the copy which he gives at II, 45, ed. 1859: it is, however, made up from versions previously printed.
When Mary Stuart was sent to France in 1548, she being then between five and six, she had for companions "sundry gentlewomen and noblemen's sons and daughters, almost of her own age, of the which there were four in special of whom every one of them bore the same name of Mary, being of four sundry honorable houses, to wit, Fleming, Livingston, Seton, and Beaton of Creich; who remained all four with the queen in France during her residence there, and returned again in Scotland with her Majesty in the year of our Lord 1561: "Lesley, History of Scotland, 1830, p. 209. We still hear of the Four Maries in 1564, Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), VII, 213, 230; cited by Burton, IV, 107. The ballad substitutes Mary Hamilton and Mary Carmichael for Mary Livingston and Mary Fleming; but F 3, 12 has Livingston. N, of late recitation, has Heaton for Seton and Michel for Carmichael.
D 4, etc. In 'Tam Lin,' No 39, Janet pulls the rose to kill or scathe away her babe; A 19, 20, F 8, I 24, 25 (probably repeated from A). In G 18, 19, the herb of 15 and the rose of 17 becomes the pile of the gravil green, or of the gravil gray; in H 5, 6 Janet pulls an unspecified flower or herb (I, 341 ff).
We have had in 'The Twa Brothers,' No 49, a passage like that in which Mary begs sailors and travellers not to let her parents know that she is not coming home; and other ballads, Norse, Breton, Romaic, and Slavic, which present a similar trait, are noted at I, 436 f, II, 14. To these may be added Passow, p. 400, No 523; Jeannaraki, p. 116, No 118; Sakellarios, p. 98, No 31; Puymaigre, 1865, p. 62, Bujeaud, II, 210 (Liebrecht); also Guillon, p. 107, Nigra, No 27, A, B, pp. 164, 166, and many copies of 'Le Déserteur,' and some of 'Le Plongeur,' 'La ronde du Battoir.'
Scott thought that the ballad took its rise from an incident related by Knox as occurring in "the beginning of the regiment of Mary, Queen of Scots." "In the very time of the General Assembly," says Knox, "there comes to public knowledge a heinous murder committed in the court, yea, not far from the queen's own 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 child, whom, with common consent, the father and the mother murdered. Yet were the cries of a new-born bairn heard; search was made, the child and mother was both deprehended, and so were both the man and the woman damned to be hanged upon the public street of Edinburgh."[foot-note] "It will readily strike the reader," says Scott, "that the tale has suffered great alterations, as handed down by tradition; the French waiting-woman being changed into Mary Hamilton, and the queen's apothecary[foot-note] into Henry Darnley. Yet this is less surprising when we recollect that one of the heaviest of the queen's complaints against her ill-fated husband was his infidelity, and that even with her personal attendants." This General Assembly, however, met December 25, 1563, and since Darnley did not come to Scotland until 1565, a tale of 1563, or of 1563-4, leaves him unscathed.
Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, in his preface to A, Ballad Book, 1824, p. 18, observes: "It is singular that during the reign of the Czar Peter, one of his empress's attendants, a Miss Hamilton, was executed for the murder of a natural child... I cannot help thinking that the two stories have been confused in the ballad, for if Marie Hamilton was executed in Scotland, it is not likely that her relations resided beyond seas; and we have no proof that Hamilton was really the name of the woman who made a slip with the queen's apothecary." Sharpe afterwards communicated details of the story [foot-note] to Scott, who found in them "a very odd coincidence in name, crime and catastrophe;" Minstrelsy, 1833, III, 296, note. But Sharpe became convinced "that the Russian tragedy must be the original" (note in Laing's edition of the Ballad Book, 1880, p. 129); and this opinion is the only tenable one, however surprising it may be or seem that, as late as the eighteenth century, the popular genius, helped by nothing but a name, should have been able so to fashion and color an episode in the history of a distant country as to make it fit very plausibly into the times of Mary Stuart.
The published accounts of the affair of the Russian Mary Hamilton differ to much the same degree as some versions of the Scottish ballad. The subject has fortunately been reviewed in a recent article founded on original and authentic documents.
