Young Johnstone
Encyclopedia
Young Johnstone is Child ballad 88, a border ballad
that exists in several variants.
In one variant, the love seeks refuge with his mother and his sister and is turned away.
In all, the surviving man seeks refuge with the heroine, confessing to having killed her brother or her love. She hides him. When his pursuers are gone, he stabs her. She remonstrates, and he promises to get her doctors if she lives out the hour, but she tells him the wound will be mortal before then.
Border ballad
The English/Scottish border has a long and bloody history of conquest and reconquest, raid and counter-raid . It also has a stellar tradition of balladry, such that a whole group of songs exists that are often called "border ballads", because they were collected in that region.Border ballads, like...
that exists in several variants.
Synopsis
Several variants open with the heroine's brother and love drinking together. One of them may propose that they each marry the other's sister. One of them kills the other: often, the brother's reason is that the other has refused to marry his sister but intends to keep her as his mistress.In one variant, the love seeks refuge with his mother and his sister and is turned away.
In all, the surviving man seeks refuge with the heroine, confessing to having killed her brother or her love. She hides him. When his pursuers are gone, he stabs her. She remonstrates, and he promises to get her doctors if she lives out the hour, but she tells him the wound will be mortal before then.