Bluegrass Messengers

Mrs. Brown's "Lass of Roch Royal" and the Golden Age of Scottish Balladry

Mrs. Brown's "Lass of Roch Royal" and the Golden Age of Scottish Balladry
by Thomas Pettitt
by Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung, 29. Jahrg. (1984), pp. 13-31

Mrs. Brown's "Lass of Roch Royal" and the Golden Age of Scottish Balladry
By THOMAS PETTITT (Odense)

If on turning to the ballads of Mrs. Brown of Falkland the ballad-scholar suddenly feels at home in familiar country with well-marked contours and boundaries, there are good reasons for it. It is not merely that the later 18th century was a 'golden age' of balladry in Scotland, if we merely mean by this that there were more and better ballads produced and sung at this time than at any other, or anywhere else. The fact of the matter is that our inherited notions of what a ballad ought to be are based precisely on this phase in the evolution of popular narrative song, and on the models furnished by Mrs. Brown in particular. The final irrevocable moment in this development was the publication in 1882-98 of the third edition of Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. While the earlier editions had contained a miscellany of popular narratives and lyrics, somewhat in the manner of Percy's Reliques, this new drastically revised edition aimed at comprehensive coverage of a single genre, by providing "every valuable copy of every known ballad" [1]. Child's collection of 305 ballads was long considered definitive and exhaustive, and since Child himself never formulated an explicit definition of the ballad, there has been tacit agreement that the collection itself defines the ballad, or that the genre should be defined to include as many "Child ballads" as possible.

It is now some time however since the integrity of the collection has been challenged. It has been pointed out that no consistent pattern emerges from examining Child's omissions and inclusions, and the reasons he gives for them [2], and that both the selection and arrangement of the materials obscure the evolution of the form and style of popular narrative song over the centuries [3]. Both of these objections are related to the additional problem of geography, for it does not yet seem to have been sufficiently appreciated that The English and Scottish Popular Ballads is essentially an anthology of Scottish ballads, with occasional English analogues, and some English pieces which approximate more or less closely to the characteristics of the exemplary Scottish models [4]. Of the 305 ballads, only 61 lack Scottish versions, and 36 of these are the easily separable Outlaw Ballads, of whose ballad status Child is anyway doubtful [5]. For more than half the ballads, 158, Child provides Scottish versions only. A review of his sources, confirmed by Child's own remarks in the "Advertizement" prefacing the collection, reveals that the bulk of "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" belong essentially and primarily to Scottish tradition of the last two decades of the 18th century and the first two of the 19th, as represented by the collections of Herd, Jamieson, Scott, Kinloch, Motherwell and Buchan, and the ballad manuscripts of Mrs. Brown of Falkland. It is these sources which imposed on Child a notion of ballad characteristics which is essentially and peculiarly that of 18th century Scotland, and which we, knowingly or unknowingly, have inherited from him. It is no coincidence that some of the best-known ballads, those which still, in our own minds, define the ballads for us, are known only in Scottish tradition- "Tam Lin", "Sir Patrick Spens", "Clerk Saunders", "Gil Brenton", "Willie's Lady" - or are customarily anthologized or discussed in their Scottish forms - "Edward", "Babylon", "Lizie Wan", "Young Beichan", "Lamkin". The inevitable corollary to this is that popular narrative songs of other times, places and contexts can never match in all respects the "ballads" of 18th century Scotland, and their admission to the canon becomes unavoidably a matter of subjective, and thoroughly artificial, assessment.

Among these Scottish materials, it was undoubtedly the ballads of Mrs. Brown of Falkland which played the most significant and decisive role. In a revealing remark, Child says that to Mrs. Brown's ballads, "no Scottish ballads are superior in kind" [6]. The final qualification should be given due weight: they are not merely the best ballads, but the best species of ballad. Even quantitatively, Mrs. Brown's contribution was considerable: in the last two decades of the 18th century she provided the early collectors with over thirty ballads, all of which duly appear in Child's collection, 24 of them accorded prominence as A-versions. No other individual singer can match this contribution. But qualitatively her impact was even more significant. With the exception of one small fragment, all the songs provided by Mrs. Brown were acceptable as ballads, a characteristic which is shared by no other corpus of materials of so early a date. Whether by accident or design, Mrs. Brown provided the ballad collectors with exactly what they wanted, and whether she provided them with their concept of the ballad, or merely confirmed notions already maturing, the result was eminently satisfactory to them [7].

This enthusiasm, as we have seen, was communicated to Child, and through him to subsequent scholarship. While we have long been accustomed to Mrs. Brown's "Lass of Roch Royal" and the Golden Age of Scottish Balladry refer to "Child ballads", it might, historically speaking, be more accurate to speak of "Brown ballads", for Child seems to have felt that a ballad is a song which approximates as closely as possible to one of Mrs. Brown's. Concluding his study of the popular ballad, David C. Fowler hailed Mrs. Brown as "the most important single contributer to the canon of English and Scottish popular ballads" [8]. It would have been even more to the point to assert, as a beginning rather than a conclusion to the study, that no one contributed more to determining the canon of English and Scottish ballads, than Anna Gordon Brown.

The bulk of Mrs. Brown's ballads survive in three manuscript collections, all of which provided major contributions to the important early ballad anthologies [9].

1. The Jamieson-Brown MS, compiled in 1783 by Robert (later Professor) Scott, Mrs. Brown's nephew, from her recitation, at the request of the musicologist William Tytler. It contains twenty texts of 19 ballads (there being two distinct versions of "Young Beichan"). It was never sent to Tytler, but was later given to Robert Jamieson, who used it for his Popular Ballads and Songs, 1806. All the texts appear in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The manuscripits now in the Library of the University of Edinburgh.

2. The Tytler-Brown MS, compiled for William Tytler later in 1783 to replacet he first MS, which did not give the tunes. This time Robert Scott noted both words and tunes from Mrs. Brown's recitation. The fifteen ballads in this MS are selected from among those in the Jamieson-Brown MS, which it is clear Mrs. Brown had before her during the compilation of the new collection. The Tytler-Brown MS was leant to Sir Walter Scott, who used it, after his own fashion, in compiling his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. It could not be traced when Child was compiling his collection, so he had to make do with two derivative manuscripts, one containing the complete texts of two ballads, the other giving the first stanza of each of the ballads. Since 1920 scholars have had available the complete transcript of the MS made by Joseph Ritson before it was misplaced, and the MS itself recently turned up among the papers of the Tytler family at Aldourie Castle, Inverness, and photographic copies are gradually being acquired by academicc entres.

