| A. b. |
11, went a-playing.
Burden2, a downe-o. |
| c. |
11, went a-playing.
Burden1,2. With a hey down, down, a down, down-a.
42. Till oat-meal and salt grow both on a tree.
61. ran hastily down the clift.
62. And up he took her without any life.
132. Moll Symns.
141, 151. Then he bespake.
172. And let him go i the devil's name. |
| c. |
11, went a-playing.
12, ships sailing in.
21. into.
32. me up on.
62. withouten life. |
| B. a. |
26, 27, 28. An it has been written in as a conjectural
emendation by Jamieson, he did it play, [it/he] playd; and
it is adopted by Jamieson in his printed copy: see below, d
26, 27, 28. |
| b. |
The first stanza only, agreeing with a 1, is
given by Anderson, Nichols's Illustrations,
VII, 178. |
| c. |
Evidently a copy of Mrs. Brown's version, and in Scott's
manuscript it has the air, as all the Tytler-Brown ballads had.
Still it has but twenty-three stanzas, whereas Dr. Anderson gives
fifty-eight lines as the extent of the Tytler-Brown copy of 'The
Cruel Sister' (Nichols, Illus. Lit. Hist., VII, 178).
This, counting the first stanza, with the burden, as four lines,
according to the arrangement in Scott's manuscripy, would tally
exactly with the Jamieson-Brown manuscript B a.
It would seem that B c had been altered
by somebody in order to remove the absurd combination of sea and
mill-dam; the invitation to go see the ships come to land,
B a 7, is omitted, and "the deep mill-dam"
substituted, in 8, for "yon sea-stran." Stanza
17 of c, "They raisd her," etc., cited below,
occurs in Pinkerton, N 20, and is more likely to be his
than anybody's.
21. brooch and ring.
22. abune a' thing.
31. wooed . . . with glove and knife.
32. looed the second.
52. she well nigh brist.
7. wanting.
82. led her to the deep mill-dam.
92. Her cruel sister pushd her in.
112. And Ise mak ye.
12. wanting.
141. Shame fa the hand that I shall tak.
151. gowden hair.
152. gar . . . maiden ever mair.
16. wanting.
171. Then out and cam.
172. swimming down.
181. O father, haste and draw.
191. his dam.
192. And then. (?)
Instead of 20-22:
They raisd her wi meikle dule and care,
Pale was her cheek and green was her hair.
241. that corpse upon.
252. he 's strung.
261, 271, 281, for
tune, line, if the copy be right.
271. The next.
281. The last.
282. fause Ellen.
"Note by Ritson. 'The fragment of a very different copy of this
ballad has been communicated to J.R. by a friend at Dublin.'"
[J.C. Walker, no doubt.] |
| d. |
Jamieson, Popular Ballads and Songs, I, 48, says
that he gives his text verbatim as it was taken from the
recitation of the lady in Fifeshire (Mrs. Brown), to whom both he
and Scott were so much indebted. That this is not to be
understood with absolute strictness will appear from the
variations which are subjoined. Jamieson adds that he had
received another copy from MrsArrott of Aberbrothick, "but as it
furnished no readings by which the text could have been
materially improved," it was not used. Both Jamieson and Scott
substitute the "Binnorie" burden, "the most common and popular,"
says Scott, for the one given by Mrs. Brown, with which Mrs.
Arrott's agreed. It may be added that Jamieson's interpolations
are stanzas 20, 21, 27, etc., and not, as he says (I,
49), 19, 20, 27, etc. These interpolations also occur as such
in the manuscript.
11, sisters livd.
22. aboon.
32. he loved.
42. and sair envied.
51. Intill her bower she coudna.
52. maistly brast.
112. mak ye.
142. me o.
161. omits an.
162. came to the mouth o yon mill-dam.
182. There 's.
202. that was.
222. that were.
261. it did.
271. it playd seen.
281. thirden tune that it.
A copy in Motherwell's Manuscript, p. 239, is derived
from Jamieson's printed edition. It omits the interpolated
stanzas, and makes a few very slight changes. |
| C. |
Scott's account of his edition is as follows (II,
143, later ed., III, 287):
"It is compiled from a copy in Mrs. Brown's manuscript,
intermixed with a beautiful fragment, of fourteen verses,
transmitted to the editor by J.C. Walker, Esq., the ingenious
historian of the Irish bards. Mr. Walker, at the same time,
favored the editor with the following note: ' I am indebted to my
departed friend, Miss Brooke, for the foregoing pathetic
fragment. Her account of it was as follows: This song was
transcribed, several years ago, from the memory of an old woman,
who had no recollection of the concluding verses; probably the
beginning may also be lost, as it seems to commence abruptly.'
