41 ‘The laird o Clennel bears my bow, The laird o Brandon bears my brand; Wheneer they ride i the Border-side, They’ll mind the fate o the laird Troughend.’ * * * * * #A.# 10^1, 12^1, 14^1, or _for_ nor; _cf._ 8^1. 12^2. “O Parcy Reed, etc. (same as stanza 8, save at end, thee and me).” _The same abridgment and remark at 10^2, 14^2, but the last words are there given as_ me and thee. _Uniformity is to be expected._ 16^1. fare thou: _cf._ 16^3, 17^1. 194 THE LAIRD OF WARISTON #A.# ‘The Laird of Waristoun,’ Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, I, 109. #B.# ‘Laird of Wariestoun,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 217; Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 49. #C.# ‘Death of Lord Warriston,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 56. Birrell’s Diary, under the date of July 2, 1600, has the following entry: “John Kinland [Kincaid] of Waristone murderit be hes awin wyff and servant-man, and the nurische being also upone the conspiracy. The said gentilwoman being apprehendit, scho was tane to the Girth Crosse upon the 5 day of Julii, and her heid struck fra her bodie at the Can-nagait fit; quha diet verie patiently. Her nurische was brunt at the same tyme, at 4 houres in the morneing, the 5 of Julii.” P. 49. Both husband and wife belonged to houses of some note. The wife, Jean Livingston, was a daughter of John Livingston of Dunipace, “and related to many of the first families in Scotland.” Nothing seems to have been done to keep the murder from divulging. Warriston being only about a mile from Edinburgh, information very soon reached the authorities of justice, and those who were found in the house, the mistress, the nurse, and two female servants, were arrested. The crime was committed on Tuesday morning, not long after midnight. On Thursday such trial as there was took place, and it may have occupied three hours, probably less. At three o’clock on Saturday morning sentence was executed. This had been burning (_i. e._ after strangling), both for the principal and her accomplice, the nurse; but for the well-born woman, no doubt through the influence of her kindred, it was commuted to beheading. The servant-man who did the handiwork fled, but the penalty for undue devotion to his former master’s daughter overtook him within four years. He was broken on a cart-wheel with a plough-coulter.