3. The Fraser Tytler-Brown MS was compiled in 1800 for Sir Walter Scott, who was in quest of more material for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Mrs. Brown providedn ine ballads (without music), which she apparently wrote down herself. Two of them duplicate ballads already recorded in the Jamieson-Brown MS of 1783. Child printed all nine texts. The MS is now at Aldourie Castle.

A few further ballads are preserved in other sources. In 1800 Mrs. Brown met Robert Jamieson, who was collecting materials for his Popular Ballads and Songs, and Jamieson "wrote down from her unpremeditated recitation about a dozen pieces" [10]. Jamieson's notes from this occasion do not survive, but five of these ballads he eventually published in his collection, whence they were available to Child, who printed all of them. They do not duplicate ballads already available in the three major MS's. In subsequent correspondance, Mrs. Brown furnished Jamieson with two further ballads, one being an "improved" version of a ballad Jamieson had already obtained at their meeting earlier. These two texts and their covering letter now form part of an appendix prefacing the Jamieson-Brown MS, and so were available to Child, who printed both of them.

Mrs. Brown's ballad repertoire, as it survives in these records, and as made available by Child, is as follows:

5A "Gil Brenton"
6A "Willie's Lady"
10B "Twa Sisters"
11A "The Cruel Brother"
32 "King Henry"
34B "Kemp Owyne"
35 "Allison Gross"
37A "Thomas Rhymer"
42A "Clerk Colvill"
53A, C "Young Beichan"
62E "Fair Annie"
63B "Child Waters"
65A "Ladie Maisrie"
76D, E "The Lass of Roch Royal"
82 "The Bonny Birdy"
89 "Fause Foodrage"
90A "Jellon Graeme"
91C "Fair Mary"
92A "Bonny Bee Hom"
93A "Lamkin"
96A "The Gay Goshawk"
97 "Brown Robin"
98A "Brown Adam"
99A "Johnie Scot"
101A "Willie o Douglas Dale"
102A "Willie and Earl Richard's Daughter"
103A "Rose the Red and White Lily"
155A "Sir Hugh"
203A "The Baron of Brackley"
216B "The Mother's Malison"
222A "Bonny Baby Livingston"
247 "Lady Elspat"
252C "The Kitchie-Boy"

For the full extent of Mrs. Brown's repertoire, these 33 ballads[11] should be supplemented by four "lost" ballads which Mrs. Brown offered to William Tytler in a letter in 1800, but of which no record was made, or has survived[12]:

"The Lass of Philorth" (probably Child 239, "Lord Saltoun and Archanichie")
"The Tryal of the Laird of Eycht" (Child 209, "Geordie")
"The Death of the Countess of Aboyne" (Child 235, "The Earl of Aboyne")
"TheC arryingo ff of the Heiresso f Kenady"( Child2 34, "CharlieM acPherson").

She also mentions having "heard" a version of Child 67, "Glasgerion", although no text from her seems to have survived [13].

Several points about Mrs. Brown's repertoire are striking. It is emphatically a Scottish collection, only eight of the ballads having been recovered in England[14]. The homogeneity of the collection is likewise remarkable. With few exceptions Mrs. Brown's ballads are of the romantic, frequently sentimental type, with the thwarting or destruction of true love, provoking adventures and confrontations which reveal the ressourcefulness of hero and heroine, the machinations of the villain, and which culminate in dramatic resolution or pathetic tragedy. "The Lass of Roch Royal" is a good representative of the corpus as a whole[15].

There is likewise a striking homogeneity of form: with one exception Mrs. Brown's repertoire consists exclusively of narrative songs which Child had no hesitation in characterizing as ballads, and whose ballad status is therefore enshrined by inclusion in his collection. The exception is a 10-line fragment, included in one of Mrs. Brown's letters to Jamieson, of "Alan o Maut"[16], a drinking-song also known from other collections, including broadsides, similar to the more familiar "John Barleycorn". This exception is significant in indicating that Mrs. Brown did sing songs other than "Child ballads", and that the homogeneity of her preserved repertoire results presumably from some awareness on her part of what kind of song the collectors wanted. But the impact of this extensive single-genre collection must have been decisive in moulding or confirming in the minds of the collectors such notions as they already had of the proper characteristics of the ballad genre. For it is clear that in the closing decades of the 18th century scholars had not fully discriminated the "ballad" from the other types of poetry and song in tradition: it is not until the time of Motherwell in the 1820's that we find a fully-fledged concept of the ballad as a distinct genre similar to that later applied by Child [17]. This homogeneity, whatever its cause, is certainly in impressive contrast to the miscellaneous character of the earlier collections, such as those of Allan Ramsay, Elizabeth Cochrane, Bishop Percy and David Herd.

Mrs. Brown's success among the scholars is amply confirmed by the way her repertoire and the specific Scottish 18th century tradition it represents have set the standards ever since. It is both striking and disturbing that a popular genre should in this way have been defined by the peculiar and distinct form of narrative song current in a particular place at a particular time, and that a decisive role in the process should have been played by a specific singer with an especially individual contribution of her own. That the Scottish ballad as performed by Mrs. Brown and her contemporaries is an idiosyncratic form of popular narrative song is suggested by the paucity of English analogues and the excuses which have to be made for most specifically English songs brought within the umbrella of the genre. Furthermore, a major feature of this Scottish corpus, at least of the texts that we have, is its particular mixture of oral tradition, written tradition, and individual literary talent, all of which it may be presumed likewise have characteristics peculiar to this specific time, place and milieu. Any ballad which we receive from Mrs. Brown's lips is likely to be a special amalgam of the traditional ballad as she received it, the changes she introduced within the organic processes of that tradition, the impact of printed versions, and a specific literary contribution of her own. We are fortunate in having, in Mrs. Brown's correspondance, the observations of her family, and the comments of the collectors who knew her, a rich fund of background information to an examination of her handling of ballads.

