The Text is taken from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, where it is entitled The Gowans sae gay. This ballad is much better known in another form, May Colvin (Collin, Collean).
The Text is taken from Motherwell's Minstrelsy, a similar version being given in Maidment's North Countrie Garland. A few alterations from the latter version are incorporated. ...
The Text given here is comparatively a late one, from the Roxburghe collection (iii. 456). An earlier broadside, in the same and other collections, gives a longer but curiously corrupted version, exhibiting such perversions as ...
The Text is formed by a collation of six broadsides printed between 1672 and 1700: they do not, however, present many variations. Here, if anywhere, one would demand licence to make alterations and improvements. In stanza 12 th...
The Text is taken from Buchan's MSS., the Scots version being rather more condensed than the corresponding English broadside. There is a reference to this ballad in Munday's Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington (1598); but ea...