[20] The above three verses are in the version printed in Lawrie and Symington's collection, 1791. The queen's Maries are also introduced in _Mary Hamilton_, who, indeed, is represented as one of them: Yestreen the queen she had four Maries; The night, she has but three; There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton, And Mary Carmichael and me. On arriving at love Gregory's castle, beside the sea, the lady calls: 'Oh, open the door, love Gregory; Oh, open and let me in; For the wind blaws through my yellow hair, And the rain draps o'er my chin.' He being in a dead sleep, his mother answers for him, and turns from the door the forlorn applicant, who then exclaims: 'Tak down, tak down the mast o' gowd; Set up a mast o' tree; It disna become a forsaken lady To sail sae royallie. 'Tak down, tak down the sails o' silk; Set up the sails o' skin; Ill sets the outside to be gay, When there's sic grief within.' Gregory then awakes: O quickly, quickly raise he up, And fast ran to the strand, And there he saw her, fair Annie, Was sailing frae the land. * * * The wind blew loud, the sea grew rough, And dashed the boat on shore; Fair Annie floated on the faem, But the babie raise no more. * * * And first he kissed her cherry cheek, And syne he kissed her chin; And syne he kissed her rosy lips-- There was nae breath within. The resemblance of these verses to several of the preceding ballads,[21] and particularly to _Sir Patrick Spence_, and their superiority in delicacy of feeling and in diction to all ordinary ballad poetry, is very striking. It chances that there is here, as in _Sir Patrick_, one word peculiarly _detective_--namely, strand, as meaning the shore. In the Scottish language, strand means a rivulet, or a street-gutter--never the margin of the sea. [21] A passage in _Hardyknute_ maybe quoted as bearing a marked resemblance to one of the above verses: Take aff, take aff his costly jupe, Of gold well was it twined, &c.