There is of course no doubt that Mrs. Brown's ballads owe much to oral tradition. In a much quoted letter, her father reports that her maternal aunt, Mrs. Farquherson, living in "a sequestered, romatic, pastoral" area of Aberdeenshire, learnt many "songs she had heard the nurses and old women sing in that neighborhood", and taught these "songs and tales of chivalry and love" to Mrs. Brown while the latter was still a child[18]. Mrs. Brown herself in a letter to Alexander Fraser Tytler confirms and supplements this, and asserts that her ballads derive exclusively from oral tradition[19]:

they are written down entirely from recollection, for I never saw one of them in print or manuscript; but I learned them all when a child, by hearing them sung by ... Mrs. Farquherson, by my own mother, and an old maid-servant that had been long in the family. The traditional features of Mrs. Brown's ballads have been exhaustively and admirably analysed by David Buchan, and need no lengthy treatment here, although it need not be conceded that these traditional features prove Mrs. Brown to have improvised her ballads during performance[20]. A glance at Mrs. Brown's 1783 text of "The Lass of Roch Royal" may illustrate some of the more pertinent features. David Fowler's suggestion that this ballad has evolved from a legend of the Accused Queen type[21] is interesting for present purposes only in that the extent of the evolution postulated requires a good period of transmission and remoulding in tradition. The ballad's traditional status is likewise suggested by the number of versions predating Mrs. Brown's performance of 1783: it is found in Elizabeth Cochrane's Manuscript Song Book of c. 1730 (Child 76A), there are two versions among David Herd's papers (Child 76B & F, the latter incomplete), and it is also found among the Roxburgh collection of broadside ballads as "The Lass of Ocram" (printed Child, ESPB, III, 510-511), from c. 1765, which Fowler suggests, on account of the rhymes, is closely connected to Scottish tradition.

Mrs. Brown's text, meanwhile, shows many of the oral features discussed by Buchan, some of which also occur in other versions, suggesting that they were likewise part of the ballad as Mrs. Brown received it from oral tradition. Buchan notes its chiastic structure, with the plaints of heroine and hero, with which it opens and closes, enclosing an inner frame of the Lass's journies to and from her lover's home, and at the centre the balance between the mother's rebuff of the Lass at the door, and the hero's discovery on awakening that the rebuff has occurred[22]. Traditional patterns are likewise observable in the distribution of material between the stanzas, most obviously in the series of question and answer balances with which the text opens (sts. 1-4) and the highly structured conversation between the Lass and the lover's mother (sts. 9-10)23. Comparing Mrs. Brown's text with the other early versions of the ballad noted above it is clear that these two clusters of patternings belong to the tradition of the ballad itself, and it may likewise be conceded that Mrs. Brown, in the specific form she gave them is likely to have worked within the remoulding process of the oral tradition. Her "Lass of Roch Royal" is likewise characterized by a heavy density of formulaic phrases and commonplace stanzas[24].

But purely oral tradition - in whatever sense we use the term - is not characteristic of the late 18th century balladry that survives to us. By the time Mrs. Brown's repertoire was being recorded, ballads were appearing in print in considerable numbers, and it is likely also that written copies were not unknown: while most of the surviving MSS. were made for collectors rather than singers, this is unlikely to be the case with Elizabeth Cochrane's Manuscript Song Book, and the status of the Herd papers is, I should say, ambiguous. Of the ballads in Mrs. Brown's recorded repertoire, 10 are found in earlier versions, 8 of them in printed sources25. That Mrs. Brown was familiar with at least some of these printed versions of ballads in her own repertoire is beyond doubt. Writing to Jamieson in 1801 she notes "Glen Kindy or rather Glen Sheeny I have heard & there is a ballad in Percies collection that is very much the same as is there called Glasgerion but is the same story in all"[26].

The evidence further suggests that Mrs. Brown was interested in comparing her texts with those in the printed collections. Writing in 1801, again to Jamieson, she observes, "as to the fragment of Lamikin upon reading over the edition of it that is in herd's collection I find that mine differs from it very materially tho the story must have been the same"[27]. But it is possible to go beyond this and suggest that Mrs. Brown's ballads, before being given to the collectors, had been influenced by the available printed versions. An odd comment by Jamieson, hithertoe apparently neglected, may point in this direction[28]:

what she once learnt, she never forgot; and such were her curiosity and industry, that she was not contented with merely knowing the story, according to any one way of telling, but studied to acquire all the Varieties of the same tale which she could meet with. In some instances, these different readings may have insensibly m ixed with each other, and produced, from various disjointed fragments, a whole, such as reciters, whose memories and judgements are less precise, can seldom produce.

David Fowler, at least, seems to have been sufficiently struck by the possibility of such interference to observe that "it is highly unlikely that Anna Gordon's singing family carried on an oral tradition totally independent of these printed sources"[29]. Such an assertion, however, in the absence of the texts of the ballads in the form Mrs. Brown received them from tradition, as a basis for comparison, is virtually impossible to substantiate or refute. To take a simple example, while the celebrated "shoe my foot" stanzas occur in the two earliest versions of "The Lass of Roch Royal" (76A - the Cochrane Song Book - and "The Lass of Ocram") immediately after the heroine's repulse at the door of her lover, making them a dramatic part of the conversation with the scheming mother, in Mrs. Brown's text of 1783 they open the ballad, becoming a pathetic expression of the Lass's desertion by her lover. It is therefore tempting to suggest that Mrs. Brown's rendition of the story was influenced by the text in Herd's Scottish Songs of 1776, where the "shoe my foot" stanzas likewise open the ballad[30]. But of course we have no way of knowing whether this is what happened, or whether the shift had already occurred at some earlier stage of tradition before the ballad reached Mrs. Brown.

More serious is the possibility of Mrs. Brown applying her educated literary talents to give her ballads the form in which we have received them. That her cultural background included a familiarity with such polite literature as was deemed appropriate at the time for professors' daughters and clergymen's wives may be taken for granted: perhaps Jamieson assessed her tastes correctly in sending her a copy of "Wieland's Oberon" as a token of appreciation[31]. She is also said to have written poetry herself (see Mrs. Brown's "Lass of Roch Royal" and the Golden Age of Scottish Balladry quotation below), and there are indeed hints of nervousness among the collectors that her ballads may not have been the authentic reproduction of tradition. Jamieson's comment, quoted above, on Mrs. Brown's possible conflation of different texts of a ballad, seems something like an apology, the more so as it is prefaced by the following assertion which does not, on reflection, have quite the effect Jamieson seems to have intended[32]:

As to the authenticity of the pieces themselves, they are as authentic as traditionary p oetry can be expected to be; and their being more entire than most other pieces are found to be, may be easilya ccountedf or, from the circumstancteh at there are very few persons of Mrs. Brown's abilities and education, that repeat popular ballads from memory. Jamieson's unease may have been caused by suspicions like the following voiced by Dr. Robert Anderson, writing to Bishop Percy of a meeting at which Jamieson himself was present[33]:

I accompanied Mr. Jamieson to my friend [Walter] S cott's house in the country, for the sake of bringing the collectors to a good unterstanding. It hen took on me to hint my suspicion o f modernm anufacture, in which Scott had secretlya nticipatedm e. Mrs. Brown is fond of ballad poetry, writes verses, and reads everything in the marvelous way. Yet her character places her above s uspicion o f literary i mposture; b ut it is wonderful h ow she should h appen to be the depository of so many curious and valuable ballads.

