When Mary Stuart was sent to France in 1548, being - then between five and six, she had four companions "sundry gentlewomen and noblemen's sons and daughters, almost of her own age, of the which there were four in special of whom every one of them bore the same name of Mary, being of four sundry honorable houses, to wit, Fleming, Livingston, Seton, and Beaton of Creich; who remained all four with the queen in France during her residence there, and returned again in Scotland with her Majestv in the year of our Lord 1561." Lesley, History of Scotland, 1830, p. 209.
This ballad purports to relate the tragic history of one of the queen's Maries. In some of the versions her lover is said to be the king (Darnley). The ballad seems to have taken its rise in an incident which occurred at Mary's court in 1563, which involved the queen's apothecary and "a French woman that served in the queen's chamber." There is also a striking coincidence between the ballad and the fate of a Miss Hamilton who, in the reign of Peter the Great, was one of the attendants of the Russian Empress. The subject is fully discussed by Professor Child, Ballads, III, 381 ff., v, 298 f., and Mr. Andrew Lang, Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1895, pp. 381 ff.
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