Stanzas 1, 5, 6, 7, 16, of B were printed by Jamieson (under the title of Sweet Willie and May Margaret) in the Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 700, in the hope of obtaining a complete copy.
In notes to B are here given some various readings and supplementary verses which were entered by Motherwell in a copy of his Minstrelsy, without indication of their origin.[foot-note] Motherwell made a few changes in transcribing C into his Manuscript, and others in the verses which he printed in the appendix to his Minstrelsy.
The copy of this ballad in Nimmo's Songs and Ballads of Clydesdale, p. 134, was compounded from B and C.
Willie orders his horse and his man to be fed, for he means to be that very night with his love Margaret. His mother would have him stay with her: he shall have the best bed in the house and the best hen in the roost, A; the best cock in the roost and the best sheep in the flock, B; a sour wind is blowing and the night will be dark, C. He cares for none of these, and will go. My malison drown thee in Clyde! says his mother. Clyde is roaring fearfully, but he wins through. Arrived at Margaret's bower, he tirls at the pin and calls to her to open. A voice asks, Who is there? It is her lover, his boots full of Clyde's water. An answer comes, as if from Margaret, that she has no lovers without and none within, and she will not open, A, C; her mother is fast asleep, and she dares make no din, B. Then he begs for some shelter for the night; but is told that one chamber is full of corn, another full of hay, and the third full of gentlemen, who will not go till morning. Farewell, then; he has won his mother's malison by coming. Clyde's water is half up over the brae, B, and sweeps him off his horse, C. Margaret wakens from a dreary dream that her love had been 'staring' (standing?) at the foot of her bed, A; had been at the gates, and nobody would let him. in, C. Her mother informs her that her lover had really been at the gates but half an hour before. Margaret instantly gets up and goes after Willie, crying to him against the loud wind. She does not stop for the river. No more was ever seen of Willie but his hat, no more of Margaret but her comb and her snood, A, which might end well so, but has lost a few lines. C ends like the preceding ballad: Margaret finds Willie in the deepest pot in Clyde; they shall sleep together in its bed.
C 20, 21 absurdly represents Willie's brother as standing on the river-bank and expostulating with him; this in the dead of night.[foot-note]
The passage in two of the copies, A 10-16, C 11-15, 22-25, in which the mother, pretending to be her daughter, repels the lover, and the daughter, who has dreamed that her lover had come and had been refused admittance, is told by her mother that this had actually happened, and sets off in pursuit of her lover, seems to have been adopted from 'The Lass of Roch Royal,' No 76. Parts are exchanged, as happens not infrequently with ballads; in the 'Lass of Roch Royal,' the lass is turned away by her lover's mother, pretending' to speak in his person. There is verbal correspondence, particularly in A 16; cf. No 76, D 26, 27, B 22, 23. In D 19 of No 76 the professed Love Gregor tells Annie that he has another love, as the professed Meggie in A 11 (inconsistently with what precedes) tells Willie.
The three steps into the water, C 26-28, occur also in 'Child Waters,' No 63, B 7-9, C 6-8, I 3, 4, 6. Nose-bleed, C 1, is a bad omen; see No 208.
Verses A 81,2, C 101,2,
Make me your wrack as I come back, But spare me as I go,
are found in a broadside 'Tragedy of Hero and Leander,' Roxburghe Ballads, III, 152, etc., of the date, it is thought, of about 1650; Ebsworth's Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 558, Collier's Book of Roxburghe Ballads, 1847, p. 227. The conceit does not overwell suit a popular ballad. The original is Martial's Parcite dum propero, mergite cum redeo, otherwise, Mergite me, fluctus, cum rediturus ero, Epigr. lib., 25 b, and lib. xiv, 181.
A very popular Italian ballad has some of the traits of 'The Mother's Malison,' parts being exchanged and the girl drowned. A girl is asked in marriage; her mother objects, in most of the copies on the ground of her daughter's youth; she goes off with her lover; the mother wishes that she may drown in the sea; arrived at the seashore her horse becomes restive, and the girl is drowned (or she goes down in mid-sea): 'Maledizione della Madre,' Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte, p. 151, No 23 A-F; 'La Maledizione materna,' Marcoaldi, p. 170, No 15; 'La Maledetta,' Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 35, No 27; 'Buonasera, vedovella,' Ferraro, C. p. del Basso Monferrato,p. 16, No 7; 'La Figlia disobbediente,' Bolza, C. p. comasche, No 55; 'Amor di Fratello,' Beruoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata 9, No 4; Righi, C. p. veronesi, p. 30, No 93; Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 92 (a fragment). In 'Marinai,' Ferraro, C. p. di Ferrara, etc., p. 59, No 9, the suitor is a sailor, and the girl goes down in his ship, and so in 'Il marinaro e la sua amorosa,' No 94, Wolf, but in this last she is still told to stick to her horse. A fragment in Marie Aycard's Ballades et ch. p. de la Provence, p. xix, repeated in Arbaud, II, 166, makes it probable that the Italian ballad was known in the south of France. (All the above are cited by Count Nigra.)
A mother's curse upon her son, who is riding to fetch his bride, results in his breaking his neck, in a Bohemian ballad already spoken of under 'Clerk Colvil,' No 42; see I, 368 (where a translation by Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder, p. 47, might have been noted).
A mother refuses to give her daughter in marriage because the girl is under age; the daughter is forcibly carried off; the mother wishes that she may not live a year, which comes to pass: 'Der Mutter Fluch,' Meinert, p. 246.
B is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotshe Folkeviser, p. 64, No 10, and (with use of C), by Wolff, Halle der Volker, I, 26, Hausschatz, p. 203; Aytoun's ballad (with use of C) by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 152, No 35; Allingham's ballad by Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 123.
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