Cecil Sharp's Note 10 (1916)

No. 10. Lady Maisry

For other versions of the words only of this ballad, see Motherwell’s Minstrelsy (p. 71), and Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads (No. 65); and of the words with tunes, the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 43; volume iii, pp. 74 and 304). In the Scottish ballad, Lady Maisry rejects the Northern lords, who come to woo her, and enters into an illicit connection with an English nobleman. Lord William. During the absence of the latter, the brothers of Lady Maisry discover her secret and make preparations to burn her. She dispatches in hot haste a messenger to apprise Lord William of her danger. He hastens home to find her at the point of death. He swears to avenge her by burning her kinsmen, and

⁠The last bonfire that I come to
⁠Myself I will cast in.

The first part of the story is omitted in this version, while the last four verses recall the ballad of “Lord Lovel,” rather than that of “Lady Maisry.”

The tune is in the Æolian mode.