Laird of Wariston, The [Child 194]

DESCRIPTION: Wariston (accuses his wife of adultery and) strikes her. She avenges herself by killing him with the help of a servant. Lady Wariston is arrested and condemned. (She begs the King to lessen her sentence to beheading. He wishes she did not have to die.)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Kinloch)
KEYWORDS: homicide revenge adultery accusation punishment execution nobility royalty
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
July 5, 1600 - Execution of the former Jean Livingston, Lady Wariston (according to Birrell)
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Child 194, "The Laird of Wariston" (3 texts)
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 114-117, "The Laird of Waristoun" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 528-533, "The Laird of Wariston" (2 texts)
DT 194, WARSTON
Roud #3876
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Laird of Woodhouslie" (plot)
NOTES [411 words]: Child reports that this event is historical, but the judicial records of Lady Wariston's trial are lost. This ballad is therefore the only evidence of the motive for her murder of her husband.
This certainly appears to be a folk ballad, but it also appears to be extinct. Child knew three texts, all damaged, and the song has not been collected since. Ewan MacColl has a tune for it, but it's nearly certain that it came out of his own head. (Or, more correctly, is a modification of a tune for another ballad -- e.g. it's much like the tune I know for "The Dowie Dens o' Yarrow.")
Child treats this as one ballad, and given its lack of survival in tradition, there is no reason to break it up into two entries -- but I think it likely that it is in fact *two* ballads, one represented by Child's A and B texts and the third by his C text.
There are several reasons for this. The forms of the stanzas are different (though we might note that A and B also differ from each other). There are only a few common words, and most of them commonplace ("O Wariston, I wad that ye wad sink for sin").
Most crucial, though, is the complete difference in motive. In the A/B text, Wariston strikes his wife over a trivial quarrel. In C, however, Lady Wariston is a child bride (her age is given as fifteen at the time of her marriage; the real Lady Wariston seems to have been about nineteen). Shortly after their marriage, Wariston goes to sea; before he returns a year later, she bears a child.
Upon his return, Wariston accuses his lady of adultery and casts her out. The murder is her retaliation.
Steve Gardham has an explanation for the peculiarities of at least the C version, which is Peter Buchan's: it's Buchan's own work. Steve wrote on Mudcat: "Peter's text (Child C) is a typical Buchan concoction, in at least 2 ways, it is as usual more than twice as long as any other version, and the girl's age is lowered as in many of Peter's concoctions.... If you need further convincing, there is some typical Buchan shite, the dreaming of his brother's death in stanza 12, some archaic language, e.g., sts 6/17, stanzas 24 and 26 rubbish, stanza 27 filched from Kitchie Boy, as is Peter's wont, and the final stanza is certainly not of tradition. Also, only in Peter's version does she having a child out of wedlock occur, likewise only in Peter's version is the nurse responsible for his murder. It has PB written all over it, like many another of his concoctions." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: C194

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