From the _Border Minstrelsy_. The ideas are mainly pre-Christian; the Brig o’ Dread occurs in Islamite and Iroquois belief, and in almost all mythologies the souls have to cross a River. Music for this dirge is given in Mr. Harold Boulton’s and Miss Macleod’s _Songs of the North_. THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN.—p. 145 This version was taken down by Sir Walter Scott from his mother’s recitation, for Jamieson’s book of ballads. Jamieson later quarrelled bitterly with Sir Walter, as letters at Abbotsford prove. A variant is given by Kinloch, and a longer, less poetical, but more historically accurate version is given by Buchan. The House of Waristoun is, or lately was, a melancholy place hanging above a narrow lake, in the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, near the Water of Leith. Kincaid was the name of the Laird; according to Chambers, the more famous lairds of Covenanting times were Johnstons. Kincaid is said to have treated his wife cruelly, wherefore she, or her nurse, engaged one Robert Weir, an old servant of her father (Livingstone of Dunipace), to strangle the unhappy man in his own bedroom (July 2, 1600). The lady was beheaded, the nurse was burned, and, later, Weir was also executed. The line “I wish that ye may sink for sin” occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle— “And that all for the black dinner Earl Douglas got therein.” MAY COLVEN.—p. 147 From Herd’s MS. Versions occur in Polish, German, Magyar, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and in French. The ballad is here localised on the Carrick coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. Bugge regards this widely diffused ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes. If so, the legend is _diablement changé en route_. More probably the origin is a _Märchen_ of a kind of _Rakshasa_ fatal to women. Mr. Child has collected a vast mass of erudition on the subject, and by no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge’s ingenious hypothesis. JOHNIE FAA.—p. 150 From Pinkerton’s Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical. “Sir John Faa,” in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently, is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett’s novel, _The Raiders_, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as is known, in Ramsay’s _Tea Table Miscellany_. HOBBIE NOBLE.—p. 152 The hero recurs in _Jock o’ the Side_, and Jock o’ the Mains is an historical character, that is, finds mention in authentic records, as Scott points out. The Armstrongs were deported in great numbers, as “an ill colony,” to Ulster, by James I. Sir Herbert Maxwell’s _History of Dumfries and Galloway_ may be consulted for these and similar reivers. THE TWA SISTERS.—p. 157