Minstrelsy of the Scottish border - National Library of Scotland

THE SCOTTISH BOUDER. 87
THE QUEEN'S MARIE.
NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED.
" J.Ntheverytimeof the General Assembly, there comes
" to public knowledge a haynous murther, committed
" in the court; yea, not fax* 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 apothe-
*'cary.—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
2