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diff --git a/35602.txt b/35602.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fce9350 --- /dev/null +++ b/35602.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2649 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch +and Authorship, by Robert Chambers + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship + +Author: Robert Chambers + +Release Date: March 18, 2011 [EBook #35602] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS *** + + + + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +[Illustration: THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS: + +THEIR EPOCH AND AUTHORSHIP. + +ROBERT CHAMBERS. + +1849] + + + + +THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS: THEIR EPOCH AND AUTHORSHIP. + + +Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, 1765; David Herd's +_Scottish Songs_, 1769; Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, +1802; and Jamieson's _Popular Ballads and Songs_, 1806, have been +chiefly the means of making us acquainted with what is believed to be +the ancient traditionary ballad literature of Scotland; and this +literature, from its intrinsic merits, has attained a very great fame. +I advert particularly to what are usually called the Romantic Ballads, +a class of compositions felt to contain striking beauties, almost +peculiar to themselves, and consequently held as implying extraordinary +poetical attributes in former generations of the people of this +country. There have been many speculations about the history of these +poems, all assigning them a considerable antiquity, and generally +assuming that their recital was once the special business of a set of +wandering _conteurs_ or minstrels. So lately as 1858, my admired +friend, Professor Aytoun, in introducing a collection of them, at once +ample and elegant, to the world, expressed his belief that they date at +least from before the Reformation, having only been modified by +successive reciters, so as to modernise the language, and, in some +instances, bring in the ideas of later ages. + +There is, however, a sad want of clear evidence regarding the history +of our romantic ballads. We have absolutely no certain knowledge of +them before 1724, when Allan Ramsay printed one called _Sweet William's +Ghost_, in his _Tea-table Miscellany_. There is also this fact staring +us in the face, that, while these poems refer to an ancient state of +society, they bear not the slightest resemblance either to the minstrel +poems of the middle ages, or to the well-known productions of the +Henrysons, the Dunbars, the Douglases, the Montgomeries, who flourished +in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Neither in the poems of +Drummond, and such other specimens of verse--generally wretched--as +existed in the seventeenth century, can we trace any feature of the +composition of these ballads. Can it be that all editors hitherto +have been too facile in accepting them as ancient, though modified +compositions? that they are to a much greater extent modern than has +hitherto been supposed? or wholly so? Though in early life an editor of +them, not less trusting than any of my predecessors, I must own that a +suspicion regarding their age and authorship has at length entered my +mind. In stating it--which I do in a spirit of great deference to +Professor Aytoun and others--I shall lead the reader through the steps +by which I arrived at my present views upon the subject. + +In 1719, there appeared, in a folio sheet, at Edinburgh, a heroic poem +styled _Hardyknute_, written in affectedly old spelling, as if it had +been a contemporary description of events connected with the invasion +of Scotland by Haco, king of Norway, in 1263. A corrected copy was soon +after presented in the _Evergreen_ of Allan Ramsay, a collection +professedly of poems written before 1600, but into which we know the +editor admitted a piece written by himself. _Hardyknute_ was afterwards +reprinted in Percy's _Reliques_, still as an ancient composition; yet +it was soon after declared to be the production of a Lady Wardlaw of +Pitreavie, who died so lately as 1727. Although, to modern taste, a +stiff and poor composition, there is a nationality of feeling about it, +and a touch of chivalric spirit, that has maintained for it a certain +degree of popularity. Sir