There was no pity for the two lords, 115 Where they were lying slain, All was for Lady Maiserey: In that bower she gaed brain! There was no pity for the two lords, When they were lying dead, 120 All was for Lady Maiserey: In that bower she went mad! "O get to me a cloak of cloth, A staff of good hard tree; If I have been an evil woman, 125 I shall beg till I die. "For ae bit I'll beg for Childe Vyet, For Lord Ingram I'll beg three, All for the honourable marriage, that At Mary Kirk he gave me!" 130 4. The less was their bonheur. MOTHERWELL. 70, she was neen. Motherwell. 76, gold. 78, mould. N. C. G. LADY MAISRY. This ballad, said to be very popular in Scotland, was taken down from recitation by Jamieson, and is extracted from his collection, vol. i. p. 73. A different copy, from Motherwell's _Minstrelsy_, p. 234, is given in the Appendix. Another, styled _Young Prince James_, may be seen in Buchan's _Ballads_, vol. i. 103. _Bonnie Susie Cleland_, Motherwell, p. 221, is still another version. In _Lady Maisry_ we seem to have the English form of a tragic story which, starting from Denmark, has spread over almost all the north of Europe, that of _King Waldemar and his Sister_. Grundtvig's collection gives seven copies of the Danish ballad upon this subject (_Kong Valdemar og hans Söster_, No. 126), the oldest from a manuscript of the beginning of the 17th century. Five Icelandic versions are known, one Norse, one Faroish, five Swedish (four of them in Arwidsson, No. 53, _Liten Kerstin och Fru Sofia_), and several in German, as _Graf Hans von Holstein und seine Schwester Annchristine_, Erk, _Liederhort_, p. 155; _Der Grausame Bruder_, Erk, p. 153, and Hoffmann, _Schlesische Volkslieder_, No. 27; _Der Grobe Bruder_, _Wunderhorn_, ii. 272; _Der Pfalzgraf am Rhein_, _id._ i. 259, etc.; also a fragment in Wendish. The relationship of the English ballad to the rest of the cycle can perhaps be easiest shown by comparison with the simplified and corrupted German versions. The story appears to be founded on facts which occurred during the reign and in the family of the Danish king, Waldemar the First, sometime between 1157 and 1167. Waldemar is described as being, with all his greatness, of a relentless and cruel disposition (_in ira pertinax_; _in suos tantum plus justo crudelior_). Tradition, however, has imputed to him a brutal ferocity beyond belief. In the ballad before us, Lady Maisry suffers for her weakness by being burned at the stake, but in the Danish, Swedish, and German ballads, the king's sister is beaten to death with leathern whips, by her brother's own hand. "Er schlug sie so sehre, er schlug sie so lang, Bis Lung und Leber aus dem Leib ihr sprang!"