Child Ballads - Additions and Corrections

77. Sweet William's Ghost

P. 233. G. These three stanzas, which Scott annexed to 'Clerk Saunders' in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, II, 41, were contributed by the Ettrick Shepherd, who writes, not quite lucidly: "Altho this ballad [Clerk Saunders] is mixed with another, according to my mother's edition, in favour of whose originality I am strongly prepossessed, yet, as the one does in no sense disgrace the other in their present form, according to her it ends thus."

"Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy," No 141, Abbotsford; in the handwriting of James Hogg.

1	'But plett a wand o bonnie birk An lay it on my breast, An drap a tear upon my grave, An wiss my saul gude rest.
2	'But fair Marget, an rare Marget, An Marget, o verity, If eer ye loe another man, Neer loe him as ye did me.'
3	But up then crew the milk-white cock, An up then crew the grey; Her lover vanishd in the air, An she gaed weepin away.

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