#C.# 'The Cruel Sister,' Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 143 (1802).
#D.# 'The Bonnie Milldams of Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, II, 49.
#E.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No X, p. 30.
#F.# 'The Bonny Bows o London,' Motherwell's MS., p. 383.
#I.# 'Bonnie Milldams o Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, V, 425.
#J.# 'The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 4th S., V, 23.
#L. a.# 'The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 1st S., V, 316. #b.# 'The Drowned Lady,' The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 161.
#M.# 'Binorie, O an Binorie,' Murison MS., p. 79.
#N.# 'Binnorie,' [Pinkerton's] Scottish Tragic Ballads, p. 72.
#O.# 'The Bonny Bows o London.' #a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 128. #b.# Christie's Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 42.
#P. a.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Motherwell's MS., p. 245. #b.# 'The Swan swims bonnie O,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xx.
#Q.# 'The Twa Sisters,' communicated by J. F. Campbell, Esq.
#R. a.# 'The Three Sisters,' Notes and Q., 1st S., VI, 102. #b.# 'Bodown,' communicated by J. F. Campbell, Esq. #c.# 'The Barkshire Tragedy,' The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 158.
#T.# 'Sister, dear Sister,' Allingham's Ballad Book, p. xxxiii.
#U.# From Long Island, N.Y., communicated by Mr W. W. Newell.
This is one of the very few old ballads which are not extinct as tradition in the British Isles. Even drawing-room versions are spoken of as current, "generally traced to some old nurse, who sang them to the young ladies."[126] It has been found in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and was very early in print. Dr Rimbault possessed and published a broadside of the date 1656[127] (#A a#), and the same copy is included in the miscellany called Wit Restor'd, 1658. Both of these name "Mr Smith" as the author; that is, Dr James Smith, a well-known writer of humorous verses, to whom the larger part of the pieces in Wit Restor'd has been attributed. If the ballad were ever in Smith's hands, he might possibly have inserted the three burlesque stanzas, 11-13; but similar verses are found in another copy (#L a#), and might easily be extemporized by any singer of sufficiently bad taste. Wit and Drollery, the edition of 1682, has an almost identical copy of the ballad, and this is repeated in Dryden's Miscellany, edition of 1716, Part III, p. 316. In 1781 Pinkerton inserted in his Tragic Ballads one with the title 'Binnorie,' purporting to be from Scottish tradition. Of twenty-eight couplets, barely seven are genuine. Scott printed in 1802 a copy (#C#) compounded from one "in Mrs Brown's MS." (#B b#) and a fragment of fourteen stanzas which had been transcribed from recitation by Miss Charlotte Brooke, adopting a burden found in neither.[128] Jamieson followed, four years after, with a tolerably faithful, though not, as he says, _verbatim_, publication of his copy of Mrs Brown's ballad, somewhat marred, too, by acknowledged interpolations. This text of Mrs Brown's is now correctly given, with the whole or fragments of eleven others, hitherto unpublished.