Note B — EDINBURGH JOTTINGS.

The "dear deceiver" was said to have been her cousin, the Hon. Alexander Erskine, brother to the earl of Mar. He came to a violent death, although not in the manner suggested in the ballad. While stationed at Dunglass Castle, engaged in collecting levies for the army of the Covenanters, an angry page thrust a red-hot poker into the powder-magazine, and blew him up with a number of others, so that there was "never bone nor hyre seen of them again."