Four Maries- McGill (NB) 1928 Barry A
[My title, not a local title. From British Ballad from Maine; Barry Eckstorm & Smyth, 1929. Barry's notes follow.
Mrs. McGill of Kirkcudbrightshire, learned many of her ballads from her mother in Galloway, Scotland. As I recall she came to Canada circa 1911. Unfortunately, Barry sent or gave her copies of ballads to kindle her recollections. The ballad was sent in and I assume Herzog visited her circa 1928 to get the melody (no date is given).
R. Matteson 2015]
In a letter, Mrs. McGill sent two lines of an additional stanza:
O I hae dressed up my queen,
And pit gowd in her hair.
Of "Mary Hamilton" Child published twenty-eight different versions, the largest number for any ballad with which he dealt. yet it has almost disappeared from tradition in the British Isles. Even so indefatigable a collector as Gavin Greig was able to recover only two short versions, one of them not wholly traditional, and a fragment. Dr. J. H. Combs, in Folk-songs du Midi des Etats-unis, p. 142, has published an excellent text from West Virginia, which is very close to Child A.
There is a reference in JAFL, XXXVI, 204, to a Virginia fragment, with melody.
Mrs. McGill's version belongs to a group which represents a secondary tradition of the ballad. Some of the versions in this group have been influenced by the intrusion of two stanzas of recent and known authorship. The feature of this secondary tradition, is its brevity: the detailsof seduction and infanticide have either disappeared entirely, or have
left only a trace. To this group belong the following:
1. Maine A, --Mrs. McGill's version;
2. Child BB;
3. Gavin Greig's B-text;
4. "The Four Maries": a, Methven Simpson Co., Ltd., Dundee (no date); b, W. F. Shaw (copyrighted, 1884), reprinted-in 1-10
Scotch songs, arranged and revised by Thomas a, Becket, Jr., Oliver Ditson Co., Boston.
5. A copy in J. P. McCaskey's Franktlin Square song Collection, VI, 75.
The close relationship of the foregoing versions to one another is shown partly by the music since all except Child BB, the melody of which was never recorded, are sung to nearly identical versions of a single air. The editor of Greig's Last Leaves, states, on page 109, that "in 1881, Mr. Colin Brown printed in 'The Thistler' an air which is but slightly different" from the air to which Greig's B-text was sung. This version of the melody we have not seen.
[Four Maries] Sung by Mrs. James McGill of Chamcook, New Bruswick, Canada.
Yestre'en the queen had four Maries,
This nicht she'll hae but three;
There was Mary Beaton, an' Mary Seaton,
An' Mary Carmichael an' me.
O little did my mither ken,
The day she cradled me,
The land I was tae travel in,
The death I was tae dee.
Last nicht I dressed Queen Mary
An' pit on her braw silken goon,
An' a' thanks I've gat this nicht
Is tae be hanged in Edinboro toon.
They've tied a hanky roon me een,
An' they'll no let me see tae dee:
An' they've pit on a robe o' black
Tae hang on the gallows tree.
Yestre'en the queen had four Maries,
This nicht she'll hae but three:
There was Mary Beaton, an' Mary Seaton,
An' Mary Carmichael an' me.