Note 107 — 214 THE BRAES O YARROW

James Chalmers, in Archæologia Scotica, III, 261, says that Hamilton’s ballad was contributed to the second volume of the Tea Table Miscellany in 1724. It is not in the Dublin edition of 1729. It is at p. 242 of the London edition of 1733; in Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius, II, 34, of the same year; at p. 46 of the first edition of [Hamilton’s] Poems on Several Occasions, Glasgow, 1748. The author died in 1754. The copy in the second edition of Hamilton’s Poems, 1760, p. 67, says Chalmers, is somewhat altered.

In Hamilton’s ballad it is a lover, and not a husband, who is slain, and he is thrown into the Yarrow. It is a question whether Hamilton’s ballad did not affect tradition in the case of J, K, L, particularly L. The editorial Douglas in A 11 is from Hamilton 24. ‘Wi her tears she bathed his wounds,’ I 13³, looks like Hamilton 9¹. The ‘dule and sorrow’ of O 4² is a recurring phrase in Hamilton, and ‘slain the comeliest swain,’ O 4³, is in Hamilton 6³.

In Hamilton’s ballad the slayer of the lover endeavors to induce the lady to marry him, as is done in the Icelandic ballad spoken of under No 89, II, 297 f.

A song by Ramsay, T. T. M., Dublin, 1729, p. 139, has nearly the same first four lines as Hamilton’s ballad, and these have been thought to be traditional.