As far as can be made out, Livingston and Seaton engage themselves to play against one another at some game, the victor expecting to stand the better in the eyes of a lady. They then proceed to Edinburgh castle, where a lady, whose 'gowns seem like green,' marshals the company in pairs, and chooses Livingston for her own partner. This preference enrages Seaton, who challenges Livingston to fight with him the next day. Up to this point the pairing may have been for a dance, or what not, but now we are told that Livingston and the fair dame are laid in the same bed, and further on that they were wedded that same night. In the morning Livingston arms himself for his fight; he declines to let his lady dress herself in man's clothes and fight in his stead. On his way 'to plain fields' a witch warns him that she has had the dream which Sweet William dreams in No 74, and others elsewhere. Livingston is 'slain,' but for all that stands presently bleeding by his lady's knee: see No 73, B 34, D 17. She begs him to hold out but half an hour, and every leech in Edinburgh shall come to him: see No 88, A 12, etc. He orders his lands to be dealt to the auld that may not, the young that cannot, etc.: see No 92, A 10, B 15. The lady declares that it was known from her birth that she was to marry a knight and lose him the next day. She will now do for his sake what other ladies would not be equal to (and which nevertheless many other ballad-ladies have undertaken, as in No 69 and elsewhere). When seven years are near an end her heart breaks.
This ballad, or something like it, was known at the end of the last century. The story has a faint resemblance to that of 'Armstrong and Musgrave,' a broadside printed in the last quarter of the seventeenth century: Crawford Ballads, No 123, Old Ballads, 1723, I, 175; Evans, Old Ballads, 1777, II, 70. Pinkerton acknowledges that he composed the 'Lord Livingston' of his Tragic Ballads, 1781, p. 69, but he says that he had "small lines from tradition." (Ancient Scotish Poems, 1786, I, cxxxi.) Pinkerton's ballad is the one which Buchan refers to, II, 308. It is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 139, No 21.
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