Uploaded May 2021 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago

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Four Maries / The Four Marys / Mary Mild / Mary Hamilton (Child No. 173) - Performed by Wendy Stewart and Gary West on "Hinterlands" (2009).

Note by Kevin W.:
Based on Child 173 Version J, taken from the Harris Manuscript as sung by Amelia and Jane Harris in Perthshire, Scotland, in the middle of the 19th century.

Song transcription:

My mother was a proud woman,
A proud woman and a bold;
She sent me to Queen Marie's bour,
When scarcely eleven years old.

Queen Marie's bread it was sae sweet,
An her wine it was sae fine,
That I hae lien in a young man's arms,
An I rued it aye synsyne.

Queen Marie she cam doon the stair,
Wi the goud kamis in her hair:
'Oh whare oh whare is the wee wee babe
I heard greetin sae sair?'

'There is nae babe, nae bonnie babe,
Nor ever intends to be;
But I mysel, wi a sair colic,
As sick and like to dee.'

They socht the bed baith up an doon,
Frae the pillow to the straw,
There they got the wee wee babe,
But its life was far awa.

['Come doon, come doon, Marie Hamilton,
Come doon and speak this time;
Go dress yerself Marie Hamilton,
Go dress an mak ye fine.'] *

'You'll no put on your dowie black,
Nor yet your dowie broun;
But you'll put on your ried, ried silk,
To ride through Edinborough toun.'

'Yestreen the queen had four Maries,
The nicht she'll hae but three;
There was Marie Bethune, an Marie Seaton,
An Marie Carmichael, an me.

'Ah, little did my mother ken,
The day she cradled me,
The lands that I sud travel in,
An the death that I suld dee.'

Yestreen the queen had four Maries,
The nicht she has but three;
For the bonniest Marie amang them a'
Was hanged upon a tree.

* This verse was incomplete in the Harris MS and has been reconstructed.