Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she'll hae but three,
There was Marie Seaton, and Marie Beaton,
And Marie Carmichael and me.

In later editions Sir Walter offered a made-up copy of the ballad,
most of it from a version collected by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.

It now appeared that Mary Hamilton was the heroine, that she was one
of Queen Marie's four Maries, and that she was hanged for murdering
a child whom she bore to Darnley. Thus the character of Mary
Hamilton was 'totally lost,' and Darnley certainly 'had not
sufficient for two.' Darnley, to be sure, told his father that 'I
never offended the Queen, my wife, in meddling with any woman in
thought, let be in deed,' and, whether Darnley spoke truth or not,
there was, among the Queen's Maries, no Mary Hamilton to meddle
with, just as there was no Mary Carmichael.

The Maries were attendant on the Queen as children ever since she
left Scotland for France. They were Mary Livingstone (mentioned as
'Lady Livinston' in one version of the ballad),* who married 'John
Sempill, called the Dancer,' who, says Laing, 'acquired the lands of
Beltree, in Renfrewshire.'**

*Child, vol. iii. p. 389.
**Laing's Knox, ii. 415, note 3.

When Queen Mary was a captive in England she was at odds with the
Sempill pair about some jewels of hers in their custody. He was not