Fair Flower o Northumberland- Stirling (Edin) 1863
[From "James Gibb's Manuscript," 1863. Harvard College Library description of his MS: "Twenty-one ballads written down from the recitation of his mother. Derived by Mrs Gibb from her grandmother. They 'very nearly represent,' he says, 'the form in which the ballads were recited about the beginning of the century in the howes of Angus and Mearns." Obviously there were other collected version and MS no. 8 has this fragment.
According to the Harvard Library Bulletin (Volume 25) p. 145, 1977: "James Gibb, whom Campbell introduced as a son-in-law of his servant and a man of literary interests, was an Edinburgh Post Office official. He wrote to Campbell on 2 September 1881 from Joppa, near Edinburgh, with an account of the collection he had made eighteen years before and enclosing samples from it: Dear Sir, I enclose copies of fragmentary versions of one or two ballads which either I have not seen in print or which differ in some respects from the printed versions."
R. Matteson 2018]
'The Fair Flower o Northumberland,' from Jeannie Stirling, a young girl, as learned from her grandmother as collected by James Gibb of Joppa, no date but by 1863.
1 * * * *
She stole the keys from her father's bed-head,
O but her love it was easy won!
She opened the gates, she opened them wide,
She let him out o the prison strong.
2 She went into her father's stable,
O but her love it was easy won!
She stole a steed that was both stout and strong,
To carry him hame frae Northumberland.
* * * * *
3 'I'll be cook in your kitchen,
Noo sure my love has been easy won!
I'll serve your own lady with hat an with hand,
For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'
4 'I need nae cook in my kitchin,
O but your love it was easy won!
Ye'll serve not my lady with hat or with hand,
For ye maun gae back to Northumberland.'
5 When she gaed hame, how her father did ban!
'O but your love it was easy won!
A fair Scottish girl, not sixteen years old,
Was once the fair flower o Northumberland!'