MINNIE DEAN.

Evening Star, Issue 9776, 5 August 1895, Page 3

MINNIE DEAN.

TO THE EDITOR. (mk, —The verses quoted in your Saturday’s issue as in Mrs Dean’s own handwriting are part of au old Scotch ballad known as ‘ The four Maries,’ relating to the period of Mary, Queen of Scots. The circumstances connected with the ballad are as follow When Queen Mary was scut to France she was accompanied by four chosen companions—to wit, Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Beaton, and Mary Seaton (Mary Carmichael appears afterwards to have taken the place of one of these)—-who were all celebrated in after life in song and in tradition. Subsequent to the return to Scotland, one of the Maries committed a mistake, and endeavored to hide the birth. She was accused of child murder, condemned, and sentenced to death, and she is supposed to be speaking on the morning of her execution when she says

Last nicht there were four Maries, This nicht there be but three— There was Man - Deaton, and Mary Seaton, And Mary Carmichael, and me. Little did my mither think The day she cradled me The land I was to travel in Ur the deatli that I should dee. Etc., etc.

What makes the story the more pathetic is that, so the tradition I heard runs, her child was stolen, as in the case of Effie Deans (Scott’s ‘ Heart of Midlothian ’), by a less favored (?) rival, and was actually alive at the time of tho trial, the mother being charged and found guilty of concealment of birth, a capital offence in the Scotch code in those days.—l am, etc ,

Scotch Thistle.

Dunedin, August 3. P.S.—“Clocks” is Scotch for “beetles.” [We have received letters on the same subject from Mr A. Bathgate and others, but the points they make are to the same effect as those of the above letter, which chanced to be the first to arrive.— Ed. E.S.J