Walter Scott tells us it was the first poem +he ever learned by heart, and he believed it would be the last he +should forget. + +It is necessary to present a few brief extracts from this poem. In the +opening, the Scottish king, Alexander III., is represented as receiving +notice of the Norwegian invasion: + + The king of Norse, in summer pride, + Puffed up with power and micht, + Landed in fair Scotland, the isle, + With mony a hardy knicht. + The tidings to our gude Scots king + Came as he sat at dine, + With noble chiefs in brave array, + Drinking the blude-red wine. + 'To horse, to horse, my royal liege; + Your faes stand on the strand; + Full twenty thousand glittering spears + The king of Norse commands.' + 'Bring me my steed, page, dapple-gray,' + Our good king rose and cried; + 'A trustier beast in a' the land + A Scots king never tried.' + +Hardyknute, summoned to the king's assistance, leaves his wife and +daughter, 'Fairly fair,' under the care of his youngest son. As to the +former lady-- + + ... first she wet her comely cheeks, + And then her bodice green, + Her silken cords of twirtle twist, + Well plet with silver sheen; + And apron, set with mony a dice + Of needle-wark sae rare, + Wove by nae hand, as ye may guess, + But that of Fairly fair. + +In his journey, Hardyknute falls in with a wounded and deserted knight, +to whom he makes an offer of assistance: + + With smileless look and visage wan, + The wounded knight replied: + 'Kind chieftain, your intent pursue, + For here I maun abide. + + 'To me nae after day nor nicht + Can e'er be sweet or fair; + But soon beneath some dropping tree, + Cauld death shall end my care.' + +A field of battle is thus described: + + In thraws of death, with wallowit cheek, + All panting on the plain, + The fainting corps[1] of warriors lay, + Ne'er to arise again; + Ne'er to return to native land, + Nae mair, with blithesome sounds, + To boast the glories of the day, + And shaw their shining wounds. + + On Norway's coast, the widowed dame + May wash the rock with tears, + May lang look o'er the shipless seas, + Before her mate appears. + 'Cease, Emma, cease to hope in vain; + Thy lord lies in the clay; + The valiant Scots nae rievers thole[2] + To carry life away.' + + [1] A Scotticism, plural of corp, a body. + + [2] Permit no robbers, &c. + +I must now summon up, for a comparison with these specimens of the +modern antique in ballad lore, the famous and admired poem of _Sir +Patrick Spence_. It has come to us mainly through two copies--one +comparatively short, published in Percy's _Reliques_, as 'from two +manuscript copies transmitted from Scotland;' the other, containing +more details, in Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, also +'from two manuscript copies,' but 'collated with several verses recited +by the editor's friend, Robert Hamilton, Esq., advocate.' It is nowhere +pretended that any _ancient_ manuscript of this poem has ever been seen +or heard of. It acknowledgedly has come to us from modern manuscripts, +as it might be taken down from modern reciters; although Percy prints +it in the same quasi antique spelling as that in which _Hardyknute_ had +appeared, where being _quhar_; sea, _se_; come, _cum_; year, _zeir_; +&c. It will be necessary here to reprint the whole ballad, as given +originally by Percy, introducing, however, within brackets the +additional details of Scott's copy:[3] + + The king sits in Dunfermline town, + Drinking the blude-red wine: + 'O whar will I get a gude sailor, + To sail this ship of mine?' + + Up and spak an eldern knight, + Sat at the king's right knee: + 'Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailor + That sails upon the sea.' + + The king has written a braid letter, + And signed it with his hand, + And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, + Was walking on the sand. + + ['To Noroway, to Noroway, + To Noroway o'er the faem; + The king's daughter of Noroway, + 'Tis thou maun bring her hame.'] + + The first line that Sir Patrick read, + A loud lauch lauched he: + The next line that Sir Patrick read, + The tear blinded his ee. + + 'O wha is this hae done this deed, + This ill deed done to me; + To send me out this time o' the year, + To sail upon the sea? + + ['Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, + Our ship must sail the faem; + The king's daughter of Noroway, + 