XIII.

LADY ANNE BOTHWELL'S LAMENT.

A SCOTTISH SONG.

HE subject of this pathetic ballad the Editor once thought might possibly relate to the Earl of Bothwell, and his desertion of his wife Lady Jean Gordon, to make room for his marriage with the Queen of Scots. But this opinion he now believes to be groundless; indeed Earl Bothwell's age, who was upwards of 60 at the time of that marriage, renders it unlikely that he should be the object of so warm a passion as this elegy supposes. He has been since informed, that it entirely refers to a private story: A young lady of the name of Bothwell, or rather Boswell, having been, together with her child, deserted by her husband or lover, composed these affecting lines herself; which here are given from a copy in the Editor's folio MS. corrected by another in Allan Ramsay's Miscellany.

[The young lady alluded to above has since been set aside for the Hon. Anne Bothwell, daughter of Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney. Mr. James Maidment, in his elegant edition of Scottish Ballads and Songs (vol. ii. 1868), writes: "The late Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, Esquire, whose knowledge of antiquated scandal was extraordinary, found in a MS. history of the family of Bothwell by Father Hay, that Adam Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, had a daughter named 'Anne, who fell with child to a son of the Earl of Marre.' Anne was the sister of the first Lord Holyroodhouse (created in 1607), and her seducer was Alexander, third son of John, seventh Earl of Mar, a cousin of her own, considered one of the handsomest men of his day. This is all very well for conjecture, but it is nothing more. The ballad does not appear to have been associated with a Bothwell, or in fact with any named person, until more than a century after it was written. In the Folio MS. it is simply called Balowe, and Percy therefore might well have hesitated before he gave it the heading he has, and before he Scotticised all the English words. The four earliest versions are in the following books: 1. Richard Brome's Comedy of the Northern Lass, or the Nest of Fools, printed in 1632, but acted somewhat earlier; 2. Percy Folio; 3. Pinkerton's MS. (1625-49), in the possession of David Laing; 4. John Gamble's MS., 1649;

5. Elizabeth Rogers' MS., 1658. Mr. Chappell drew up the following very valuable note for the edition of the Percy Folio (vol. iii. p. 518), which puts the matter very clearly:

"Baloo is a sixteenth-century ballad, not a seventeenth. It is alluded to by several of our early dramatists, and the tune is to be found in an early Elizabethan MS. known as William Ballet's Lute Book, as well as in Morley's Consort Lessons, printed in 1599. The words and tune are together in John Gamble's Music Book, a MS. in the possession of Dr. Rimbault, (date 1649,) and in Elizabeth Rogers's Virginal Book, in the library of the British Museum (Addit. MS. 10,337). The last is dated 1658, but the copy may have been taken some few years after. Baloo was so popular a subject that it was printed as a street ballad, with additional stanzas, just as 'My lodging it is on the cold ground' and other popular songs were lengthened for the same purpose. It has been reprinted in that form by Evans, in his Old Ballads, Historical and Ñarrative, edit. 1810, vol. i. p. 259. The title is 'The New Balow; or A Wenches Lamentation for the loss of her Sweetheart: he having left her a babe to play with, being the fruits of her folly.' The particular honour of having been the 'wench' in question was first claimed for 'Lady Anne Bothwell' in Part iii. of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, published by Watson in Edinburgh in 1711. Since that date Scotch antiquaries have been very busy in searching into the scandalous history of the Bothwell family, to find out which of the Lady Annes might have been halla-balooing.

"May we not release the whole race from this imputation? The sole authority for the charge is Watson's Collection! the same book that ascribes to the unfortunate Montrose the song of 'My dear and only love, take heed,' and tacks it as a second part to his 'My dear and only love, I pray.' Shade of Montrose! how must you be ashamed of your over-zealous advocate! Let us examine whether the spirit of 'Lady Anne Bothwel' has more reason to be grateful. Among the stanzas ascribed to her by Watson are the two following, which are not to be found in any English copy:

'I take my fate from best to worse
That I must needs now be a nurse,
And lull my young son in my lap.
From me, sweet orphan, take the pap:
Balow, my boy, thy mother mild

Shall sing, as from all bliss exil'd.'

"In the second we find the inducement supposed to have been offered by Lady Anne's lover:

'I was too credulous at the first
To grant thee that a maiden durst,
And in thy bravery thou didst vaunt
That I no maintenance should want: (!)
Thou swear thou lov'd, thy mind is moved,
Which since no otherwise has proved.'

