This ballad was known before 1700; how much earlier it is to be put cannot be ascertained. There is, however, nothing in the language of the piece as it stands which obliges us to assign it a much higher antiquity. It is here given according to the copy in Herd's Manuscripts. (A a), which he received in 1795 from Andrew Plummer. Scott's version in the Minstrelsy agrees substantially, except for his interpolations. B (from Glenriddell's Manuscripts.) is defective and corrupt, and C (from an Abbotsford Manuscript) is a fragment. Various attempts have been made to find an historical foundation for 'The Outlaw Murray,' but the ballad corresponds to nothing that is known, or even probably surmised, in the relations between the Murrays and the Scottish kings.
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