Answer to Rambling Boy- (Glas) Robertson chapbook, 1799
[From a chapbook by J & M Robertson, Saltmarket, Glasgow; 1799. This was the second part of the Rambling Boy ballad Which was published in Scotland and in the US as "Rambling Boy with the Answer."
The beginning is very similar to The Squire's Daughter, part of the Cruel Father branch where the father sends her lover to sea and after a sea battle he dies there after being shot by a cannonball. That very night his ghost visits the father and his daughter subsequently hangs her self leaving a note which blames the cruel father for her death.
Original spelling kept.
R. Matteson 2017]
ANSWER TO THE RAMBLING BOY.
A squire’s daughter near Auchnacloy,
Fell in love with a servant boy,
And when her father came to hear,
He separated her from her dear.
Now all for to encrease her pain.
He lent her true love to the main;
To act the part of a gallant tar,
On board the terrible man of war.
He had not been two months at sea,
Before he fell in a bloody fray ;
It was tins young man's lot to fall.
And lose his life by a cannon-ball.
The very night that he was slain,
His Ghost unto her father came,
With dismal groans at the bed side stood,
Neck and breast all besmear'd with blood.
Her father seeing this strange fight,
It very sore did him affright.
It was so dark, and look’d so grim,
It made him tremble in every limb.
That day three weeks his love did hear,
What happ'ned to her dearest dear;
That very night on a beam of oak,
She hung herself in her bed-rope.
Her father hearing of the sad news.
It greatly then did him confuse;
He wrung his hands and tore his hair.
Crying, Now, alas! I'm in dispair.