"Yes marry have I" usage

I was looking through the original text of a popular nursery rhyme “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” in Tommy Thumb’s Pretty Song Book when noticed an expression whose meaning I can’t understand: “Yes, marry, have I”.

What does that expression mean? And speaking in general, does this text from the book issued in 1744 look archaic for modern English native speakers?

Solution 1:

In this passage, marry¹ is not used as an oath or as a term of surprise; it is used as an interjection meaning “certainly”. Wiktionary gives definition “(obsolete) indeed!, in truth!; a term of asseveration”, and illustrates with a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry IV: “I have chequed him for it, and the young lion repents; marry, not in ashes and sackcloth, but in new silk and old sack.”

Solution 2:

This is marry the interjection, which is originally a minced oath. According to OEtmD, the term is an obsolete corruption of the name of Mary, the mother of Jesus.

Shakespeare was fond enough of marry used in this way – and also of the unminced oath by God’s Mother – that both appear in various glossaries of archaic words found in his plays.

A fair reading of the text would be:

Baa, baa, black sheep, / Have you any wool?
Yes, by Mary, have I, / Three bags full.