A curiously ambiguous formulation, whose last sentence strongly suggests that Anderson's fears were not entirely allayed. Such suspicions find a modern echo in J. B. Toelken's refusal to accept as belonging to an authentic oral canon those ballads found only in Mrs. Brown's corpus; partly because of her manifest literacy, and partly because of the occasional uncertain appropriateness of melody (as given in Tytler- Brown MS) to text[34]: the implications of this last observation are particularly damaging.

It is unlikely, I think, in view of her own very firm assertions on the subject, that Mrs. Brown created or manufactured any one of her ballads in its entirety. David Fowler, in a chapter which is not too precise in its terms, goes so far as to call Mrs. Brown a ballad "composer", and claims to detect a difference between those ballads which exist in other versions (and which she presumably received from tradition) and those unique to her corpus (which Fowler implies she composed herself)[35]. It is much more likely that all her ballads derive from tradition, and that the differences Fowler detects are due to varying degrees of remoulding on Mrs. Brown's part[36]. But we may agree with Fowler that she exercised both a "native flair" and "a more rational desire for literary elegance", with the result that "her style, although unmistakably traditional, is also distinctly her own"[37].

Once again, in the absence of the traditional versions as Mrs. Brown received them we are unable to measure accurately the extent and nature of any changes she introduced. David Fowler's interesting and provocative discussion, referred to a number of times already, works precisely on the dubious hypothesis that differences of substance between Mrs. Brown's text of a given ballad and other surviving versions are due to her own intervention. Rather more solidly based is B. H. Bronson's assertion of a distinct literary quality in Mrs. Brown's ballads taken altogether in contrast to contemporary Scottish balladry as a whole[38]:

her ballads, as might have been expected in the light of her origins and background, subsist o n a higher than average level of well-bred literacy. This fact is not all to the good. While it  generally makes her texts easier and smoother reading, it is not infrequently responsible for the presence of false notes, artificial touches, prettys entimentalities, and a specious neatness that puts one on guard. Her versions seldom have the gaps and chasms, the rugged and abrupt leaps o f narrative which are such characteristic and vivid features of traditional balladry. They show, on the contrary, an expository skill, a faculty of neat transition and summary, which is doubtfully welcome at this stage of art. It is symptomatic, too that there are almost no real obscurities of phrase or idea, such as often appear in pure oral transmission. There are occasional moral observations and pious reflections, especially at the ends of her ballads, which are little above the broadside level and w hich jar our sense of fitness. It can hardly be an accident that where the erotic note is bluntly struck in other v ersions, in Mrs. Brown's it is side-stepped or soft-pedaled. . . . She pitches for the most part upon the marvelous, the supernatural, and the sentimentally romantic; and in her appetite for the last she is avid to the point of wholly uncritical acceptance of the most insipid folly.

Mrs. Brown's 1783 performance of "The Lass of Roch Royal" illustrates most of the major assertions by Bronson, although, once again, we should be on our guard against assigning all the features to Mrs. Brown rather than an earlier stage of transmission:
perhaps for a number of them we should more accurately speak of the characteristics of what has very properly been called the women's tradition of which Mrs. Brown, her aunt, mother, and the maidservant are parts. That "The Lass of Roch Royal" is romantically sentimental is beyond question, and this feature reaches a climax in the melodramatic final scene, with the hero kissing the "cherry cheek . . . chin ... an' ruby lips" of the Lass's corpse, washed up on the beach, before himself expiring in the
fading light of a Hollywood sunset, blessed on his way by the narrator's pious assurance of his salvation:

O he has mournd oer Fair Anny
Till the sun was going down,
Then wi a sigh his heart is brast
An his soul to heaven has flown.
(76D, st. 32)

Mrs. Brown's version lacks the specifically erotic element present in some of the earlier versions. It is of course impossible to disguise the fact that the Lass has had a child, and it can be inferred that it was the fruit of an illicit relationship, but the point is not laboured. When asked by the hero's mother for "love tokens" to prove her identity, the  heroine duly refers to the exchange of rings and kerchiefs, but since such things, especially when lingered over by incremental repetition, usually come in threes, it is no surprise to discover that in Herd's complete text and the broadside "Lass of Ocram" the heroine completes the triad by explicit reference to the begetting of the child:

'Don't you remember, Lord Gregory,
One night in my father's hall,
Where you stole my maidenhead.
Which was the worst of all.'
("Lass of Ocram", st. 14)

We also lack here, as Bronson asserts, any obscurity of phrase or idea: the ballad makes sense at each step as we read it. But in this it seems that Mrs. Brown's version is not atypical of its place and time, for the same can be said of all the versions before it, as far as style is concerned, although those that have the hero setting off on horse-back in pursuit of the Lass's ship (A. 26-8, B. 23) may be accused of a degree of narrative obscurity. Finally, this ballad confirms Bronson's observation of Mrs. Brown's smoother narrative transitions and summary, and a generally high story-telling competence.

All the earlier versions have the Lass encounter a robber or pirate or merchant on her way to the castle of her lover, apparently a redundant piece of debris from the "accused queen" story, which Mrs. Brown seems to recognize as redundant, and resolutely omits. Mrs. Brown is likewise alone in providing an even transition between the Lass's arrival at the gate and the mother's demand for love-tokens, thus avoiding the "leap" at this point in all the other early versions. Her conclusion to the story is also highly competent, with the steady sequence of hero running to the beach, seeing the shipwreck, dragging the Lass to the shore, kissing her, and lamenting over her. The other texts either end with startling abruptness ("Lass of Ocram"), or meander on with a new and illogical episode of the hero encountering the lass's funeral procession, which seriously endangers the whole balance of the narrative (A & B).

As pointed out a number of times, the value of the above discussions is seriously impaired by the fact that we do not have the texts of the ballads in the form Mrs. Brown received them from tradition, as a reliable basis for determining what features can be assigned specifically to her intervention. We are, however, in the fortunate position that Mrs. Brown is one of the few balladsingers, and the earliest, from whom we have "multiple performances" of a number of ballads. All fifteen of the texts in the Tytler- Brown MS of 1783 duplicate ballads in the Jamieson-Brown MS produced earlier in the same year. At their meeting in 1800 Mrs. Brown provided Jamieson with a text of "Bonny Baby Livingston" (which he duly published), and shortly afterwards sent him another text of the same ballad, in a letter which has survived. Finally "Child Waters" and "The Lass of Roch Royal" survive from independent performances in the Jamieson-Brown MS of 1783 and the Fraser-Tytler-Brown MS of 1800.

