The publication this Sir Walter Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border turned Selkirk into a romantic tourist site and Sir Walter Scott into a folk hero overnight!

http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/scott/douglas_tragedy.htm

It is also the reason that ballads collected in that immediate area (Kilbarchin, Roxburgh)which might have contained the rose-briar motif floating verse ending within that immediate time frame after publication had a tendency to leave it off. They wanted the ending to be attached to their local legend only- The Douglas Tragedy. The names of the tragic couple- Margaret and William seems to suggest also that the story is the basis for the fairy ancient ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet William.

There was a great competition regarding which ballad gets to claim the coveted rose-briar ending. It seem obvious to me that Barbara Allen won out over the others on the sheer strength of its enduring popularity as a love ballad. However, in Tom Munnelly's Mount Callan Garland, Irish traditional singer Tom Lenihan is reported to have insisted that the rose-briar ending belongs to Lord Levett (Irish variant of Lord Lovel) and Lord Levett alone! My money's on Tom :-)

What would any of you have in terms of backing up this proposition.