This ballad was widely diffused in Scotland. "It would be useless," says Motherwell, "to enumerate the titles of the different versions which are common among reciters." The earliest known copies are of the second half of the eighteenth century. There is an English "ditty" (not a traditional ballad) of a northern lass who got harm while milking her father's ewes, which was printed in the first half of the seventeenth century. This ditty is "to a pleasant Scotch tune called The broom of Cowden Knowes," and the burden is:
With, the broome, the bonny broome, The broome of Cowden Knowes! Fain would I be in the North Countrey, To milk my dadyes ewes.
The tune was remarkably popular, and the burden is found, variously modified, in connection with several songs.
There is very little story to the English ditty, far too little to have served as a basis for the Scottish ballad. On the other hand, the English author seems to have known only the burden of the Scottish ballad and to have built his very slight tale on that.
'Half red og Sadehnand,' Kristensen, 1, 258, No, 9J, is an independent ballad, but has some of the traits of this: the maid, who is treated with great violence, asks the knight's name, as in two versions of 'The Broom of Cowdenknows;' he comes back to marry her, after she has borne twins.
Cowdenknowes is on the east bank of Leader, near Earlston, and some four or five miles from Melrose.
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