B. H. Bronson, having collated the texts which overlap in the two manuscripts of 1783, concludes that the changes introduced are due to the following causes: corrections of memory, rationalizing, metrical considerations, regularizing and reducing dialectical features, and aesthetic considerations[39]. What Bronson calls corrections of memory, he notes, occur usually in connection with those sequences of verbal patterning usually called "incremental repetition". In view of the valuable work of
David Buchan on such structural patternings in Mrs. Brown's ballads it would probably be more accurate to consider these changes as a feature of a point discussed earlier, Mrs. Brown's ability to alter the texts of her ballads with the natural techniques of a living ballad tradition (without conceding that the techniques involve improvisation).

The regularization of metre and the toning down of the dialect may reasonably be ascribed to Mrs. Brown's concern to provide texts suitable for publication: to this extent she is merely editing the texts in the earlier MS, which she probably had before
her at the time. The same may be true in part of the remaining types of alteration: the rationalization, and the changes on aesthetic grounds. But probably only in part, for all of Mrs. Brown's texts were in fact provided for collectors with publication in mind, and a degree of rationalization and poetic beautifying may have occurred before we get to see them for even the first time. The changes Bronson observes may be simply a further step in a process which was already under way before the collectors got to Mrs. Brown. This seems particularly likely in the case of the most important type of aesthetic change Bronson notes, the tidying up of the conclusions of the ballads: for as we have seen the conclusion of the "Lass of Roch Royal" in even its earliest form from Mrs. Brown is a good deal more satisfactory than any of the other early versions.

"The Lass of Roch Royal" in fact provides us with the most illuminating example of Mrs. Brown's handling of her ballads. The two texts are separated by 17 years, and there is no chance that the copy of the first interfered with the second performance. The changes are extensive, but not, it would seem, the result of oral improvisation: the two other examples of multiple performance, "Bonny Baby Livingston" and "Child Waters", provide fairly conclusive evidence that Mrs. Brown memorized the texts of her ballads[40]. Here too, it seems that Mrs. Brown's remoulding of the ballad took place in a number of interlocking ways: through the techniques of tradition, the impact of printed copies, and the exercise of individual literary talent. Several blocks of stanzas evince considerable textual stability, the first being the "shoe my foot" questions and answers with which both texts open, together with the Lass's expression of her wish for a boat to take her to Love Gregor (D. 1-5, E. 1-5), although there is a moderate toning down of the dialect at the opening of st. 5:

D (1783)
O gin I had a bony ship
An men to sail wi me.

E (1800)
But I will get a bonny boat
And I will sail the sea.

Also fairly stable is the conversation between the Lass and Love Gregor's Mother, in which the latter, pretending to be her son, demands "love tokens" of the Lass to prove her identity. The main difference here is that while the 1783 text offers two love-tokens (napkins and rings), in 1800 we have only one (rings), effectively destroying the incremental repetition which characterizes this section in all early versions of the ballad. This may be an example of Mrs. Brown deliberately ironing out the repetitional "lingering" of the ballad, to give a smoother narrative progress, but from the placing of the omission it would seem rather to be a mechanical fault of memory; the second repetition setting in too early, effectively telescoping the two statements into one:

D (1783)
14.
O dinna ye mind, Love Gregor, she says
Whan we sat at the wine,
How we changed the napkins frae our necks,
it's nae sa lang sin syne?

E (1800)
13.
O dina you mind, Love Gregor
When we sat at the wine,

15.
An yours was good, an good enough,
But nae sae good as mine;
For yours was o the cumbruk clear,
But mine was silk sae fine.

16.
An dinna ye mind, Love Gregor, she says,
As we twa sat at dine,
How we changed the rings frae our fingers?
But ay the best was mine?

17.
For yours was good, and good enough,
Yet nae sae good as mine;
For yours was of the good red gold,
But mine o the diamonds fine.
How we changed the rings frae our fingers?
And I can show thee thine.

14.
O yours was good, and good enough
But ay the best was mine;
For yours was o the good red goud,
But mine o the diamonds fine.

This major disturbance has brought some minor ones in its train, for example the change in the function of the line "But ay the best was mine" (D. 164 vs. E. 142). While these changes involve basically the omission or rearrangement of lines present in the
1783 text, the stanza in which the mother demands the love-tokens involves a small but perhaps significant alteration of another sort:

D (1783)
13.
O gin ye be Anny o Roch-royal,
As I trust not ye be,

E (1800)
12.
Gin ye be Annie of Rough Royal-
And I trust ye are not she-

What taiken can ye gie that ever Now tell me some of the love-tokens I kept your company? That past between you and me.
Lines 3 and 4 for the 1800 text are new, with no warrant in the earlier version, but are almost the same as in Herd's printed text of the ballad, which we know Mrs. Brown had access to:

If thou be the lass of Lockroyan,
As I know no thou be,
Tell me some of the true tokens
That past between me and thee.
(Child 76B, st. 12)

The third of the stable sequences is the scene on the beach where Love Gregor in anguish sees the shipwreck and drowning of the Lass and her son. The central two stanzas are repetitional, and their order has simply been reversed between 1783 (D. st.
26-27) and 1800 (E. st. 22-23), while the stanzas introducing and closing the scene show a considerable degree of verbal variation, in which Mrs. Brown appears to be evolving new lines on the basis of key-words from the earlier text (D. sts. 25 and 28, vs. E. sts. 21 and 24; and see further below).

It is again not without significance that these passages of relatively high verbal stability are precisely those which in Mrs. Brown's and the other early versions of the ballad show the highest concentration of repetition patterns: a useful indication of the memorial function of these structural features in ballad transmission.

These three stable sequences are interspersed by passages in which there is a much higher degree of verbal change. The first of these is the transition which brings the Lass from her home to the door of Love Gregor's castle. It opens with the Lass acquiring a ship, balancing the wish for one she has uttered in st. 5 (both versions). While in 1783 this is expressed in new formulation (st. 6, quoted later), in 1800 Mrs. Brown uses the traditional repetitional technique of expressing the wish and its fulfillment in the same words:

E. 1800
5.
But I will get a bonny boat,
And I will sail the sea,
For I maun gang to Love Gregor,
Since he canno come hame to me.

