Isabella Robertson worked as a maidservant; her employer was a one-armed, invalid man, and she'd probably have been called a housekeeper if the house in question hadn't been so small (two rooms, apparently). She got her keep and two pounds a year. She provided Greig with nearly 400 items in all; some she recited, others she wrote down and posted to him, if I remember right. She also wrote poetry -of the pious kind, I gather- and was published from time to time in local newspapers and the like. With backing from a Mrs Russell of Aden, she published a small book, Lays of Buchan. (David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk, 1972, chapter 18: The Ballads of Bell Robertson.)