'Tis we must fetch her hame.' + + They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, + Wi' a' the speed they may; + They hae landed in Noroway, + Upon a Wodensday. + + They had na been a week, a week, + In Noroway, but twae, + When that the lords of Noroway + Began aloud to say: + + 'Ye Scottish men spend a' our king's gowd, + And a' our queenis fee.' + 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, + Fu' loud I hear ye lie. + + 'For I hae broucht as much white monie + As gane[4] my men and me, + And I broucht a half-fou o' gude red gowd, + Out ower the sea wi' me.'] + + 'Mak haste, mak haste, my merry men a', + Our gude ship sails the morn.' + 'O say na sae, my master dear,[5] + For I fear a deadly storm. + + 'Late, late yestreen, I saw the new moon + Wi' the auld moon in her arm; + And I fear, I fear, my master dear, + That we will come to harm.' + + [They had na sailed a league, a league, + A league but barely three, + When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, + And gurly grew the sea. + + The ankers brak, and the topmasts lap, + It was sic a deadly storm, + And the waves cam o'er the broken ship, + Till a' her sides were torn.] + + O our Scots nobles were richt laith + To weet their cork-heeled shoon; + But lang ere a' the play was played, + Their hats they swam aboon.[6] + + [And mony was the feather-bed + That flattered on the faem; + And mony was the gude lord's son + That never mair cam hame. + + The ladies wrang their fingers white, + The maidens tore their hair, + A' for the sake of their true loves, + For them they'll see nae mair.] + + O lang, lang may the ladies sit, + Wi' their fans into their hand, + Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spence + Come sailing to the land. + + O lang, lang may the ladies stand, + Wi' their gold kames in their hair, + Waiting for their ain dear lords, + For they'll see them nae mair. + + Half ower, half ower to Aberdour,[7] + It's fifty fathom deep; + And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spence + Wi' the Scots lords at his feet. + + [3] Only omitting the five verses supplied by Mr Hamilton, as + they appear redundant. + + [4] Serve. + + [5] Variation in Scott: + + Now ever alak_e_, my master dear. + + [6] Variation in Scott: + + They wet their hats aboon. + + [7] Variation in Scott: + + O forty miles off Aberdeen. + +Percy, at the close of his copy of _Sir Patrick Spence_, tells us that +'an ingenious friend' of his was of opinion that 'the author of +_Hardyknute_ has borrowed several expressions and sentiments from the +foregoing [ballad], and other old Scottish songs in this collection.' +It does not seem to have ever occurred to the learned editor, or any +friend of his, however 'ingenious,' that perhaps _Sir Patrick Spence_ +had no superior antiquity over _Hardyknute_, and that the parity he +remarked in the expressions was simply owing to the two ballads being +the production of one mind. Neither did any such suspicion occur to +Scott. He fully accepted _Sir Patrick Spence_ as a historical +narration, judging it to refer most probably to an otherwise unrecorded +embassy to bring home the Maid of Norway, daughter of King Eric, on the +succession to the Scottish crown opening to her in 1286, by the death +of her grandfather, King Alexander III., although the names of the +ambassadors who did go for that purpose are known to have been +different.[8] The want of any ancient manuscript, the absence of the +least trait of an ancient style of composition, the palpable modernness +of the diction--for example, 'Our ship must sail the faem,' a glaring +specimen of the poetical language of the reign of Queen Anne--and, +still more palpably, of several of the things alluded to, as +cork-heeled shoon, hats, fans, and feather-beds, together with the +inapplicableness of the story to any known event of actual history, +never struck any editor of Scottish poetry, till, at a recent date, Mr +David Laing intimated his suspicions that _Sir Patrick Spence_ and +_Hardyknute_ were the production of the same author.