XIII.-LADY ANNE BOTHWELL'S LAMENT. A SCOTTISH SONG. THE subject of this pathetic ballad the Editor once thought might possibly relate to the Earl of Bothwell and his desertion of his wife, Lady Jean Gordon, to make room for his marriage with the Queen of Scots. But this opinion he now believes to be groundless; indeed, Earl Bothwell's age, who was upwards of sixty at the time of that marriage, renders it unlikely that he should be the object of so warm a passion as this elegy supposes. He has been since informed, that it entirely refers to a private story: A young lady of the name of Bothwell, or rather Boswell, having been together with her child deserted by her husband or lover, composed these affecting lines herself, which here are given from a copy in the Editor's folio MS. corrected by another in Allan Ramsay's Miscellany. Balow, my babe, lye still and sleipe! Balow, my babe, ly stil and sleipe, Whan he began to court my luve, Balow, etc. Lye still, ray darling, sleipe a while, *When sugar was first imported into Europe, it was a very great dairty; and therefore the epithet sugred is used by all our old writers metaphorically to express extreme and delicate sweetness. (See above, No. XI. V. 10) Sugar at present is cheap and common, and therefore suggests now a coarse and vulgar idea. I cannae chuse, but ever will Balow, etc. But doe not, doe not, prettie mine, And nevir change hir for a new : Bairne, sin thy cruel father is gane, He'll comfort me when cares doe grieve: Balow, etc. Fareweil, fareweil, thou falsest youth, XIV. THE MURDER OF THE KING OF SCOTS.* THE catastrophe of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, the unfortunate husband of Mary Queen of Scots, is the subject of this ballad. It is here related in that partial imperfect manner, in which such an event would naturally strike the subjects of another kingdom, of which he was a native. Henry, Lord Darnley, was eldest son of the Earl of Lennox, by the Lady Margaret Douglas, niece of Henry VIII. and daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scotland, by the Earl of Angus, whom that princess married after the death of James IV. Darnley, who had been born and educated in England, was but in his twenty-first year, when he was murdered Feb. 9, 1567-8. This crime was perpetrated by the Earl of Bothwell, not out of respect to the memory of Rizzio, but in order to pave the way for his own marriage with the queen. This ballad (printed, with a few corrections, from the Editor's folio MS.) seems to have been written soon after Mary's escape into England in 1568, see v. 65. XV.-A SONNET BY QUEEN ELIZABETH. THE following lines, if they display no rich vein of poetry, are yet so strongly characteristic of their great and spirited authoress, that the insertion of them will be pardoned. They are preserved in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, a book in which are many sly addresses to the queen's foible of shining as a poetess. XVI.-KING OF SCOTS AND ANDREW BROWNE.* THIS ballad is a proof of the little intercourse that subsisted between the Scots and English, before the accession of James I. to the crown of England. The tale which is here so circumstantially related does not appear to have had the least foundation in history, but was probably built upon some confused hearsay report of the tumults in Scotland during the minority of that prince, and of the conspiracies formed by different factions to get possession of his person. It should seem from ver. 97 to have been written during the regency, or at least before the death of the Earl of Morton, who was condemned and executed June 2, 1581, when James was in his fifteenth year. The author, W. Elderton, who had been originally an attorney in the Sheriffs Courts of London, and afterwards (if we may believe Oldys) a comedian, was a facetious companion, whose tippling and rhymes rendered him famous among his contemporaries. He was author of many popular songs and ballads, and is believed to have fallen a victim to his bottle before the year 1592. |