The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
King Herod, 1 suggest that the folk have taken
this form of revenge for the exclusion of
such legends from the canon ;
the origins of
all three are to be found in the Apocryphal
Gospels.
I have no space to touch upon all the ballads
which hover between legend and history ;
but
one peculiar instance may be studied, perhaps, so
as to throw out a few hints of the difficulties encountered
by any student who confronts the
psychology of record-makers. The ballad of
Mary Hamilton 2 tells how she, one of the queen's
" four Maries," murdered the child she had
borne to " the highest Stewart of a','' and was
hanged in Edinburgh for the crime. A large
number of versions are known, but they nearly
all agree in assigning the incident to the court of
Mary Stuart, and in naming the four Maries
Seaton, Beaton, Carmichael, and Hamilton. As
a matter of history, when Mary Stuart was sent
to France in 1548 she had as attendants ladies
named
" Mary of four sundry honourable houses,
to wit, Fleming, Livingstone, Seton, and Beaton
of Creich " :
they were still with the Queen in
1564. Moreover, history records that in 1563-4
a French woman of Mary Stuart's chamber was
seduced by the Queen's apothecary, and bore a
child which was murdered by common consent
1
Second Series, 133, 129, and 125.
2 Third Series, 44.
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