[9] To me it +appears that there could not well be more remarkable traits of an +identity of authorship than what are presented in the extracts given +from _Hardyknute_ and the entire poem of _Sir Patrick_--granting only +that the one poem is a considerable improvement upon the other. Each +poem opens with absolutely the same set of particulars--a Scottish king +sitting--drinking the blude-red wine--and sending off a message to a +subject on a business of importance. Norway is brought into connection +with Scotland in both cases. Sir Patrick's exclamation, 'To Noroway, to +Noroway,' meets with an exact counterpart in the 'To horse, to horse,' +of the courtier in _Hardyknute_. The words of the ill-boding sailor in +_Sir Patrick_, 'Late, late yestreen, I saw the new moon'--a very +peculiar expression, be it remarked--are repeated in _Hardyknute_: + + 'Late, late the yestreen I weened in peace, + To end my lengthened life.' + + [8] There is one insuperable objection to Sir Walter's + theory, which I am surprised should not have occurred to + himself, or to some of those who have followed him. In his + version of the ballad, the design to bring home the daughter + of the king of Norway is expressed by the king of Scotland + himself. Now, there was no occasion for Alexander III. + sending for his infant granddaughter; nor is it conceivable + that, in his lifetime, such a notion should have occurred or + been entertained on either his side or that of the child's + father. It was not till after the death of Alexander had made + the infant Norwegian princess queen of Scotland--four years + after that event, indeed--that the _guardians of the + kingdom_, in concert with Edward I. of England, sent for her + by Sir David Wemyss of Wemyss and Sir Michael Scott of + Balwearie, who actually brought her home, but in a dying + state. For these reasons, on the theory of the ballad + referring to a real occurrence, it must have been to the + bringing home of some Norwegian princess to be wedded to a + king of Scotland that it referred. _But there is no such + event in Scottish history._ + + Professor Aytoun alters a verse of the ballad as follows: + + To Noroway, to Noroway, + To Noroway o'er the faem; + The king's daughter _to_ Noroway, + It's thou maun tak her hame. + + And he omits the verse in which Sir Patrick says: + + The king's daughter of Noroway, + 'Tis we must fetch her hame. + + Thus making the ballad referrible to the expedition in 1281 + for taking Alexander's daughter to be married to the king of + Norway. But I apprehend such liberties with an old ballad are + wholly unwarrantable. + + [9] Notes to Johnson's _Scots Musical Museum_, 1839. + +The grief of the ladies at the catastrophe in _Sir Patrick Spence_, is +equally the counterpart of that of the typical Norse lady with regard +to the fate of her male friend at Largs. I am inclined, likewise, to +lay some stress on the localities mentioned in _Sir Patrick +Spence_--namely, Dunfermline and Aberdour--these being places in the +immediate neighbourhood of the mansions where Lady Wardlaw spent her +maiden and her matron days. A poet, indeed, often writes about places +which he never saw; but it is natural for him to be most disposed to +write about those with which he is familiar; and some are first +inspired by the historical associations connected with their native +scenes. True, as has been remarked, there is a great improvement upon +_Hardyknute_ in the 'grand old ballad of _Sir Patrick Spence_,' +as Coleridge calls it, yet not more than what is often seen in +compositions of a particular author at different periods of life. +It seems as if the hand which was stiff and somewhat puerile in +_Hardyknute_, had acquired freedom and breadth of style in _Sir Patrick +Spence_. For all of these reasons, I feel assured that _Sir Patrick_ is +a modern ballad, and suspect, or more than suspect, that the author is +Lady Wardlaw.[10] + + [10] Professor Aytoun says: 'It is true that the name [of Sir + Patrick Spence] ... is not mentioned in history: but I am + able to state that tradition has preserved it. In the little + island of Papa Stronsay, one of the Orcadian group, lying + over against Norway, there is a large grave or tumulus, which + has been known to the inhabitants from time immemorial as + "The grave of Sir Patrick Spence." The Scottish ballads were + not early current in Orkney, a Scandinavian country; to it is + very unlikely that the poem could have originated the name.' + I demur to this unlikelihood, and would require some proof to + convince me that the grave of Sir Patrick Spence in Papa + Stronsay is not a parallel geographical phenomenon to the + island of Ellen