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The earliest printed copy of this ballad is the curious piece in Wit Restor'd, (1658,) called The Miller and the King's Daughter, improperly said to be a parody, by Jamieson and others. (See Appendix.) Pinkerton inserted in his Tragic Ballads, (p. 72,) a ballad on the subject, which preserves many genuine lines, but is half his own composition. Complete versions were published by Scott and Jamieson, and more recently a third has been furnished in Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 30, and a fourth in Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland (given at the end of this volume). The burden of Mr. Sharpe's copy is nearly the same as that of the Cruel Mother, post, p. 372. Jamieson's copy had also this burden, but he exchanged it for the more popular, and certainly more tasteful, Binnorie. No ballad furnishes a closer link than this between the popular poetry of England and that of the other nations of Northern Europe. The same story is found in Icelandic, Norse, Faroish, and Estnish ballads, as well as in the Swedish and Danish, and a nearly related one in many other ballads or tales, German, Polish, Lithuanian, etc., etc.—See Svenska Folk-Visor, iii. 16, i. 81, 86, Arwidsson, ii. 139, and especially Den Talende Strengeleg, Grundtvig, No. 95, and the notes to Der Singende Knochen, K. u. H. Märchen, iii. 55, ed. 1856.

Of the edition in the Border Minstrelsy, Scott gives the following account, (iii. 287.)

"It is compiled from a copy in Mrs. Brown's MSS., intermixed with a beautiful fragment, of fourteen verses, transmitted to the Editor by J. C. Walker, Esq. the ingenious historian of the Irish bards. Mr. Walker, at the same time, favored the Editor with the following note: 'I am indebted to my departed friend, Miss Brook, for the foregoing pathetic fragment. Her account of it was as follows: This song was trans-scribed, several years ago, from the memory of an old woman, who had no recollection of the concluding verses; probably the beginning may also be lost, as it seems to commence abruptly.' The first verse and burden of the fragment ran thus:—

'O sister, sister, reach thy hand!

Hey ho, my Nanny, O; And you shall be heir of all my land, While the swan swims bonney, O.'"