Lady Grisel Baillie


1665 - 1746

Lady Grisel Baillie
©2022 Gazetteer for Scotland

Lady Grisel Baillie

Song-writer and heroine. Born at Redbraes Castle (Scottish Borders). She concealed her covenanting father, Sir Patrick Hume (1641 - 1724), in the church vaults in the Border town of Polwarth (1684) and also supported another Covenanter, Robert Baillie of Jerviswood (c.1634 - 1684), whose son George she later married. She is noted for the song And werena my heart licht I wad dee. Her household notebook was published as The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie (edited by R. Scott-Moncrieff, Edinburgh, 1911) and gave a remarkable insight into household management in the 18th C.

Lady Grizel is remembered by Scottish poet Joanna Baillie (1762 - 1851), who claimed to be a distant relative, in a poem published in her Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (1821).


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