In #A d# 7 Lady Ogilvie asks the favor of Argyle that he will take her to a high hill-top that she may _not_ see the burning of Airlie; the passage is of course corrupt. In #A g# 7 she more sensibly asks that her face may not be turned that way. In #C a# 5, 6, #b# 5, 6, the rational request is made that she may be taken to some dark dowey glen[35] to avoid the sight; but Argyle leads her “down to the top of the town,” and bids her look at the plundering, #a#; sets her upon a bonnie knowe-tap, and bids her look at Airlie fa’ing, #b#. #D# 7, 8, goes a step further. The lady asks that she may be thrown over the castle-wall rather than see the plundering; Argyle lifts her up ‘sae rarely’ and throws her over, and she never saw it. In #C a# 8 Argyle would have Lord Airlie informed that one kiss from his lady would have saved all the plundering. In #D# 5 he tells Lady Ogilvie that if she had surrendered on the first demand there would have been no plundering; and this assurance he repeats to ‘Captain’ Ogilvie, whom he meets on his way home. #A b# 2, #D# 1, 2, represent Argyle to be acting under the orders of Montrose, or in concert with him. A piece in five or six stanzas which appears, with variations, in Cromek’s Remains, p. 195, Hogg’s Jacobite Relics, II, 151, Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, III, 218, under the caption of ‘Young Airly’ (the title of #C b# also in Cromek), moves forward the burning of Airlie to “the 45;” not very strangely (if there is anything traditional in these verses), when we consider the prominence of the younger Lord Ogilvie and his wife among the supporters of Charles Edward. (The first three of Cromek’s stanzas are transcribed into Campbell MSS, I, 187.) No doubt the Charlie and Prince Charlie of some versions of our ballad were understood by the reciters to be the Young Chevalier. The Committee of Estates, June 12, 1640, gave commission to the Earl of Argyle to rise in arms against certain people, among whom was the Earl of Airlie, as enemies to religion and unnatural to their country, and to pursue them with fire and sword until they should be brought to their duty or else utterly subdued and rooted out. The Earl of Airlie had gone to England, fearing lest he should be pressed to subscribe the Covenant, and had left his house to the keeping of his eldest son, Lord Ogilvie. Montrose, who had signed the commission as one of the Committee, but was not inclined to so strenuous proceedings, invested Airlie, forced a surrender, and put a garrison in the place to hold it for the “public.” Argyle did not interpret his commission in this mild way. He took Airlie in hand in the beginning of July, and caused both this house and that of Forthar, belonging to Lord Ogilvie, to be pillaged, burned, and demolished. Thereafter he fell upon the lands both of the proprietor and his tenantry, and carried off or destroyed “their whole goods, gear, corns, cattle, horse, nolt, sheep,” and left nothing but bare bounds.