6.
O she has gotten a bonny boat,
And sailed the sa't sea fame;
She langd to see her ain true-love
Since he could no come hame.

The following stanzas seem on the other hand to be built on echoes of some of the words and rhymes in the parallel stanzas from the earlier performance, including the ship-acquisition stanza (6) replaced as we have seen above:

D. 1783 E. 1800
6. 7.
Her father's gien her a bonny ship, O row your boat, my mariners,
And sent her to the stran; And bring me to the land,
She's tane her young son in her arms For yonder I see my love's castle
An turnd her back to the land. ~\ Close by the sa't sea strand

8.
9. She has taen her young son in her arms,
Long stood she at her true-love's door - And to the door she's gone,
And lang tirld at the pin. - And long she's knocked and sair she ca'd
But answer got she none.
The opening of the conversation is in contrast radically different:
D. 1783 E. 1800
9.
At length up got his fa'se mither,
Says, Wha's that would be in?
10. 9.
O it is Any of Roch-royal O open the door, Love Gregor, she says,
Your love, come oer the sea, O open and let me in;
But an your young son in her arms; For the wind blaws thro my yellow hair,
So open the door to me. And the rain draps oer my chin.

Two processes are possible here. Mrs. Brown may be recomposing in the traditional manner, using the stock of commonplace stanzas which characterize this phase of Scottish balladry. The "Open the door" stanza of the 1800 text is such a commonplace;
a variant of it occurs later in both versions (D. 18, E. 15), and it can be found in other Scottish ballads (e. g. Child 64A, st. 13, 70A, st. 7). In this instance it seems more likely however that this is another loan from Herd's printed text, where all four lines
are closely paralleled:

Now open, open, Love Gregory,
Open, and let me in!
For the rain rains on my gude cleading,
And the dew stands on my chin.
(76B, st. 17, and cf. st. 113-4)

A similar degree of verbal change characterizes the second of the ballad's transitions, the conclusion of the conversation between Lass and mother, the Lass's withdrawal, and then the next scene with the awakening of the hero. In both versions the mother dismisses the Lass in harsh terms, although the formulation has changed; in 1800 Mrs. Brown omits the mother's final false revelation, and hence the Lass's response to it, making the dismissal more abrupt:

D. 1783
19.
Awa, awa, you ill woman,
Gae frae my door for shame;
For I hae gotten another fair love
Sae ye may hye you hame.

E. 1800
16.
Awa, awa, ye ill woman,
For here ye shanno win in;
Gae drown ye in the raging sea,
Or hang on the gallows-pin.

20.
O hae you gotten another fair love,
For a' the oaths you sware?
Then fair you well now, fa'se Gregor,
For me you's never see mair.

In 1800 Mrs. Brown likewise omits the transition with the Lass withdrawing to her ship. As a result her later text has here a "leap" of the traditional kind from one scene to another. But this, however, seems seriously to have disturbed Mrs. Brown's recollection of the text, as she seems obliged to use phrases, lines and rhyme-scheme of the earlier version for a new function at a different stage of the narrative in the later one:

D. 1783
21.
O heely, heely gi'd she back,
As the day began to peep
She set her foot on good ship-board
And sair, sair did she weep.
22.
Love Gregor started frae his sleep,
An to his mither did say,
I dreamd a dream this night, mither,
That mads my heart right wae
23.
I dreamd that Anny of Rochroyal,
the flour o a' her kin,
Was standin mournin at my door
But nane would lat her in.

E. 1800
17.
When the cock had crawn and day did dawn,
And the sun began to peep
Then it raise him love Gregor
And sair, sair did he weep.

18.
0 I dreamd a dream, my mother dear
The thoughts o it gars me greet
That Fair Annie of Rough Royal
Lay cauld dead at my feet.
19.
Gin it be for Annie of Rough Royal
That ye make a' this din,
She stood a' last night at this door,
But I trow she wan no in

In 1800 Mrs. Brown concludes this scene with a declaration from the hero which was not present in the earlier performance:

E. 1800
20.
O wae betide ye, ill woman,
An ill dead may ye die!
That ye woudno open the door to her,
Nor yet would waken me.

As on previous occasions, Mrs. Brown here may be working within the techniques of ballad tradition, as the first part of the exclamation is a commonplace (Cf. Child 69F, 231-2, 70A, 141-2, 114D, 201-2, 204A, 131-2, etc.), but this is also another of those stanzas which Mrs. Brown might have picked up between 1783 and 1800 by reading Herd's text:

Awa, awa, ye wicket woman,
And an ill dead may ye die;
Ye might have either letten her in,
Or selse have wakened me.
(B. 22)

The conclusion of the ballad provides the final sequence of stanzas which are drastically revised between the performances of 1783 and 1800. Both texts describe the Lass's shipwreck (D. 28, E. 24), but it is only the version of 1783 which provides a
transition to the final scene of Love Gregor mourning over the lass's body: the 1800 text, once again more traditional in narrative technique, "leaps" to the new scene, but once again seems to have left Mrs. Brown the problem of making old phrases do new work:

D. 1783 E. 1800
29.
He saw her young son in her arms
Baith tossd aboon the tide;
He wrang his hands, then fast he ran,
An plung'd i the sea sae wide.

30. 25.
He catched her by the yellow hair, Love Gregor tore his yellow hair
And drew her to the strand, And made a heavy moan;
But cauld and stiff was every limb Fair Annie's corpse lay at his feet,
Before he reached the land. But his bonny young son was gone.

Of the remaining two stanzas of the 1783 text only one is retained in 1800, and significantly a stanza with internal repetitional patterns. The melodramatic final stanza with Love Gregor's death through heart-break is omitted. Instead, Mrs. Brown generates a new stanza by repetition of lines from the one stanza which does recur, and then repeats the "Woe betide" commonplace used earlier, effectively providing a verbal frame for this final section of the ballad:

D. 1783 E. 1800
26.
O cherry, cherry, was her cheek,-.
And gowden was her hair,
But clay cold were her rosy lips-.
Nae spark of life was there -

31. 27.
O first he kissd her cherry cheek -o- And first he's kissd her cherry cheek
And then he kissd her chin; - And neist he's kissd her chin;
An sair he kissd her ruby lips, - And saftly pressd her rosy lips
But there was nae breath within. -- But there was nae breath within.

28.
O wae betide my cruel mother,
And an ill dead may she die!
For she turnd my true-love frae my door,
When she came sae far to me.