"Comment is unnecessary. Can any one believe that such lines were written by or for any lady of rank? Yet they were copied as Lady Anne's by Allan Ramsay, and polished in his usual style. They have been polished and repolished by subsequent editors, but to little avail, for they remain great blots upon a good English ballad. There is not a Scotch word, nor even one peculiar to the North of England, in the whole of Watson's ver sion."

This attempt to dispute the Scottish origin of the ballad is strongly resented by the editor of the Ballad Minstrelsy of Scotland, Glasgow, 1871. At all events the fact remains that the title Lady Anne Bothwell's Balow" cannot be traced farther back than Watson's Collection, published in 1711.]

B

ALOW,1 my babe, lye still and sleipe!
It grieves me sair to see thee weipe:
If thoust be silent, Ise be glad,
Thy maining maks my heart ful sad.
Balow, my boy, thy mothers joy,
Thy father breides me great annoy.

Balow, my babe, ly stil and sleipe,
It grieves me sair to see thee weepe.

Whan he began to court my luve,
And with his sugred wordes* to muve,

* When sugar was first imported into Europe, it was a very great dainty; and therefore the epithet sugred is used by all our old writers metaphorically to express extreme and delicate sweetness. (See above, No. XI. v. 10.) Sugar at present is cheap and common; and therefore suggests now a coarse and vulgar idea.

His faynings fals, and flattering cheire
To me that time did not appeire:
But now I see, most cruell hee
Cares neither for my babe nor mee.

Balow, &c.

15

Lye still, my darling, sleipe a while,
And when thou wakest, sweitly smile:
But smile not, as thy father did,
To cozen maids: nay God forbid!
Bot yett I feire, thou wilt
gae neire
Thy fatheris hart, and face to beire.

Balow, &c.

I cannae chuse, but ever will
Be luving to thy father still:
Whair-eir he whair-eir he ryde,
gae,
My luve with him doth still abyde:
In weil or wae, whair-eir he gae,
Mine hart can neire depart him frae.

Balow, &c.

Bot doe not, doe not, prettie mine,
To faynings fals thine hart incline:
Be loyal to thy luver trew,

20

25

30

And nevir change hir for a new :
If gude or faire, of hir have care,

For womens banning's' wonderous sair.

35

Balow, &c.

Bairne, sin thy cruel father is gane,

Thy winsome smiles maun eise my paine;
My babe and I'll together live,

He'll comfort me when cares doe grieve:
My babe and I right saft will ly,

And quite forgeit man's cruelty.

40

['1 cursing.]

Balow, &c

Fareweil, fareweil, thou falsest youth,
That evir kist a womans mouth!
I wish all maides be warnd by mee
Nevir to trust mans curtesy;
For if we doe bot chance to bow,
They'le use us then they care not how.
Balow, my babe, ly stil, and sleipe,
It grives me sair to see thee weipe.

45

50

XIV.

THE MURDER OF THE KING OF SCOTS.

HE catastrophe of Henry Stewart, lord Darnley, the unfortunate husband of Mary Q. of Scots, is the subject of this ballad. It is here related in that partial, imperfect manner in which such an event would naturally strike the subjects of another kingdom, of which he was a native. Henry appears to have been a vain, capricious, worthless young man, of weak understanding, and dissolute morals. But the beauty of his person, and the inexperience of his youth, would dispose mankind to treat him with an indulgence, which the cruelty of his murder would afterwards convert into the most tender pity and regret: and then imagination would not fail to adorn his memory with all those virtues he ought to have possessed. This will account for the extravagant elogium bestowed upon him in the first stanza, &c.

Henry lord Darnley was eldest son of the earl of Lennox, by the lady Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII. and daughter of Margaret queen of Scotland by the earl of Angus, whom that princess married after the death of James IV.-Darnley, who had been born and educated in England, was but in his 21st year, when he was murdered, Feb. 9, 1567-8. This crime was perpetrated by the E. of Bothwell, not out of respect to the memory of Riccio, but in order to pave the way for his own marriage with the queen

This ballad (printed, with a few corrections, from the Editor's folio MS.) seems to have been written soon after Mary's escape into England in 1568, see v. 65.-It will be remembered at v. 5, that this princess was Q. dowager of France, having been first married to Francis II. who died Dec. 4, 1560.