variants even the name of the heroine does not tally with that of
the Russian maid of honour. That most important and telling
coincidence wholly disappears. In a version of Motherwell's, from
Dumbartonshire, the heroine is Mary Myle. In a version known to
Scott ('Minstrelsy,' 1810, iii. 89, note), the name is Mary Miles.
Mr. Child also finds Mary Mild, Mary Moil, and Lady Maisry. This
Maisry is daughter of the Duke of York! Now, the Duke of York whom
alone the Scottish people knew was James Stuart, later James II.
Once more the heroine is daughter of the Duke of Argyll, therefore a
Campbell. Or she is without patronymic, and is daughter of a lord
or knight of the North, or South, or East, and one of her sisters is
a barber's wife, and her father lives in England!--(Motherwell.)
She, at least, might invoke 'Ye mariners, mariners, mariners!' (as
in Scott's first fragment) not to carry her story. Now we ask
whether, after the ringing tragedy of Miss Hamilton in Russia, in
the year of grace 1719, contemporaries who heard the woeful tale
could, between 1719 and 1820, call the heroine--(1) Hamilton; (2)
Mild, Moil, Myle, Miles; (3) make her a daughter of the Duke of
York, or of the Duke of Argyll, or of lords and of knights from all
quarters of the compass, and sister-in-law to an English barber,
also one of the Queen's 'serving-maids.' We at least cannot accept
those numerous and glittering contradictions as corruptions which
could be made soon after the Russian events, when the true old
ballad style was dead.

We now produce more startling variations. The lover is not only
'the King,' 'the Prince,' Darnley, 'the highest Stuart o' a',' but
he is also that old offender, 'Sweet Willie,' or he is Warrenston
(Warriston?). Mary is certainly not hanged (the Russian woman was
beheaded) away from her home; she dies in Edinburgh, near the