Sir Walter Scott

The reading selection for January 5th is two poems by Sir Walter Scott, in the form of ballads compiled in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.  The two selections are Proud Maisie and County Guy.

My initial thoughts are these are not very much like the Wife of Usher's Well, from yesterday, nor much similar to others of the Scottish Ballads I happened to read.

Things to know here that escaped me on first reading, is kirk is a church (presbyterian in the case of Scotland) so the 6 men who will bear her kirkward are pallbearers.  I did not get that on first reading.  It thus makes much more sense when she asks the robin about who will make her bridal bed, and the answer is the sexton who digs her grave.  So the final set of lines regarding glow-worms and owls in the steeple settles the image of the graveyard as her resting place.

Proud I do not get.  One analysis suggested Maisie was vain, but I don't see that in the poem itself.  I see a young, perhaps even adolescent, girl playing in the woods, with a touch of magical fantasy talking to birds, etc.  The poem is very dark, however, once the allusions are understood.

County Guy is another short one.  My original reading was that he is a suitor or lover of the village maid.  Something bad has happened and he is not going to make his scheduled assignation for some reason.  She does not yet know that something bad has happened, and is sneaking out to meet him. Nature and the stars above continue on, unaffected, giving no hint to the maid of something amiss, nor a clue to what has happened to Guy.  Hopefully I have not missed any important subtexts or queues.

With the clarifications I found on Proud Maisie, I came to rather like that poem, and I like County Guy with the interpretation I have made of it.  I don't see them as particularly ballad-like, though.

Comments are welcome, though moderated.