the variants are full of historical impossibilities, due to the
lapses of memory and the wandering fancy of reciters, altering and
interpolating, through more than two centuries, an original of which
nothing can now be known. The fancy, if not of the first ballad
poet who dealt with a real tragic event, at least of his successors
in many corners of Scotland, raised the actors and sufferers in a
sad story, elevating a French waiting-maid to the rank of a Queen's
Marie, and her lover, a French apothecary, to the place of a queen's
consort, or, at lowest, of a Scottish laird.

At the time of the General Assembly which met on Christmas Day 1563,
a French waiting-maid of Mary Stuart, 'ane Frenche woman that servit
in the Queenis chalmer,' fell into sin 'with the Queenis awin
hipoticary.' The father and mother slew the child, and were
'dampned to be hangit upoun the publict streit of Edinburgh.' No
official report exists: 'the records of the Court of Justiciary at
this time are defective,' says Maidment, and he conjectures that the
accused may have been hanged without trial, 'redhand.' Now the
Queen's apothecary must have left traces in the royal account-books.
No writer on the subject has mentioned them. I myself have had the
Records of Privy Council and the MS. Treasurer's Accounts examined,
with their statement of the expenses of the royal household. The
Rev. John Anderson was kind enough to undertake this task, though
with less leisure than he could have desired. There is, unluckily,
a gap of some months in 1563. In June 1560, Mr. Anderson finds
mention of a 'medicinar,' 'apoticarre,' 'apotigar,' but no name is
given, and the Queen was then in France. One Nicholas Wardlaw of
the royal household was engaged, in 1562, to a Miss Seton of
Parbroath, but it needed a special royal messenger to bring the
swain to the altar. 'Ane appotigar' of 1562 is mentioned, but not