Mr. Edmonston, from whose memory this ballad was derived, notes that though stanzas are probably lost after the first, which would give some account of the king in the east wooing the lady in the west, no such verses were sung to him. He had forgotten some stanzas after the fourth, of which the substance was that the lady was carried off by fairies, that the king went in quest of her, and one day saw a company passing along a hillside, among whom he recognized his lost wife. The troop went to what seemed a great "ha-house," or castle, on the hillside. Stanzas after the eighth were also forgotten, the purport being that a messenger from behind the grey stane appeared and invited the king in.
We have here in traditional song the story of the medieval romance of Orpheus, in which fairy-land supplants Tartarus, faithful love is rewarded, and Eurydice (Heurodis, Erodys, Eroudys) is retrieved. There are three versions of this tale (edited respectively by Laing, Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, No. 3; Halliwell, Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, p. 37; and Ritson, Metrical Romancees, n, 248). See the critical edition by O. Zielke, Breslau, 1880.
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