The copy in The New Deeside Guide, by James Brown [Joseph Robertson], Aberdeen, 1832, p. 26, is B a with a few editorial changes. It is repeated in The Deeside Guide, Aberdeen, 1889, with slight variations. The copy in Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 22, is "given from the way the editor has heard it sung, assisted by Mr. Buchan's copy in his Gleanings;" in fact, it is B a with unimportant variations, which must be treated as arbitrary. Smith's New History of Aberdeenshire, I, 207, repeats Aytoun, nearly, and Aytoun, II, 309, 1859, B a, nearly.
None of the versions here given go beyond 1800. Mrs. Brown of Falkland, in an unprinted letter to Alexander Fraser Tytler, December 23, 1800, offers him 'The Death of the Countess of Aboyne,' which she had heard sung when a child: see p. 309, note.
A-I. The Earl of Aboyne (who is kind but careless, E) goes to London without his wife, and stays overlong. Information comes by letter that he has married there, B, or that he is in love with another woman, D. Word is brought that he is on his way home, and very near. His lady orders stable-grooms, minstrels, cooks, housemaids, to bestir themselves, A-E, I, K, makes a handsome toilet, A, B, D, E, F, and calls for wine to drink his health, B, C, D, G. She comes down to the close to take him from his horse, B, C, D, F, and bids him thrice welcome. "Kiss me then for my coming," says the earl, and surprises his wife, and all of us, by adding that the morrow would have been his wedding-day, if he had stayed in London. The lady gives him an angry and disdainful answer. This he resents, and orders his men to mount again; he will go first to the Bog of Gight to see the Marquis of Huntly, and then return to London. The lady attempts, through a servant, to get permission to accompany him, but is repulsed, A, B, C, D (misplaced in G). According to A, C, D 24, F, the countess languished for about a twelvemonth, and then died of a broken heart; but D 25, G, H, make her death ensue before or shortly after the earl's arrival at the Bog o Gight. Aboyne is very much distressed at the tidings; he would rather have lost all his lands than Margaret Irvine, C, D, E, G, H. He goes to the burial with a train of gentlemen, all in black from the hose to the hat, A, C (horse to the hat, B, E, F).
J. No Earl of Aboyne ever married an Irvine, and no Earl of Aboyne would have meditated open bigamy, and have informed his wife while receiving her welcome home how near he had come to perpetrating the same. The historical difficulty and the practical absurdity are removed by assuming that J alone has preserved (or restored) the true and original story, and that all the other copies, beginning with Mrs. Brown's, which calls the lady the Countess of Aboyne, have gone wrong. In J, Peggy Irvine is only Aboyne's love, I 3, and Aboyne is her true lover, 83. Aboyne was careless and kind, and kind to every woman, and Aboyne staid over long in London, A, and the ladies they did invite him, H. Under these circumstances, some Aboyne may have been on the brink of deserting a Peggy Irvine to whom he was engaged.
Aboyne is Boyn, D, Boon, H; Irvine is Harboun, Harvey, D, Ewan, B, K; Bog o Gight is Bogs o the Geich, D, Bogs o the Gay, G, Bughts o the Gight, H, Bogo Keith, J. The Bog o Gight is made Aboyne's property in D, G, H. The Marquis of Huntly is blamed by Aboyne for inciting him to unkindness, D 28, G 11.
This page most recently updated on 22-Apr-2011, 18:42:40. Return to main index
