In notes to #B# are here given some various readings and supplementary verses which were entered by Motherwell in a copy of his Minstrelsy, without indication of their origin.[113] Motherwell made a few changes in transcribing #C# into his MS., and others in the verses which he printed in the appendix to his Minstrelsy. The copy of this ballad in Nimmo’s Songs and Ballads of Clydesdale, p. 134, was compounded from #B# and #C#. Willie orders his horse and his man to be fed, for he means to be that very night with his love Margaret. His mother would have him stay with her: he shall have the best bed in the house and the best hen in the roost, #A#; the best cock in the roost and the best sheep in the flock, #B#; a sour wind is blowing and the night will be dark, #C#. He cares for none of these, and will go. My malison drown thee in Clyde! says his mother. Clyde is roaring fearfully, but he wins through. Arrived at Margaret’s bower, he tirls at the pin and calls to her to open. A voice asks, Who is there? It is her lover, his boots full of Clyde’s water. An answer comes, as if from Margaret, that she has no lovers without and none within, and she will not open, #A#, #C#; her mother is fast asleep, and she dares make no din, #B#. Then he begs for some shelter for the night; but is told that one chamber is full of corn, another full of hay, and the third full of gentlemen, who will not go till morning. Farewell, then; he has won his mother’s malison by coming. Clyde’s water is half up over the brae, #B#, and sweeps him off his horse, #C#. Margaret wakens from a dreary dream that her love had been ‘staring’ (standing?) at the foot of her bed, #A#; had been at the gates, and nobody would let him in, #C#. Her mother informs her that her lover had really been at the gates but half an hour before. Margaret instantly gets up and goes after Willie, crying to him against the loud wind. She does not stop for the river. No more was ever seen of Willie but his hat, no more of Margaret but her comb and her snood, #A#, which might end well so, but has lost a few lines. #C# ends like the preceding ballad: Margaret finds Willie in the deepest pot in Clyde; they shall sleep together in its bed. #C# 20, 21 absurdly represents Willie’s brother as standing on the river-bank and expostulating with him; this in the dead of night.[114]