Re: Jock o' Hazeldean (Child #293):

"Jock O'Hazeldean is dead."

That's certainly an interesting interpretation of the text, Deskjet, and indeed a rather gloomy one. But there is little, either explicit or implicit within the song itself, to indicate that. I suppose one could draw an inference that she had committed suicide or (as many ballad heroines are wont to do) just hauled off and died rather than marry a man she doesn't love. But upon hearing

She's o'er the border and awa'
With Jock o' Hazeldeen.

what leaps immediately to mind is that she's o'er the geographical border rather than the border between life and death.

Perhaps you are hanging this on "Now, let this willful grief be done." But my immediate interpretation of that was that she "let the tears doon fa'" because others, her parents, guardians, whoever, had declared Jock o' Hazeldean persona non marriage material because he was poor or not of her class, and besides, why would she want to marry him when she could marry the wealthy young laird she was being offered?

The general consensus:    CLICKY #1, and CLICKY #2.

And the following excerpt:

Footnote : A poem by Sir Walter Scott, first published in Albyn's Anthology in 1806, which Scott derived from an older ballad, "John of Hazelgreen." For once the course of true love wins out as the young lady of the song, who is being forced into marriage by the father of the prospective groom (guardian?), elopes on her wedding day with her true love, Jock o' Hazeldean.

The most commonly heard version of the song was "written" by Sir Walter Scott. It is well known that he was an avid collector of border ballads and that he often was given to "tidying up" and "improving" them, which he may well have done from the viewpoint of a professional poet (what the English professor who taught the "Popular Ballad" course I took many years ago, Dr. David C. Fowler, called "essence of ink-pot."). There are earlier versions of the ballad than Scott's

Don Firth