Ed de Moel

Child Ballads - End-Notes

16. Sheath and Knife

A. b.  Motherwell's printed copy has these variations:
11. It is talked, it is talked; a variation found in the Manuscript
31. O when ... loud, loud cry.
32. an arrow frae thy bow.
41. cauld and dead.
51. loud, loud cry.
61. has houkit.
62. babie.
71. came hame.
72. dancing mang them a': this variation also in the Manuscript
91, 101. There are.
B.  "I have heard the 'Broom blooms bonnie' sung by our poor old nursery-maid as often as I have teeth in my head, but after cudgelling my memory I can make no more than the following stanzas." Scott, Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1880, p. 159.
Scott makes Effie Deans, in The Heart of Mid-Lothian, vol. I ch. 10, sing this stanza, probably of his own making:
The elfin knight sat on the brae,
      The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair
And by there came lilting a lady so gay.
      And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair

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