ballads about the Queen's Maries. These ladies, as we know from
Keith, were, from the first, in the Queen's childhood, Mary
Livingstone, Mary Seatoun, Mary Beatoun, and Mary Fleming.

We have, then, a child-murder, by a woman of the Queen, we have
ballads about her Maries, and, as Scott says, 'the tale has suffered
great alterations, as handed down by tradition, the French waiting-
woman being changed into Mary Hamilton, and the Queen's apothecary
into Henry Darnley,' who, as Mr. Child shows, was not even in
Scotland in 1563. But gross perversion of contemporary facts does
not prove a ballad to be late or apocryphal. Mr. Child even says
that accuracy in a ballad would be very 'suspicious.' Thus, for
example, we know, from contemporary evidence, that the murder of the
Bonny Earl Murray, in 1592, by Huntley, was at once made the topic
of ballads. Of these, Aytoun and Mr. Child print two widely
different in details: in the first, Huntley has married Murray's
sister; in the second, Murray is the lover of the Queen of James VI.
Both statements are picturesque; but the former is certainly, and
the latter is probably, untrue. Again, 'King James and Brown,' in
the Percy MS., is accepted as a genuine contemporary ballad of the
youth of gentle King Jamie. James is herein made to say to his
nobles,--

'My grandfather you have slaine,
And my own mother you hanged on a tree.'

Even if we read 'father' (against the manuscript) this is absurd.
James V. was not 'slaine,' neither Darnley nor Mary was 'hanged on a
tree.' Ballads are always inaccurate; they do not report events, so
much as throw into verse the popular impression of events, the