The first verse and burden of the fragment run thus:
"'O sister, sister, reach thy hand!
Hey ho, my Nanny, O,
And you shall be heir of all my land.
While the swan swims bonny,'"
Out of this stanza, or the corresponding
one in Mrs. Brown's copy, Scott seems to
have made his 9, 10. |
| E. |
"My mother used to sing this song." Sharpe's
BaUad Book, ed. of 1880, note, p. 129. |
| F. |
22. An wooer. |
| G. |
21. strand, with sand written above:
sand in 31. |
| I. |
12, var. in manuscript.
There was a knicht and he loved them bath.
7. The following stanza was subsequently written on an
opposite blank page, perhaps derived from D 8:
Foul fa the hand that I wad take,
To twin me and my warld's make.
102. a was, perhaps, meant to be expunged,
but is only a little blotted.
112. var. a lady or a milk-white swan.
12, 13 were written in later than the rest; at the same time,
apparently, as the stanza above (7). |
| K. |
Found among Mr. Kinloch's papers by Mr.
Macmath, and inserted by him as a note on
p. 59, vol. II, of Kinloch's manuscripts. The order
of the stanzas is there, wrongly, inverted.
12, var. I wad give you. |
| L. a. |
These fragments were communicated to Notes and Queries,
April 3, 1852, by "G.A.C.," who had heard 'The
Miller's Melody' sung by an old lady in his childhood, and who
represents himself as probably the last survivor of those who had
enjoyed the privilege of listening to her ballads. We may, there
fore, assign this version to the latter part of the 18th
century. The two four-line stanzas were sung to "a slow,
quaint strain." Two others which followed were not
remembered, "but their purport was that the body 'stopped
hard by a miller's mill,' and that this 'miller chanced to come
by,' and took it out of the water 'to make a melodye.'" G.A.C.
goes on to say: "My venerable friend's tune here became a
more lively one, and the time quicker; but I can only recollect a
few of the couplets, and these not correctly nor in order of
sequence, in which the transformation of the lady into a viol is
described." |
| b. |
Some stanzas of this four-line version, with a ludicrous
modern supplement, are given in 'The Scouring of the White
Horse,' p. 161, as from the Welsh marshes. Five out of the
first six verses are there said to be very old indeed, "the
rest all patchwork by different hands." Mr. Hughes has kindly
informed me that he derived the ballad from his father, who had
originally learned it at Ruthyn when a boy. What is material here
follows:
| 1 |
it was not a pheasant cock,
Nor yet a pheasant hen,
But O it was a lady fair
Came swimming down the stream. |
| 2 |
An ancient harper passing by
Found this poor lady's body,
To which his pains he did apply
To make a sweet melody. |
| 3 |
To cat-gut dried he her inside,
He drew out her back-bone,
And made thereof a fiddle sweet
All for to play upon. |
| 4 |
And all her hair, so long and fair,
That down her back did flow,
he did lay it up with care,
To string his fiddle bow. |
| 5 |
And what did he with her fingers,
Which were so straight and small?
O he did cut them into pegs,
To screw up his fiddoll. |
| 6 |
Then forth went he, as it might be,
Upon a summer's day,
And met a goodly company,
Who asked him in to play. |
| 7 |
Then from her bones he drew such tones
As made their bones to ache,
They sounded so like human groans
Their hearts began to quake. |
| 8 |
They ordered him in ale to swim,
For sorrow's mighty dry,
And he to share their wassail fare
Essayd right willingly. |
| 9 |
He laid his fiddle on a shelf
In that old manor-hall,
It played and sung all by itself,
And thus sung this fiddoll:
|
| 10 |
'There sits the squire, my worthy sire,
A-drinking hisself drunk,' etc., etc. |
|
| N. |
Pinkerton tells us, in the Preface to his Ancient
Scottish Poems, p. cxxxi, that "Binnorie is one half from
tradition, one half by the editor." One fourth and three
fourths would have been a more exact apportionment. The remainder
of his text, which is wholly of his invention, is as follows:
'Gae saddle to me my swiftest steid;
Her fere, by my fae, for her dethe sail bleid.'
