Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1833, III, 282; 1802, II, 138.
The first edition lacks stanzas 5, 6, 8, 9. Two of these were inserted "from another copy of the ballad in which the conclusion proves fortunate."
"The ballad," says Scott, "is given from tradition," for which a more precise expression would perhaps be "oral repetition." It is asserted in the Minstrelsy to be "the original words of the tune of 'Allan Water,' by which name the song is mentioned in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany" ('Allan Water, or, My love Annie's very bonny,' T.T.M., vol. i, p. 105, of the Dublin edition of 1729). This assertion is not justified by any reasons, nor does it seem pertinent, if the Allan was originally the river of the ballad, to add, as the editor does, that "the Annan and the Frith of Solway, into which it falls, are the frequent scenes of tragical accidents."
A song which may pass for the original Allan Water until an earlier is produced is among the Laing broadsides (now in the possession of Lord Rosebery), No 59. There is no date or place, but it is thought to have been printed toward the end of the seventeenth century, or the beginning of the eighteenth, and probably at Edinburgh.
The title is: 'Allan Water, or, A Lover in Captivity.'[foot-note] A new song, sung with a pleasant new air.' There are three eight-line stanzas, and it be gins:
Allan Cunningham says of the ballad, Songs of Scotland, II, 102: "I have heard it sung on the banks of the Annan. Like all traditional verses, there are many variations." And he cites as "from an old fragment " these couplets:
It is my conviction that 'Anna Water,' in Ramsay's language, is one of the "Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before" 1800.
"By the Gatehope Slack," says Sir Walter Scott, "is perhaps meant the Gate Slack, a pass in Annandale."
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