There are several copies of the broadside version (A); that in the Pepys collection was printed for Thackeray and Passenger, and the ballad is No, 71 in Thackeray's list, printed 1685. 'The Dseraon Lover' was first published in Scott's Minstrelsy, 5th edition, 1812 (F). William Laidlaw, who furnished the copy, inj serted four stanzas of his own (here omitted). D (probably by the fortunate accident of being a fragment) leaves us to put our own construction upon the weird seaman; and though it retains the homely ship-carpenter, is on the whole the most satisfactory of all the versions.
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