The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 2 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 2 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
#I. a.# 'Bonnie Susie Cleland,' Motherwell's MS., p.
235, Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 221. #b.# 'Susie
Cleland,' Motherwell's MS., p. 179. #c.# 'Susie Cleland,'
Motherwell's MS., p. 181.
#A# was No 12 in William Tytler's Brown manuscript, and stanzas 1,
21, 22, of that copy are cited by Anderson in his letter to Percy,
Nichols's Illustrations, VII, 177. Jamieson, who made a few changes in
printing from his manuscript, attributes, by an oversight, the ballad
to Mrs Arrot: compare Popular Ballads, I, pp 66 and 59. His copy is
repeated by Motherwell, p. 71. #C#, of which no account is given by
Motherwell, is hardly more than a variety of #B#. There is a copy in
the Abbotsford manuscript, "Scottish Songs," which is more considerably
tampered with, in the way of change, omission, and insertion.[87]
All the versions are in accord as to the material points of the story.
Lady Maisry rejects the suit of all the lords in the north country,
#A#; she has given her love to an English lord. Her lover's seat is
Strawberry Castle, #D#, #E#, #F#; Adam's Tower, #H#; he lives at
London, #G#. Maisry has been at Strawberry Castle for a time, and has
there learned some unco lair, #D#, #E#.[88] It is discovered that
Maisry goes with bairn. Her brother, #A#, #H#, father, #I#, informed
to this effect, requires her to renounce her English lord, but she
refuses; her father offers her the choice of marrying an auld man or
burning, #D#. In the other versions the family set about preparations
for burning her without attempting any arrangement. Maisry, warned of
her approaching fate, calls for a boy to carry word to England, and a
light-footed and heartily devoted young messenger takes her errand.
The English lord asks if his biggins are broken, his towers won, or
is his lady lighter, and is told that his lady is to be burnt for him
that very day. Horses are instantly saddled: a black, a brown, are
foundered, a milk-white [a dapple-gray], fair fall the mare that foaled
that foal! holds out, #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#. In #D# fifteen stout steeds
are burst, yet the little foot-page runs aye before, crying, Mend your
pace an you may! Maisry, in the flames, hears her lover's horn, hears
his bridle ring, #A#, #E#, #F#, #H#. "Beet on!" she cries; "I value
you not one straw. Mend up the fire, brother; I see him coming that
will soon mend it up to thee."[89] In #A#, #H# she cries out, when her
lover appears, that if her hands had been free she would have cast out
his young son. He leaps into the fire for a last kiss; her body falls
apart, #B-G#. He threatens an awful retaliation: he will burn father
and mother, and the chief of all her kin (who, no doubt, had been
concerned in this auto da fé). Vengeance glutted, he will throw himself
into the flames, #A#, #F#; he will take the pilgrim's cloak and staff,
#C#. The foot-page shall be heir of his land, #C#; he will remember the
bonny boy that ran the errand, #E#.[90]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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