Mailin, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer lists all her suitors: "the farmer's cauld son," a soldier she refused, a sailor, ... and she waits for the lad and farm waiting for her. Now she has "found a far better and a far better place"
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1828 (Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1)
KEYWORDS: courting marriage farming sailor soldier
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 77, "The Mailin" (1 text)
Roud #3869
NOTES [140 words]: Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 translates "mailin" or "mailen" as "farm."
The Kinloch fragment (George Ritchie Kinloch, editor, The Ballad Book (revised by Edmund Goldsmid) (Edinburgh, 1885 (reprint of 1827 edition) ("Digitized by Microsoft")), #22 p. 46, ("First there came whipmen, and that not a few")) lists suitors who "court her, and leave her": "aye for the courting the lassie was keen ... and the laddie was airy." This is not the sense of the Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 text in which the woman is willing but choosy ("It's a wonner I refusit him"), even when there was one "that [others said" soud have me." Closer to LyleCrawfurd1 than to Kinloch is the Greig/Duncan4 fragment "He's a Dark Man" since the woman is the chooser. Nevertheless, I don't see "He's a Dark Man" as being a fragment of "The Mailin." - BS
Last updated in version 2.6
File: LyCr177

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