The Four Marys- Kilbride (MA) 1953 Flanders A
[From Flanders' Ancient Ballads; 1963. Coffin's/Flanders' notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Mary Hamilton
(Child 173)
The story behind the ballad of "Mary Hamilton" has baffled scholars. It is known that Mary Stuart had four maids-in-waiting named Mary, who went with her to France in 1549 and returned with her in 1561. Their last names were Seaton, Beaton, Livingston, and Fleming-- not Seaton, Beaton, Carmichael, and Hamilton as the song would tell us. All eventually left the Queen's service and married, excepting Mary Seaton, who became a nun. No scandal has been associated with any of the four. It is also known that a French girl and an apothecary of the Queen had an affair about 1565. The girl was executed in December of that year for killing her newborn baby. Finally, there is an account of a similar event that occurred in the court of peter of Russia in 1718-1719 Mary Hamilton, a Scottish lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine, fell in love with Ivan Orlof, an aide de-camp. Mary, accused of killing an illegitimate child born of this indiscretion, was executed on March 14, 1719, and Orlof was exiled to Siberia. Exactly how these pieces fit together may never be known. Andrew Lang, Blackwood's Magazine, September, 1895; Child, III, 380-f.; and A. H. Tolman, MLA, XLII, 4ZZ:, have tried to come up with a suitable answer. It may well be that all three situations have contributed to the folksong-- the four Maries and the fate cf the-French girl fusing, the ballad later adopting the name Hamilton from the parallel Russian event.
"Mary Hamilton" has been collected from time to time in America, but it is rare here and in Britain. Josiah Combs, Folk-Songs des Etats-Unis (Paris, 1926), 141, found a full variant of Child A, but usually the song is collected as a lyric lament of a girl on a gallows with little of the story retained. This is the form the song took when it was printed in J. P. McCaskey's Franklin Square Song Collection and in other songsters. It is also the form typical of New England, as given by Phillip Barry in British Ballads from Maine, 258. The Flanders A und B texts are copies of the version of the ballad that was sung at David Kennedy's Scottish Entertainments by Marjory Kennedy in the early 1880's. The final two stanzas of this form of the song were supposedly written by "a lady resident in Dundee"; however, an Edinburgh broadside printed by J. Sanderson, Canongate, contains the same two stanzas, and similar lines can be found in Child BB and the Greig and Keith B version. In Flanders C, Mr. Campbell is probably mistaken in associating his additional lines with his "Mary Hamilton" fragment.
See Coffin, 116-117 (American), 119 Greig and Keith, 108-109 (Scottish), for a start on a bibliography; The Child A text and the Barry A fragment are used in a discussion of ballad Poetry tn JAF, LXX, 208-214.
The three tunes for Child's are almost identical. For melodic relationship to the entire group see DV, p. 590, No.36, almost identical); BES, p. 258(very close); and ROI, P. I52 (not so close).
A. The Four Marys. As sung by Mrs. Frances Kilbride of Brookline, Massachusetts, who learned it from hearing her father and mother sing it , Mr. MacGregor, Mrs. Kilbride's father, was born in Scotland, and came to this country with his daughter, who was twenty-four years of age at the time. Mrs. Kilbride was born in Glasgow. when three months old, she was taken by her parents to the North coast (outside of Aberdeen), at which place she remained, until coming to America. M. Olney, Collector; September 21, 1953. structure: A B C D (2,2,2,2); Rhythm B; Contour: arc; scale: major.
Last nicht there were four Marys;
This nicht there'll be bur three.
There was Mary Beaton and Mary Seaton
And Mary Carmichael and me.
Oh, little did my mither think,
When first she cradled me,
That I would dee sae far frae hame
Or die on a gallus tree.
They'll tie a napkin roun' my een
And they'll ne'er let me see to dee;
And they'll ne'er let on to my faither and mither,
But I'm awa' o'er the sea.
I wish I could lie in our ain kirk-yard
Aneath the auld yew-tree,
Where we pu'd the gowans and thread the rowans,
My brothers, my sisters, and me.
But little care I for a nameless grave,
If I've hope for eternity;
So I'll pray that the faith o' the deein' thief
May be granted thro' grace unto me.