When the Hamiltons first came to Russia does not appear. Artemon Sergheievitch Matveief, a distinguished personage, minister and friend of the father of Peter the Great, married a Hamilton, of a Scottish family settled at Moscow, after which the Hamilton family ranked with the aristocracy. The name of Mary's father, whether William or Daniel, is uncertain, but it is considered safe to say that she was niece to Andrei Artemonovitch Matveief, son of the Tsar Alexei's friend. Mary Hamilton was created maid-of-honor to the Empress Catharine chiefly on account of her beauty. Many of Catharine's attendants were foreigners; not all were of conspicuous families, but Peter required that they should all be remarkably handsome. Mary had enjoyed the special favor of the Tsar, but incurred his anger by setting afloat a report that Catharine had a habit of eating wax, which produced pimples on her face. The empress spoke to her about this slander; Mary denied that she was the author of it; Catharine boxed her ears, and she acknowledged the offence. Mary Hamilton had been having an amour with Ivan Orlof, a handsome aide-de-camp of Tsar Peter, and while she was under the displeasure of her master and mistress, the body of a child was found in a well, wrapped in a court-napkin. Orlof, being sent for by Peter on account of a missing paper, thought that his connection with Mary had been discovered, and in his confusion let words escape him which Peter put to use in tracing the origin of the child. The guilt was laid at Mary's door; she at first denied the accusation, but afterwards made a confession, exonerating Orlof, however, from all participation in the death of the babe; and indeed it was proved that he had not even known of its birth till the information came to him in the way of court-gossip. Both were sent to the Petropaulovsk fortress, Orlof on April 4, Mary on April 10, 1718. Orlof was afterwards discharged without punishment. Mary, after being twice subjected to torture, under which she confessed to having previously destroyed two children,[foot-note] was condemned to death November 27, 1718, and executed on March 14, 1719, the Tsar attending. She had attired herself in white silk, with black ribbons, hoping thereby to touch Peter's heart. She fell on her knees and implored a pardon. But a law against the murder of illegitimate children had recently been promulgated afresh and in terms of extreme severity. Peter turned aside and whispered something to the executioner; those present thought he meant to show grace, but it was an order to the headsman to do his office. The Tsar picked up Mary's head and kissed it, made a little discourse on the anatomy of it to the spectators, kissed it again, and threw it down. That beautiful head is said to have been kept in spirits for some sixty years at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
It will be observed that this adventure at the Russian court presents every material feature in the Scottish ballad, and even some subordinate ones which may or may not have been derived from report, may or may not have been the fancy-work of singers or reciters. We have the very name, Mary Hamilton; she is a maid-of-honor; she has, as some versions run, an intrigue with the king, and has a child, which she destroys; she rolls the child in a napkin and throws it into a well (rolls the child in her handkerchief, apron, and throws it in the sea); she is charged with the fact and denies; according to some versions, search is made and overwhelming proof discovered;[foot-note] she is tried and condemned to die; she finds no grace. The appeal to sailors and travellers in the ballad shows that Mary Hamilton dies in a foreign land not that of her ancestors. The king's coming by in B 22 (cf. D 22, 23) may possibly be a reminiscence of the Tsar's presence at the execution, and Mary's dressing herself in white, etc., to shine through Edinburgh town a transformation of Mary's dressing herself in white to move the Tsar's pity at the last moment; but neither of these points need be insisted on.
There is no trace of an admixture of the Russian story with that of the French woman and the queen's apothecary, and no ballad about the French woman is known to have existed.
We first hear of the Scottish ballad in 1790, when a stanza is quoted in a letter of Robert Burns (see B). So far as I know, but one date can be deduced from the subject-matter of the ballad; the Netherbow Port is standing in G, I, M, and this gate was demolished in 1764. The ballad must therefore have arisen between 1719 and 1764. It is remarkable that one of the very latest of the Scottish popular ballads should be one of the very best.
I a is translated by Gerhard, p. 149; Aytoun's ballad by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 76, No 24.
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