The relationship between E 26 and 27 is particularly interesting. As it stands, they form a pattern of "incremental repetition", but neither the nature of the pattern, nor the way it seems to be created, looks quite traditional. For it is a purely verbal repetition, with no corresponding repetition or sequence on the conceptual level to support it. It is not the kind of narrative repetition in which two similar events or statements are made in the same phrases (e. g. E. 20, 28), or causative repetition in which similar words are used for question/answer, wish/fulfillment, etc. (e. g. E. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6), nor is it the familiar "incremental repetition" or "progressive repetition" generated by a sequence of related events or statements (e. g. D. 14-15, 16-17). As st. 26 of the 1800 text occurs neither in Mrs. Brown's 1783 text, nor in any earlier version of the ballad[41], there is
some warrant for taking it to be of her own composition, and she seems to have  manufactured it by a kind of retrospective repetition of st. 27: it might not be too provocative to lable it "poetic repetition": appropriately concluding this comparative
analysis of Mrs. Brown's two versions of "The Lass of Roch Royal" with a detail which illustrates her own characteristic blend of traditional technique and individual poetic talent.

I am aware that in claiming Mrs. Brown as a ballad transmitter who combined tradition with textual conflation and literary revision I make her sound somewhat akin to Sir Walter Scott, who is notorious for his way with ballads: but this is not a new
observation. B. H. Bronson, having compared the texts in the two Mrs. Brown  manuscripts of 1783, concludes, "we can hardly avoid ... giving her a large proportion of responsibility for the particular form her ballads assumed while they were in her
charge", and goes on to assert, "We cannot consistently hold . . . that Walter Scott's 'improvements' of the ballads that passed through his hands are illegitimate, but that Mrs. Brown's are not"[42]. The analysis of "The Lass of Roch Royal" given above serves to confirm this equivalence between Mrs. Brown and Walter Scott, but while Bronson emphasises that Scott is as "traditional" as Mrs. Brown, it would be equally legitimate to conclude that Mrs. Brown is as "artificial" as Scott: it is really a question of choosing the right terms to suit one's prejudices. But it is beyond question that early Scottish balladry reached Child, as it reaches us, in texts which have taken their available shape at the hands of people owing allegiance to both oral tradition and the polite world of 18th century poetry and printed song collections. For Mrs. Brown's way with ballads is not unique among her Scottish contemporaries. In addition to Sir Walter, there is that unknown "Scottish Master", quite possibly the judge David Dalrymple, who provided Percy with those striking and much anthologized texts of "Edward", "Sir Patrick Spens", "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" and "Sir Hugh", which likewise evince an individual's poetic manipulation of traditional materials and techniques to produce highly artistic effects[43].

In a wider perspective, Bronson is undoubtedly correct in asserting that any ballad text is a result of the re-shaping of traditional material by the individual singer, and that such a process was as typical of say the 14th century as it was of the 18th[44]. But in different places and times the proportions of tradition and individual contribution will vary, and, more significantly, the nature of the latter will be different: the reworkings of traditional ballad material by 15th-century minstrel, 17th-century broadside hack, or 19th-century miner or farm-labourer will have been as idiosyncratic, as different from each other as they are from the ballad-moulding of Mrs. Brown, and the styles of resulting ballad-texts will in consequence be equally multifarious.

Had Joseph Addison's appreciation of popular song been shared by more Englishmen in the reign of Queen Anne, and had they anticipated the work of Cecil Sharp by 200 years and collected narrative songs among the squires, yeomen and husbandmen of
Somerset and Western Shires, subsequent scholarship and the university English Literature syllabus might have inherited a concept of a "ballad" genre quite different from that current now, comprising that diffuse mixture of oral folksong and broadside
balladry which seems to characterize the popular tradition of the Southern Kingdom, and leaving the Scots, rather than the English, in a quandry about the status of their narrative folksongs. But as it happened , it was the Scottish collectors who were first in the field, and the first into print with their "ballads", emerging from the very special alloy of tradition and literary talent explored above. Their publication in the late 18th and early 19th centuries corresponded with one of those periodic English fads for things Scotch, and it was the Scottish voices which rang loudest in the ears of the scholars as they formulated their notions of the genre. Among those voices, Mrs. Brown's was perhaps the clearest: Francis James Child's notorious "ear" was quickly attuned to it, and we have been trying to make English ballads dance to her tune ever since.

Footnotes:

1. F. J. Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, 1885-98, repr. in 5 vols., New York, 1965), I, vii.

2 E. g., Thelma G. James, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads of Francis J. Child", in The Critics and the Ballad, ed. M. Leach & T. P. Coffin (Carbondale, Illinois, 1961, repr. 1973), pp. 12-19.

3 David C. Fowler,A LiteraryH istoryo f the PopularB allad( Durham,N orth Carolina,1 968),
chapter I, "The Evolution of Balladry".

4 It does not seemt o haves truck Fowler as incongruous, for example, that his Literary History of the Popular Ballad, while insisting on a legitimate and valuable chronological approach, effectively breaks in half, the last four chapters dealing almost exclusively with Scottish ballads, with little demonstrable continuity from the earlier, essentially English, stages of the enquiry.

5 Child, ESPB,I II, 42. Most of the remaindero f the non-Scottishb alladsa re from the Percy Folio Manuscript or from broadsides, and their ballad status, in Child's view, is likewise dubious.

6 Child, ESPB, I, vii.

7 See for example R obert J amieson, e d., Popular B allads and Songs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh1, 806), I, viii: "Fort he groundworko f this collection, and for the greater a nd more v aluable p art o f the popular and romantic tales which it contains, the public are indebted to Mrs. Brown of Falkland"C. f. WalterS cott, Minstrelsyo f the ScottishB order,3 vols. (Edinburgh1, 806), I,
cxxv-cxxvii.

8 Fowler,L iteraryH istoryo f the PopularB allad,p . 294, and cf. p. 331.
9 The following accounto f Mrs. Brown'sr epertoirea nd the MS sourcesi s based on Fowler,
op. cit., pp. 294-97, David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London, 1972), chapter 7, and
WilliamM ontgomerie", A bibliographyo f the ScottishB alladM anuscripts1 730-1825, Part
VI, Mrs. Brown's Manuscripts"S, tudiesi n ScottishL iteratureV, II (1969-70), 60-75 and
238-254, together with the headnotes in the collections of Jamieson and Child.
10 Jamieson, Popular Ballads and Songs, I, viii.

