Hi--sorry to seem boorish, but I haven't been ignoring you all. My PC went wonky and has just been resuscitated--and besides, this is my *fourth* try to get the message through. Points in the above exchange: Shula, a chara! yes, your grandfather's version is just as good as any other--filtered through his memory, mind. "Sievin" [pronounced to rhyme] is a good Scots word, meaning here something like "seeping through", [Any other differs in your text? You've got a real folk-song there!] The Corries' version Tim passes on is pretty much the same as that in The Songs of Scotland, edited by Myles B. Foster (circa 1878), which is actually volume 2 of the book mentioned by Kate Dunlay as Pittman, Brown & MacKay. The "extra verse" belongs to the other version from the Scots mailing list, from Lady John Scott, picked up [she said] in the streets of Edinburgh, but pretty obviously written [or rewritten] by herself. This gives names to the characters and so sets the scene for the legend. Robert Ford (Vagabond Songs I, 1899) has it, along with the usual one, "sung on the streets about sixty years ago"--which is also in John Greig's Scots Minstrelsie, MacLeod & Boltonj's Songs of the North, etc. Ford has another 2-verse fragment, "We'll meet where we parted in bonnie Luss glen" etc, likewise in his book Song Histories (1900), which latter has yet another version "recently issued", with a differ in the chorus and 4 stanzas interpolated--a sad production, making the story even more Jacobite. As to the tune: the "Lowlands" tune has little to do with it, nor is The Bonnie House o' Airlie too relevant, I think. Gavin Greig's Folk-Songs of the North-East, article xci, notes some resemblance to "Kind Robin Loes Me" (whence Emmerson's statement), and "The Bonniest Lass in a' the Warld", but finds more likeness to that associated with the Northumbrian ballad "Parcy Reed", found in 18th c. collections as "Hey, sae green as the rashes grow" and "Laird Trowend". [Emmerson, BTW, is not a perfect guide! His Rantin' Pipe book is full of misprints!!] Also, compare the chorus with the opening of the ballad "Gight's Lady", a.k.a. Geordie, in one of Christie's versions (Trad. Ballads II.44), Child 209H:

Will ye go to the Hielans, my bonny lad? Will ye go to the Hielans, Geordie? Though ye tak the high road and I tak the low, I will be in the Hielans afore ye.

That ballad, note, is all about an execution, so there MAY be some connection to be made.

Cheers Murray