Glen Collection of printed music > Printed music > Scots musical museum > Volume 5

370 ' CCCCXI.— TAM LIN.
She's prickt hersell, and prin'd hersel.
By the ae light o' the moon.
And she's aw a to Kertonha'
As fast as she can gang.
" What gars ye pu' the rose, Jenny ?
What gars ye break the tree ?
What gars ye gang to Kertonha'
Without the leave of me ?"
" Yes, I will pu' the rose, Thomas,
And I will break the tree.
For Kertonha' shou'd be my ain.
Nor ask I leave of thee."
&c. &c. &c.
Kertonha' is a corruption of the name of Carte^augh
near Selkirk. The ballad in the Museum, as well as the
original air, were communicated by Burns, in his own hand-
writing, to the editor of that work. This copy, with some
alterations, was afterwards reprinted in the Tales of Wonder.
Sir W. Scott, in his Minstrelsy of the Border^ has
likewise favoured the public with another edition of the bal-
lad, under the title of " The Young Tamlane ;" to which he
has prefixed a long and ingenious essay on the fairies of po-
pular superstition. Many of the stanzas in Sir W. Scott's
version, however, if not by himself, are evidently the work
of a modern hand. The language itself betrays the era of
the writer.
The scene of the ballad of Tam Lin is laid in Selkirk-
shire. Carterhaugh is a plain at the conflux of the Ettrick
and Yarrow, about a mile above Selkirk. Sir W. Scott says,
" The peasants point out, upon the plain, those electrical
rings, which vulgar credulity supposes to be the traces of
the fairy revels. Here, they say, were placed the stands of
milk and of water, in which Tamlane was dipped, in order
to effect his disenchantment ; and upon these spots, accord-
ing to their mode of expressing themselves, the grass will
never grow. Miles Cross, (perhaps a corruption of Mary''s
Cross) where fair Janet waited the arrival of the fairy train,
is said to have stood near the Duke of Buccleuch's seat
of Bowhill, about half a mile from Carterhaugh." — Min-
strelsy of the Border, vol. ii. p. 178.