"The heroine of this song," says Sharpe, "was a daughter of Baillie of Castle Carey, and sister, as it is said, to the wife of Maefarlane of Gartartan." The Baillies, as Maidraent has shown, acquired Castle Cary "at a comparatively recent date," and that editor must be nearly, or quite, right in declaring the ballad to be not older than the commencement of the eighteenth century.
The broadside which contains a may probably have been printed at the beginning of the eighteenth century, at Edinburgh.
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