'Nae wonder, nae wonder, Gil Morrice, My lady lo'es thee weel, The fairest part of my bodie Is blacker than thy heel.' Even in so small a matter as the choice of rhymes, especially where there is any irregularity, it may be allowable to point out a parallelism. Is there not such between those in the verse descriptive of Young Waters's fettering, and those in the closing stanza of _Sir Patrick Spence_? It belongs to the idiosyncrasy of an author to make _feet_ rhyme twice over to _deep_. Finally, let us observe how like the tone as well as words of the last lines of _Young Waters_ to a certain verse in _Hardyknute_: The fainting corps of warriors lay, Ne'er to rise again. Percy surmised that _Young Waters_ related to the fate of the Earl of Moray, slain by the Earl of Huntly in 1592, not without the concurrence, as was suspected, of the king, whose jealousy, it has been surmised, was excited against the young noble by indiscreet expressions of the queen. To the same subject obviously referred the ballad of the _Bonny Earl of Murray_, which consists, however, of but six stanzas, the last of which is very like the second of _Young Waters_: O lang will his lady Look ower the Castle Downe, Ere she see the Earl of Murray Come sounding through the town. _Edom o' Gordon_ is only a modern and improved version of an old ballad which Percy found in his folio manuscript under the name of _Captain Adam Carre_. It clearly relates to a frightful act of Adam Gordon of Auchindown, when he maintained Queen Mary's interest in the north in 1571--the burning of the house of Towie, with the lady and her family within it. All that can be surmised here is that the revision was the work of the same pen with the pieces here cited--as witness, for example, the opening stanzas: It fell about the Martinmas, When the wind blew shrill and cauld,[14] Said Edom o' Gordon to his men: 'We maun draw till a hauld. 'And what a hauld shall we draw till, My merry men and me? We will gae to the house o' Rodes, To see that fair ladye.' The lady stood on her castle-wa', Beheld baith dale and down; There she was 'ware of a host of men Come riding towards the town.[15] 'O see ye not, my merry men a',[16] O see ye not what I see?' &c. In the _Jew's Daughter_ there is much in the general style to remind us of others of this group of ballads; but there are scarcely any parallel expressions. One may be cited: She rowed him in a cake of lead, Bade him lie still and sleep, She cast him in a deep draw-well, Was fifty fadom deep. [14] _Young Waters_ opens in the same manner: About Yule, when the wind blew cool. [15] We have seen the same description in both _Young Waters_ and the _Bonny Earl of Murray_. [16] Compare this with _Sir Patrick Spence_: