Mrs. Brown was not satisfied with A b, which Jamieson had taken down from her mouth, and after a short time she sent him A a. The verbal differences are considerable. We need not suppose that Mrs. Brown had heard two "sets" or "ways," of which she blended the readings; the fact seems to be that, at the time when she recited to Jamieson, she was not in good condition to remember accurately.
A a. Glenlion carries off Barbara Livingston from Dundee and takes her to the Highlands, She is in a stupor of grief. Glenlion folds her in his arms, and says that he would give all his flocks and herds for a kind look. She tells him that he shall never get look or smile unless he takes her back to Dundee; and he her that she shall never see Dundee till he has married her. His brother John tries to dissuade him; he himself would scorn a hand without a heart; but Glenlion has long loved her, and is resolved to keep her, nevertheless. Glenlion's three sisters receive Baby kindly, and the youngest begs her to disclose the cause of her grief. Baby tells the sympathetic Jean that she has been stolen from her friends and from her lover, and obtains not only the means of writing a letter to Johny Hay, the lover, but a swift-footed boy to carry it to Dundee. Johny Hay, with a band of armed men, makes all speed to Glenlion's castle. He calls to Baby to jump, and he will catch her; she, more prudently, slips down on her sheets; her lover takes her on his horse and rides away. Glenlion hears the ring of a bridle and thinks it is the priest come to marry him. His brother corrects the mistake; there are armed men at the castle-gate, and if turns out that there are enough of them to deter Glenlion's Highlanders from an attack. So Johny Hay conveys Baby Livingstone safely back to Dundee.
The other versions give the story a tragical catastrophe. In B, Barbara is forced into Glenlion's bed. Afterwards she exclaims that if she had paper and pen she would write to her lover in Dundee. No difficulty seems to be made; she writes her letter, and sends it by the ever-ready boy. Geordie, lying in a window, sees the boy, asks for news, and is told that his love is stolen by Glenlion. He orders his horse, in fact three horses, and also a mourning hat and cloak; but though he tires out all three horses, his love is dead be fore he reaches Glenlion. This copy is pieced out with all sorts of commonplaces from other ballads: see 9 (which is nonsense), 10, 13, 14, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 30.
C is a briefer, that is, an unfarced, form of B. Glenlion is corrupted to Linlyon.
D has its commonplaces again. For Barbara we have Annie, and Glendinning for Glenlion, and a brother Jemmy instead of a lover. In B the ravisher is Lochell.
Dr. Joseph Robertson in his Adversaria, Manuscript, p. 87, gives these two lines of 'Baby Livingston:'
O bony Baby Livingston Was playin at the ba.[foot-note]
The kidnapping of women for a compulsory marriage was a practice which prevailed for hundreds of years, and down to a late date, and, of course, not only in Great Britain. The unprotected female, especially if she had any property, must have been in a state of miserable insecurity, and even a convent was far from furnishing her an asylum. See for England, in the first half of the fifteenth century, Beamont's Annals of the Lords of Warrington, pp. 256-61 and 265 f.; for Scotland, in the same century and the two following, Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 99 ff., R. Chambers's Domestic Annals of Scotland, 1858, I, 223-5, 415 f.; for Ireland, Fronde, The English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, 1872, I, 417 ff. Other Scottish ballads celebrating similar abductions are 'Eppie Morrie,' 'The Lady of Arngosk,' and 'Rob Roy,' which immediately follow.[foot-note]
A b is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 126, No 18.
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