A page cam rinning out owr the lie:
'O heavie tydings I bring,' quoth he.
'My luvely lady is far awa gane;
We weit the fairy hae her tane.
Her sister gaed wood wi dnle and rage;
Nocht cold we do her mind to suage.
"O Isabel, my sister," she wold cry,
"For thee will I weip, for thee will I die."
Till late yestrene, in an elric hour,
She lap frae aft the hichest touir.'
'Now sleip she in peace,' quoth the gallant squire;
'Her dethe was the maist that I cold require.
But I '11 main for the, my Isabel deir,
Full mony a dreiry day, bot weir.'
20. This stanza occurs also in B c (17),
and was perhaps borrowed from Pinkerton by the reviser of that
copy. |
| O. a. |
Buchan's note, II, 320: "I have seen four
or five different versions of this ballad, but
none in this dress, nor with the same chorus...
The old woman from whose recitation I took it
down says she had heard another way of it, quite
local, whose burden runs thus:
'Everinto Buchanshire, vari vari O.'"
12, hae courted. |
| b. |
Mr. Christie has "epitomized" Buchan's
copy (omitting stanzas 9-12), with these few
slight alterations from the singing of a Banffshire woman, who died in 1860, at the age of
nearly eighty:
Burden: It 's hey, etc.
22. And he courted the eldest wi mony other
thing.
31. But it fell.
52. And the eldest. |
| P. b. |
This stanza only:
There livd twa sisters in a bower,
Hey my bonnie Annie O
There cam a lover them to woo.
And the swan swims bonnie O,
And the swan swims bonnie |
| Q. |
The burden is given thus in Pop. Tales of the
West Highlands, IV, 125:
Oh ochone, ochone a rie,
On the banks of the Banna, ochone a rie. |
| R. a. |
The title 'The Three Sisters,' and perhaps
the first stanza, belongs rather to No 1 A, B,
p. 3f. |
| b. |
1. A farmer there lived in the north countree,
Bo down
And he had daughters one, two, three.
And I'll be true unto my love, if he'll be true unto me
(The burden is given as Bo down, bo down,
etc., in Popular Tales of the West Highlands, iv,
125.)
Between 1 and 2 b has:
The eldest she had a lover come,
And he fell in love with the younger one.
He bought the younger a ...
The elder she thought ...
3. wanting.
41. The sisters they walkt by the river brim.
62. my true love.
8. The miller's daughter was at the door,
As sweet as any gillyflower.
9. O father, O father, there swims a swain,
And he looks like a gentleman.
10. The miller he fetcht his line and hook,
And he fisht the fair maiden out of the brook.
111. O miller, I'll give you guineas ten,
12. The miller he took her guineas ten,
And then he popt her in again.
131. ... behind his back gate,
2. the farmer's daughter Kate.
Instead of 14:
The sister she sailed over the sea,
And died an old maid of a hundred and three.
The lover became a beggar man,
And he drank out of a rusty tin can.
b 8, 11, 12, 14, 15 are cited in Popular Tales
of the West Highlands, iv, 127. |
| c. |
1. A varmer he lived in the west countree,
Hey-down, bow-down
A varmer he lived in the west countree,
And he had daughters one, two, and dree.
And I'll be true to my love.
If my love'll be true to me.
2, 3. wanting.
41. As thay wur walking by the river's brim.
51. pray gee me thy hand.
71. So down she sank and away she swam.
8. The miller's daughter stood by the door,
As fair as any gilly-flower.
9. here swims a swan,
Very much like a drownded gentlewoman.
10. The miller he fot his pole and hook,
And he fished the fair maid out of the brook.
111. O miller, I'll gee thee guineas ten.
122. pushed the fair maid in again.
Between 12 and 13 c has,
But the crowner he cum and the justice too,
With a hue and a cry and a hullaballoo.
They hanged the miller beside his own gate
For drowning the varmer's daughter, Kate.
Instead of 14:
The sister, she fled beyond the seas,
And died an old maid among black savagees.
So I've ended my tale of the west countree,
And they calls it the Barkshire Tragedee. |
| S. |
12 Manuscript Or less (?). |
| T. |
"Sung to a peculiar and beautiful air." Allingham, p.
xxxiii. |
