'Brown Adam' was No 14 of the fifteen ballads furnished William Tytler by Mrs. Brown in 1783: Anderson, in Nichols's Illustrations, VII, 178. The ballad was first printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 16, 1802, with the omission of Mrs. Brown's second stanza, and some changes. Scott remarks that he had seen a copy printed on a single sheet.
C 1, 3, 6, 7 are very close to A 1, 2, 3, 4. A 2 was not printed by Scott, and if these stanzas were borrowed, A 2 must have been taken from the Jamieson Manuscript, to which other cases of correspondence warrant a suspicion that one of Buchan's contributors had access. C has the usual marks of Buchan's copies, great length, vulgarity, and such extravagance and absurdity as are found in stanzas 23, 26, 29.
A Danish ballad, from manuscripts of the sixteenth century and later, has a remote like ness to 'Brown Adam:' 'Den afhugne Haand,' Grundtvig, No 199, IV, 153. Lawi Pedersøn, who has shown bad faith to women, makes love to Lutzelil, who knows his ways, and rejects him summarily. Lawi rides off in wrath, saying that she shall be sorry for it. The maid is afraid to go to church for nine months, but ventures at Easter. Lawi stops her in a wood. She begs him to do her no harm, feigns to be amenable, and gives him an assignation at an off-lying apartment in which she sleeps with her maids; then rides away, laughing over her successful evasion. She tells her father how she has met Lawi, and begs him to be on the watch. Lawi comes at night, knocks, and is answered, according to the formula of Danish ballads, that she has made no appointment and he cannot come in. Lawi threatens to take off the door, and does so. Lutzelil's father is standing ready with his sword, and cuts off Lawi's hand.
The copy in Scott's Minstrelsy is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 45, p. 291; by Schubart, p. 65; Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 231; Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 29, p. 130; Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 2, p. 5.
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