Mary Hamilton Poem Rhyme Scheme

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The Text given here is from Sharpe's Ballad Book Professor Child collected and printed some twenty eight variants and fragments of which none is entirely satisfactory as regards the telling of the story The present text will suit our purpose as well as any other and it ends impressively with the famous pathetic verse of the four Maries	A
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The Story Lesley in his History of Scotland says that when Mary Stuart was sent to France in she had in attendance 'sundry gentlewomen and noblemen's sons and daughters almost of her own age of the which there were four in special of whom everyone of them bore the same name of Mary being of four sundry honourable houses to wit Fleming Livingston Seton and Beaton of Creich ' The four Maries were still with the Queen in Hamilton and Carmichael appear in the ballad in place of Fleming and Livingston	B
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Scott attributed the origin of the ballad to an incident related by Knox in his History of the Reformation in or a Frenchwoman was seduced by the Queen's apothecary and the babe murdered by consent of father and mother But the cries of a new born babe had been heard search was made and both parents were 'damned to be hanged upon the public street of Edinburgh '	-
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In in his preface to the Ballad Book Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe produced a similar story from the Russian court In this story was retold from authentic sources as follows After the marriage of one of the ministers of Peter the Great's father with a Hamilton the Scottish family ranked with the Russian aristocracy The Czar Peter required that all his Empress Catharine's maids of honour should be remarkably handsome and Mary Hamilton a niece it is supposed of the above minister's wife was appointed on account of her beauty This Mary Hamilton had an amour with one Orlof an aide de camp to the Czar a murdered babe was found the guilt traced to Mary and she and Orlof sent to prison in April Orlof was afterwards released Mary Hamilton was executed on March	C
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Professor Child in printing this ballad in considered the details of the Russian story most of which I have omitted to be so closely parallel to the Scottish ballad that he was convinced that the later story was the origin of the ballad and that the ballad maker had located it in Mary Stuart's court on his own responsibility In September Mr Andrew Lang contributed the results of his researches concerning the ballad to Blackwood's Magazine maintaining that the ballad must have arisen from the story as it is too old and too good to have been written since Balancing this improbability that the details of a Russian court scandal of should exactly correspond to a previously extant Scottish ballad against the improbability of the eighteenth century producing such a ballad Child afterwards concluded the latter to be the greater The coincidence is undoubtedly striking but neither the story nor the name are uncommon	B
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Footnote See Waliszewski's Peter the Great translated by Lady Mary Loyd vol i p London	B
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It is of course possible that the story is older than it should not be difficult to find more than one instance and that it was first adapted to the incident and afterwards to the Russian scandal the two versions being subsequently confused But there is no evidence for this	A
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MARY HAMILTON	B
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Word's gane to the kitchen	B
And word's gane to the ha'	D
That Marie Hamilton gangs wi' bairn	B
To the hichest Stewart of a'	E
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He's courted her in the kitchen	B
He's courted her in the ha'	D
He's courted her in the laigh cellar	F
And that was warst of a'	E
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She's tyed it in her apron	B
And she's thrown it in the sea	A
Says 'Sink ye swim ye bonny wee babe	G
You'll ne'er get mair o' me '	-
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Down then cam the auld queen	B
Goud tassels tying her hair	H
'O Marie where's the bonny wee babe	G
That I heard greet sae sair '	-
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'There was never a babe intill my room	I
As little designs to be	A
It was but a touch o' my sair side	J
Come o'er my fair bodie '	-
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'O Marie put on your robes o' black	K
Or else your robes o' brown	B
For ye maun gang wi' me the night	L
To see fair Edinbro' town '	-
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'I winna put on my robes o' black	K
Nor yet my robes o' brown	B
But I'll put on my robes o' white	L
To shine through Edinbro' town '	-
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When she gaed up the Cannogate	L
She laugh'd loud laughters three	A
But whan she cam down the Cannogate	L
The tear blinded her ee	A
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When she gaed up the Parliament stair	H
The heel cam aff her shee	C
And lang or she cam down again	B
She was condemn'd to dee	A
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When she cam down the Cannogate	A
The Cannogate sae free	A
Many a ladie look'd o'er her window	A
Weeping for this ladie	A
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'Ye need nae weep for me ' she says	A
'Ye need nae weep for me	A
For had I not slain mine own sweet babe	G
This death I wadna dee	A
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'Bring me a bottle of wine ' she says	A
'The best that e'er ye hae	D
That I may drink to my weil wishers	A
And they may drink to me	A
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'Here's a health to the jolly sailors	A
That sail upon the main	B
Let them never let on to my father and mother	F
But what I'm coming hame	A
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'Here's a health to the jolly sailors	A
That sail upon the sea	A
Let them never let on to my father and mother	F
That I cam here to dee	A
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'Oh little did my mother think	M
The day she cradled me	A
What lands I was to travel through	N
What death I was to dee	A
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'Oh little did my father think	M
The day he held up me	A
What lands I was to travel through	N
What death I was to dee	A
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'Last night I wash'd the queen's feet	A
And gently laid her down	B
And a' the thanks I've gotten the nicht	A
To be hang'd in Edinbro' town	B
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'Last nicht there was four Maries	A
The nicht there'll be but three	A
There was Marie Seton and Marie Beton	B
And Marie Carmichael and me '	-

Frank Sidgwick

Mary Hamilton Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis

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