A made-up copy from Scott’s edition of 1833. This ballad has caused a great deal of controversy. Queen Mary had no Mary Hamilton among her Four Maries. No Marie was executed for child-murder. But we know, from Knox, that ballads were recited against the Maries, and that one of the Mary’s chamberwomen was hanged, with her lover, a pottinger, or apothecary, for getting rid of her infant. These last facts were certainly quite basis enough for a ballad, the ballad echoing, not history, but rumour, and rumour adapted to the popular taste. Thus the ballad might have passed unchallenged, as a survival, more or less modified in time, of Queen Mary’s period. But in 1719 a Mary Hamilton, a Maid of Honour, of Scottish descent, was executed in Russia, for infanticide. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe conceived that this affair was the origin of the ballad, and is followed by Mr. Child. We reply (1) The ballad has almost the largest number of variants on record. This is a proof of antiquity. Variants so many, differing in all sorts of points, could not have arisen between 1719, and the age of Burns, who quotes the poem. (2) This is especially improbable, because, in 1719, the old vein of ballad poetry had run dry, popular song had chosen other forms, and no literary imitator could have written Mary Hamilton in 1719. (3) There is no example of a popular ballad in which a contemporary event, interesting just because it is contemporary, is thrown back into a remote age. (4) The name, Mary Hamilton, is often _not_ given to the heroine in variants of the ballad. She is of several names and ranks in the variants. (5) As Mr. Child himself remarked, the “pottinger” of the real story of Queen Mary’s time occurs in one variant. There was no “pottinger” in the Russian affair. All these arguments, to which others might be added, seem fatal to the late date and modern origin of the ballad, and Mr. Child’s own faith in the hypothesis was shaken, if not overthrown. KINMONT WILLIE.—p. 45