Flower o’ Northumberland- (Aber) pre1880 Christie
[From "Traditional ballad airs. Arranged and harmonized for the pianoforte and harmonium, from copies procured in the counties of Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray" Christie, 1880. His notes follow. From an informant in Buchan. Bronson belies the text is "refined out of Peter Buchan, Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1828, II, pp. 208ff. 6." He also says, "It is odd that Christie refers to his Appendix for another and different air to this ballad, for no such air is discoverable in William Motherwell, Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern, 182." Cf. Bell Duncan.
R. Matteson 2018]
This Air was noted from singing in Buchan, as also the one to the same Ballad given in the appendix. The Ballad appears in different forms; and the fact of its having two Airs sung to it in the same district would indicate its popularity. Buchan gives a copy of the Ballad under the name, “The Betrayed Lady’.’ "Ballads of the North’.’ Vol. II. p. 208. Motherwell in his “Minstrelsy” (l827) gives an Air No 2. “The Flower of Northumberland’,’ different from either of the two given in this work.
The Flower o’ Northumberland.
A MAID pass’d by the prison door,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
She saw a prisoner standing there,
And wishing to be in fair Scotland.
“O, fair maid, will ye pity me?
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
Ye’ll steal the keys, let me gang free,
I’ll make you my lady in fair Scotland.
“I’m sure ye hae nae need o’ me,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
For ye hae a wife and bairns three,
That live at home in fair Scotland.”
Then by a sacred oath he’s sworn,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
He ne’er had a wife since he was born,
But liv’d a free lord in fair Scotland.
She went into her father’s room,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
And mony a key from it she’s stown,
And let him out of prison strong.
She went into her father’s stable,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won ;)
And stown a steed baith wight and able,
To carry them on to fair Scotland.
They rade till they came to a moss,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won ;)
He bade her light aff her father’s best horse,
And return again to Northumberland.
When she gaed back to her father’s ha’,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won;)
She looted her low amongst them a’,
Though she was the flower o’ Northumberland
Out spoke her father, he spoke bold,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won ;)
“ How could you do so at fifteen years old,
And you the flower o’ Northumberland?”
Out spoke her mother, she spoke with a smile,
(Maids’ love whiles is easy won ;)
“She’s nae the first he has tried to beguile,
Ye’re welcome back to Northumberland.”