A was copied by Sir Walter Scott (with slight variations) into a Manuscript at Abbotsford, 'Scottish Songs,' fol. 68 (1795-1806). The first half is printed from notes of Scott in Laing's edition of Sharpe's Ballad Book, pp. 143, 156 f, and to these two stanzas, nearly as here printed, there are added in the second case, p. 157, the following verses, which are evidently modern, with the exception of the last:
His hawk and his hounds they are wandered and gane, His lady sits dowie and weary her lane, His bairns wi greetin hae blinded their een, His croft is unshorn, and his meadow grows green.
Scott subjoins, "I never heard more of this." He was familiar with Herd's Manuscripts.
C, like many things in the Scotish Minstrel, has passed through editorial hands, whence the 'never return' of st. 4, and 'A plume in his helmet, a sword at his knee,' st. 5. This copy furnished the starting point for Allan Cunningham, III, 1, who, however, substitutes Finlay's 'wife' for the Minstrel's 'bryde,' and presents her with three bairns.
Motherwell made up his 'Bonnie George Campbell' (Minstrelsy, p. 44) from B, C, D. In a manuscript copied out by a granddaughter of Lord Woodhouselee (1840-50), D is combined with Cunningham's ballad.
Motherwell says that this ballad " is probably a lament for one of the adherents of the house of Argyle who fell in the battle of Glenlivet, stricken on Thursday, the third day of October, 1594." Sir Robert Gordon observes that Argyle lost in this battle his two cousins, Archibald and James Campbell: Genealogical History of Sutherland, p. 229. Maidment, Scotish Ballads, 1868, I, 240, chooses to think that "there can be little doubt" that the ballad refers to the murder of Sir John Campbell of Calder by one of his own surname, in 1591, and alters the title accord ingly to 'Bonnie John Campbell.' Motherwell has at least a name to favor his supposition. But Campbells enow were killed, in battle or feud, before and after 1590, to forbid a guess as to an individual James or George grounded upon the slight data afforded by the ballad.
Motherwell's ballad is translated by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 79, Hausschatz, p. 226.
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