Biography

"Mary Hamilton," or "The Fower Maries" ("The Four Marys"), is a common name for a well-known sixteenth-century ballad from Scotland based on an apparently fictional incident about a lady-in-waiting to a Queen of Scotland. It is Child Ballad 173 and Roud 79. In all versions of the song, Mary Hamilton is a personal attendant to the Queen of Scots, but precisely which queen is not specified. She becomes pregnant by the Queen's husband, the King of Scots, which results in the birth of a baby. Mary kills the infant – in some versions by casting it out to sea or drowning, and in others by exposure. The crime is seen and she is convicted. The ballad recounts Mary's thoughts about her life and her impending death in a first-person narrative.