new ballads were still composed in the ancient fashion.

*See, for example, Mr. Macquoid's Jacobite Songs and Ballads, pp.
424, 510, with a picture of Charlie.

Secondly, WHY, and how tempted, would a popular poet of 1719
transfer a modern tragedy of Russia to the year 1563, or
thereabouts? His public would naturally desire a ballad gazette of
the mournful new tale, concerning a lass of Scottish extraction,
betrayed, tortured, beheaded, at the far-off court of a Muscovite
tyrant. The facts 'palpitated with actuality,' and, since Homer's
day, 'men desire' (as Homer says) 'the new songs' on the new events.
What was gained by going back to Queen Mary? Would a popular
'Musselmou'd Charlie' even know, by 1719, the names of the Queen's
Maries? Mr. Courthope admits that 'he may have been helped by some
ballad,' one of those spoken of, as we shall see, by Knox. If that
ballad told the existing Marian story, what did the 'maker' add? If
it did NOT, what did he borrow? No more than the names could he
borrow, and no more than the name 'Hamilton' from the Russian
tragedy could he add. One other thing he might be said to add, the
verses in which Mary asks 'the jolly sailors' not to

'Let on to my father and mother
But that I'm coming hame.'

This passage, according to Mr. Courthope, 'was suggested partly by
the fact of a Scotswoman being executed in Russia.' C. K. Sharpe
also says: 'If Marie Hamilton was executed in Scotland, it is not
likely' (why not?) 'that her relations resided beyond seas.' They
MAY have been in France, like many another Hamilton! Mr. Child