English and Scottish Ballads, Volume III

Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts

"O where will I get a bonny boy,
    That will win hose and shoon,--
  That will gang quickly to Sittingen's rocks,
    And bid my lady come?"                                            20

  It's out then speaks a bonny boy,
    To Earl Robert was something akin:
  "Many a time have I run thy errand,
    But this day with the tears I'll rin."

  O when he cam to Sittingen's rocks,                                 25
    To the middle of a' the ha',
  There were bells a ringing, and music playing,
    And ladies dancing a'.

  "What news, what news, my bonny boy,
    What news have ye to me?                                          30
  Is Earl Robert in very good health,
    And the ladies of your countrie?"

  "O Earl Robert's in very good health,
    And as weel as a man can be;
  But his mother this night has a drink to be druken,                 35
    And at it you must be."

  She called to her waiting-maid,
    To bring her a riding weed;
  And she called to her stable groom,
    To saddle her milk-white steed.                                   40

  But when she came to Earl Robert's bouir,
    To the middle of a' the ha',
  There were bells a ringing and sheets down hinging,
    And ladies murning a'.

  "I've come for none of his gold," she said,                         45
    "Nor none of his white monie;
  Excepting a ring of his smallest finger,
    If that you will grant me."

  "Thou'll no get none of his gold," she said.
    "Nor none of his white monie;                                     50
  Thou'll no get a ring of his smallest finger,
    Tho' thy heart should break in three."

  She set her foot unto a stone,
    Her back unto a tree;
  She set her foot unto a stone,                                      55
    And her heart did break in three!

  The one was buried in Mary's kirk,
    The other in Mary's quier;
  Out of the one there grew a bush,
    From the other a bonnie brier.                                    60

  And thir twa grew, and thir twa threw,
    Till thir twa craps drew near;
  So all the world may plainly see
    That they lov'd each other dear.




THE WEARY COBLE O' CARGILL.

From Motherwell's _Minstrelsy_, p. 230.


"This local ballad, which commemorates some real event, is given from
the recitation of an old woman, residing in the neighbourhood of Cambus
Michael, Perthshire. It possesses the elements of good poetry, and, had
it fallen into the hands of those who make no scruple of interpolating
and corrupting the text of oral song, it might have been made, with
little trouble, a very interesting and pathetic composition.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

English and Scottish Ballads, Volume III

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