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60 THE HEIR OF LINNE. |
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THE HEIR OF LINNE. Percy's Seliques, ii. 135.
" The original of this ballad," says Percy, "is found in the Editor's folio MS., the breaches and defects in which, rendered the insertion of supplemental stanzas necessary. These it is hoped the reader will pardon, as indeed the completion of the story was suggested by a modern ballad on a similar subject. From the Scottish phrases here and there discernible in this poem, it would seem to have been originally composed beyond the Tweed."
The modern ballad here mentioned is probably The Drunkard's Legacy, printed from an old chap-book, in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, p. 151, Percy Society, vol. xvii. The Scottish version of the Heir of Linne is annexed to the present in the only form in which it is now to be obtained.
The incident by which the hidden treasure is discovered in this ballad, occurs (as observes a writer in the British, Bibliographer, iv. 182) in a story of Cinthio's, Heccatomithi, Dec. ix. nov. 8: but the argument of that story is in other respects different, being in fact the following epigram:
Xpvabv ivjjp evpini l?um flpoxov avrap o xpvoov, av Anrev, oix etop&v, fypev bv cipe $pb\w.
Brunck's Anthologia, vol. i. p. 106. |
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