17. 'O pardon, pardon, gentlemen, Have mercy now upon me.' 'Such as you gave, such you shall have, And so we fall upon thee.'
18. 'Donald, my man, wait me upon, And I'll gie you my brechan; And if you stay here till I die, You'll get my trews of tartan.
19. 'There is fifty pounds in my pocket, Besides my trews and brechan, Ye'll get my watch and diamond ring, And take me to Loch-Largan.'
20. Now they've ta'en out his bleeding heart, And stuck it on a spear, Then took it to the House of Marr, And gave it to his dear.
21. But when she saw his bleeding heart, She was like one distracted, She wrung her hands and tore her hair, Crying, 'Oh! what have I acted.
22. 'It's for your sake, Sir James the Rose, That my poor heart's a-breaking; Cursed be the day I did thee betray, Thou brave knight o' Buleighan.'
23. Then up she rose, and forth she goes, And in that fatal hour She bodily was borne away, And never was seen more.
24. But where she went was never kent; And so, to end the matter, A traitor's end you may depend Can never be no better.
+The Text+ is from the Skene MS., but I have omitted the three final lines, which do not make a complete stanza, and, when compared with Scott's 'Old Lady's' version, are obviously corrupt. The last verse should signify that the mothers of Willie and Meggie went up and down the bank saying, 'Clyde's water has done us wrong!'
The ballad is better known as _Willie and May Margaret_.
+The Story.+--Willie refuses his mother's request to stay at home, as he wishes to visit his true-love. The mother puts her malison, or curse, upon him, but he rides off. Clyde is roaring, but Willie says, 'Drown me as I come back, but spare me as I go,' which is Martial's
'Parcite dum propero, mergite cum redeo,'
and occurs in other English broadsides. Meggie will not admit Willie, and he rides away. Meggie awakes, and learns that she has dismissed her true-love in her sleep. Our ballad is deficient here, but it is obvious from st. 19 that both lovers are drowned. We must understand, therefore, that Meggie follows Willie across Clyde. A variant of the ballad explains that she found him 'in the deepest pot' in all Clyde's water, and drowned herself.
Child notes that there is a very popular Italian ballad of much the same story, except that the mother's curse is on the girl and not the man.