11. Three further ballad texts, included in Wm. Montgomerie's table of Mrs. Brown's repertoire, do not in fact seem to be hers. Child 67B, "Glasgerion", was communicated to Jamieson by Professor Scott, Mrs. Brown's nephew, but "was taken from the recitation of an old woman" (Jamieson, op. cit., I, 92), an expression which neither Jamieson nor Scott would use of Mrs.
Brown. It was also Prof. Scott who provided Jamieson with Child 226A, "Lizzie Lindsay", and a fragment, Child 277D, of "The Wife Wrapt in wether's Skin". While Scott's covering letter (quoted Montgomerie, art. cit., p. 249) is obscure, I do not take him to mean that Mrs. Brown is the source.

12 Montgomerie, art. cit., p. 242.

13 Montgomerie, art. cit., p. 246, and see above, n. 11.
14 Nos. 93, 155, 53, 63, 65, 10, 92 and 11.
5 It is likewise one of the ballads not found in England. For a discussion of the substance of Mrs.
Brown's ballads, see Buchan, op. cit., chapter 8.
16 Montgomerie, art. cit., p. 65 and (for letter) p. 248.
17 A. B. Friedman, The Ballad Revival (Chicago, 1961), chapters 6-8, particularly statements
on pp. 183, 246 and 257.

18 Quoted in Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk, p. 64.

19 Quoted in Buchan, op. cit., pp. 65--6.

20 For critical reviews of Buchan's discussion of Mrs. Brown's ballads in terms of the oral improvisational theory, see Holger Olof Nygard, "Mrs. Brown's RecollectedB allads", i n Ballads and Ballad Research, ed. Patricia Conroy (Seattle, 1978), pp. 68-87; Klaus Roth, "Zur miindlichenK ompositionv on Volksballaden"J,a hrbuchf iir Volksliedforschun2g2, (1977),4 9-65; FlemmingA ndersen& ThomasP ettitt," Mrs.B rowno f FalklandA: Singero f Tales?"J AF, 92 (1979), 1-24. My following discussion,b asedo n independenta nalysisa nd assessmentl,a rgelyc oncursw ith Nygard'sp erceptives tudy of Mrs. Brown'sh andlingo f her ballads.

21 LiteraryH istoryo f PopularB allad,p p. 210-234.

22 Buchan, op. cit., pp. 218-234.
23 For a complete analysis of the stanzaic structure of this central portion of the ballad, see
Buchan, op. cit., pp. 101-102, and fig. 4.
24 By which is meant no more than that many of the phrases and stanzas are found in other
balladsa nda ret hereforea traditionafle atureB. ut manyo f themb elonga t the samet imet o the
specifict raditiono f this particulabr allad.S ee Buchan'sd iscussiono f the phenomenono, p. cit.,
chapter 12.
25 "ChildW aters"a nd "Lamkin"in Percy'sR eliques,1 765;" ClerkC olvill"a nd "FairA nnie"i n
Herd'sS cotsS ongs,1 769;" Lamkin"", SirH ugh"," TheL asso f Roch Royal",a nd "TheC ruel
Brother"in Herd'sS cottishS ongs,1 776;" TheT wa Sisters"in Englishb roadsidesa ndd rolleries
of the 16tha nd 17thc enturiesa nd in Pinkerton'sS cottishT ragicB allads,1 781;" FairM aryo f
Wellington"in a ScottishG arlando f c. 1775.
26 Quoted in Montgomeriea, rt. cit., p. 248.
27 Quoted ibid., p. 247. The reference must be to Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, which has a
versiono f "Lamkin"W. henM rs. Brown asserts( see above)t hat she nevers aw her balladsi n
28 print, she must thereforem eant he specificv ersionsi n her repertoire. Jamieson, ed., Popular Ballads and Songs, I, ix-x.
29 Fowler, op. cit., p. 298.
30 Herd, Scottish Songs, I, 149.
31 Montgomerie, art. cit., p. 246.
32 Jamieson, ed. cit., I, ix.
33 Quoted Fowler, op. cit., pp. 314-15.
34 J. BarreT oelken," AnO ral Canonf or the ChildB allads:C onstructiona ndA pplication"J,F I,
IV (1967), 75-101, particularly pp. 82-83 and n. 13.
35 Fowler,o p. cit., chapter1 0, particularlyp p. 330-331.
36 An instance is Child 89A, "Fause Foodrage". Scott was struck by a verbal echo in Mrs.
Brown'st ext of that most celebratedo f ballad-forgeries",H ardyknute"a,n d took greatp ains
to assureh imselft hatt he balladd id in fact derivef romt raditionT. his was indeedt he case,b ut
even Child is uncharacteristicalolyb liged to concedet hat "whilen ot callingi n questiont he
substantiagl enuinenesos f the ballad,w e musta dmitt hatt he formi n whichw e haver eceivedi t
is an enfeebled one, without much flavour or colour". ESPB, II, 296.
37 Fowler, op. cit., pp. 315 and 331.
38 B. H. Bronson, "Mrs. Brown and the Ballad", in The Ballad as Song (Berkeley and Los
Angeles, 1969), pp. 72-73.
39 Ibid., pp. 67-69.
40 Flemming G. Andersen & Thomas Pettitt, "Mrs. Brown of Falkland: A Singer of Tales?",
12-18. Nor, on the other hand, does the 1800 text seem to have been arrived at by as
mechanicaal processa s that impliedb y Child'sd escriptiono f it (Headnotet o No. 76) as "a
blendingo f two independentv ersionsk nown to Mrs. Brown,w hich no doubt had much in
common". I also feel that the ensuing analysis shows sufficient continuity between the two
texts to makei t unlikelyM rs. Brownk new them as distinctv ersions,a s tentativelys uggested
by HamishH enderson," TheO ral Tradition"S, cottishI nternationalV, I (1979),2 9.

41 The repetitiond oes occur in a laterv ersion,c ommunicatedto Sir WalterS cott in 1802 by a Major Henry Hutton, printed Child, vol. IV, pp. 471-74, sts. 46-47. This text, however, achievesa length o f 50 stanzas by doubling( or tripling)a large n umbero f stanzasw hicha ren ot
so treatedi n other versions,s o it is difficultt o determinew hethert his occurrencec onfersa
traditionasl tatuso n the particular epetitioni n question.
42 Bronson," Mrs.B rown and the Ballad"p, p. 73 and 77.

43 Fowler, Literary History of Popular Ballad, pp. 250 ff., and B. H. Bronson, "'Edward,
Edward'.A ScottishB allad"S, FQ, IV (1940),r epr. The Ballada s Song,p p. 1-17.
44 Bronson," Mrs.B rown and the Ballad"p, . 76.