This ballad was composed by Lady Anne Lindsay, daughter of the earl of Balcarres (afterwards Lady Barnard). It was written to an old Scotch tune called _The Bridegroom Grat when the Sun went down_. Auld Robin Gray was her father’s herdsman. When Lady Anne was writing the ballad, and was piling distress on Jennie, she told her sister that she had sent Jamie to sea, made the mother sick, and broken the father’s arm, but wanted a fourth calamity. “Steal the cow, sister Anne,” said the little Elizabeth; and so “the cow was stolen awa’,” and the song completed. =Grayson= (_Mrs._). Brave wife who, weaponless and alone, when an Indian tries to enter the block-house by an upper window, clamps his wrist to the window sill in such a way that, as his foot slips, he is suspended by it. He hangs thus for a moment, and the wrist breaks. She lets him go, and he falls to ground without.—William Gilmore Simms, _The Yemassee_ (1835). =Graysteel=, the sword of Kol, fatal to its owner. It passed into several hands, and always brought ill-luck with it.—_Icelandic Edda._ =Gray Swan=. Ship in which a sailor-boy sails away, not to return for twenty years, when he comes back to his mother and incites her to defence of the missing son by feigning to blame him for his twenty years’ silence. Her spirited vindication of her darling causes him to discover himself to her.—Alice Cary, _Poems_ (1876). =Great Captain= (_The_), Gonsalvo de Cor´dova, _el Gran Capitan_ (1453-1515). Manuel I. [Comnēnus], emperor of Trebizond, is so called also (1120, 1143-1180). =Great Cham of Literature=, Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). =Great Commoner= (_The_), William Pitt (1759-1806). =Great Dauphin= (_The_), Louis, the son of Louis XIV. (1661-1711). ⁂ The “Little Dauphin” was the duke of Bourgoyne, son of the Great or Grand Dauphin. Both died before Louis XIV. =Great Duke= (_The_), the duke of Wellington (1769-1852). Bury the Great Duke With an empire’s lamentation; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation. Tennyson. =Great-Head= or CANMORE, Malcolm III. of Scotland (* 1057-1093). =Great Heart=. The valiant guide reappears in George Wood’s satire. _Modern Pilgrims_, published in 1855. =Great-heart= (_Mr._), the guide of Christiana and her family to the Celestial City. Bunyan, _Pilgrim’s Progress_, ii. (1685). =Great Magician= (_The_) or _The Great Magician of the North_, Sir Walter Scott. So called by Professor John Wilson (1771-1832). =Great Marquis= (_The_), James Graham, marquis of Montrose (1612-1650). I’ve told thee how we swept Dundee, And tamed the Lindsays’ pride; But never have I told thee yet How the Great Marquis died. Aytoun.