Sir Walter Scott conceives the ballad to have had its foundation in an event which took place early in the reign of Mary Stuart, described by Knox as follows: "In the very time of the General Assembly, there comes to public knowledge a haynous murther, committed in the court; yea, not far from the Queen's lap; for a French woman, that served in the Queen's chamber, had played the whore with the Queen's own apothecary. The woman conceived and bare a childe, whom, with common consent, the father and mother murthered; yet were the cries of a new-borne childe hearde, searche was made, the childe and the mother were both apprehended, and so were the man and the woman condemned to be hanged in the publicke street of Edinburgh. The punishment was suitable, because the crime was haynous. But yet was not the court purged of whores and whoredoms, which was the fountaine of such enormities: for it was well known that shame hasted marriage betwixt John Sempill, called the Dancer, and Mary Levingston, sirnamed the Lusty. What bruit the Maries, and the rest of the dancers of the court had, _the ballads of that age_ doe witnesse, which we for modestie's sake omit. KNOX'S _History of the Reformation_, p. 373.
"Such," Sir Walter goes on to say, "seems to be the subject of the following ballad, as narrated by the stern apostle of Presbytery. It will readily strike the reader, that 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. Yet this is less surprising, when we recollect, that one of the heaviest of the Queen's complaints against her ill-fated husband, was his infidelity, and that even with her personal attendants."
Satisfactorily as the circumstances of Knox's story may agree with those of the ballads, a coincidence no less striking, and extending even to the name, is presented by an incident which occurred at the court of Peter the Great. "During the reign of the Czar Peter," observes Mr. C. K. Sharpe, "one of his Empress's attendants, a Miss Hamilton, was executed for the murder of a natural child,--not her first crime in that way, as was suspected; and the Emperor, whose admiration of her beauty did not preserve her life, stood upon the scaffold till her head was struck off, which he lifted by the ears and kissed on the lips. I cannot help thinking that the two stories have been confused in the ballad; for, if Marie Hamilton was executed in Scotland, it is not likely that her relations resided beyond seas; and we have no proof that Hamilton was really the name of the woman who made the slip with the Queen's apothecary."