4 And all her hair, so long and fair, That down her back did flow, O he did lay it up with care, To string his fiddle bow. 5 And what did he with her fingers, Which were so straight and small? O he did cut them into pegs, To screw up his fiddoll. 6 Then forth went he, as it might be, Upon a summer's day, And met a goodly company, Who asked him in to play. | 7 | Then from her bones he drew such tones | As made their bones to ache, | They sounded so like human groans | Their hearts began to quake. | 8 | They ordered him in ale to swim,-- | For sorrow's mighty dry,-- | And he to share their wassail fare | Essayd right willingly. 9 He laid his fiddle on a shelf In that old manor-hall, It played and sung all by itself, And thus sung this fiddoll: | 10 | 'There sits the squire, my worthy sire, | A-drinking hisself drunk,' etc., etc. #N.# _Pinkerton tells us, in the Preface to his ~Ancient Scottish Poems~, p. cxxxi, that "~Binnorie is one half from tradition, one half by the editor~." One fourth and three fourths would have been a more exact apportionment. The remainder of his text, which is wholly of his invention, is as follows_: 'Gae saddle to me my swiftest steid; Her fere, by my fae, for her dethe sall bleid.' A page cam rinning out owr the lie: 'O heavie tydings I bring,' quoth he. 'My luvely lady is far awa gane; We weit the fairy hae her tane. Her sister gaed wood wi dule and rage; Nocht cold we do her mind to suage. "O Isabel, my sister," she wold cry, "For thee will I weip, for thee will I die." Till late yestrene, in an elric hour, She lap frae aft the hichest touir.' 'Now sleip she in peace,' quoth the gallant squire; 'Her dethe was the maist that I cold require. But I'll main for the, my Isabel deir, Full mony a dreiry day, hot weir.' 20. _This stanza occurs also in #B c# (17), and was perhaps borrowed from Pinkerton by the reviser of that copy._ #O. a#. _Buchan's note, II, 320_: "I have seen four or five different versions of this ballad, but none in this dress, nor with the same chorus.... The old woman from whose recitation I took it down says she had heard another way of it, quite local, whose burden runs thus: 'Ever into Buchanshire, vari vari O.'" 1^2. hae courted. #b.#