Douglas in Loch Katrine. + +Probably, by this time, the reader will desire to know what is now to +be known regarding Lady Wardlaw. Unfortunately, this is little, for, as +she shrank from the honours of authorship in her lifetime, no one +thought of chronicling anything about her. We learn that she was born +Elizabeth Halket, being the second daughter of Sir Charles Halket of +Pitfirran, Baronet, who was raised to that honour by Charles II., and +took an active part, as a member of the Convention of 1689, in settling +the crown upon William and Mary. Her eldest sister, Janet, marrying Sir +Peter Wedderburn of Gosford, was the progenitress of the subsequent +Halkets, baronets of Pitfirran, her son being Sir Peter Halket, colonel +of the 44th regiment of foot, who died in General Braddock's +unfortunate conflict at Monongahela in 1755. A younger sister married +Sir John Hope Bruce of Kinross, baronet, who died, one of the oldest +lieutenant-generals in the British service, in 1766. Elizabeth, the +authoress of _Hardyknute_, born on the 15th of April 1677, became, in +June 1696, the wife of Sir Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie (third baronet of +the title), to whom she bore a son, subsequently fourth baronet, and +three daughters.[11] + + [11] Playfair's _Brit. Fam. Antiquity_, viii., 170, lxviii. + +The ballad of _Hardyknute_, though printed in a separate brochure by +James Watson in 1719, had been previously talked of or quoted, for the +curiosity of Lord Binning was excited about it, apparently in a +conversation with Sir John Hope Bruce, the brother-in-law of Lady +Wardlaw. Pinkerton received from Lord Hailes, and printed, an extract +from a letter of Sir John to Lord Binning, as follows: 'To perform my +promise, I send you a true copy of the manuscript I found a few weeks +ago in a vault at Dunfermline. It is written on vellum, in a fair +Gothic character, but so much defaced by time as you'll find the tenth +part not legible.' Sir John, we are told by Pinkerton, transcribed in +this letter 'the whole fragment first published, save one or two +stanzas, marking several passages as having perished, from being +illegible in the old manuscript.'[12] + + [12] _Ancient Scottish Poems_, 2 vols. (1786), i. p. cxxvii. + +Here is documentary evidence that _Hardyknute_ came out through the +hands of Lady Wardlaw's brother-in-law, with a story about its +discovery as an old manuscript, so transparently fictitious, that one +wonders at people of sense having ever attempted to obtain credence for +it--which consequently forms in itself a presumption as to an +authorship being concealed. Pinkerton rashly assumed that Sir John +Bruce was the author of the poem, and on the strength of that +assumption, introduced his name among the Scottish poets. + +The first hint at the real author came out through Percy, who, in his +second edition of the _Reliques_ (1767), gives the following statement: + +'There is more than reason to suspect that it [_Hardyknute_] owes most +of its beauties (if not its whole existence) to the pen of a lady +within the present century. The following particulars may be depended +on. Mrs [mistake for Lady] Wardlaw, whose maiden name was Halket ... +pretended she had found this poem, written on shreds of paper, employed +for what is called the bottoms of clues. A suspicion arose that it was +her own composition. Some able judges asserted it to be modern. The +lady did in a manner acknowledge it to be so. Being desired to show an +additional stanza, as a proof of this, she produced the two last, +beginning with "There's nae light, &c.," which were not in the copy +that was first printed. The late Lord President Forbes and Sir Gilbert +Elliot of Minto (late Lord Justice-clerk for Scotland), who had +believed it ancient, contributed to the expense of publishing the first +edition, in folio, 1719. This account was transmitted from Scotland by +Sir David Dalrymple (Lord Hailes),[13] who yet was of opinion that part +of the ballad may be ancient, but retouched and much enlarged by the +lady above mentioned. Indeed, he had been informed that the late +William Thomson, the Scottish musician, who published the _Orpheus +Caledonius_, 1733, declared he had heard fragments of it repeated in +his infancy before Mrs Wardlaw's copy was heard of.' + + [13] It is rather remarkable that Percy was not informed of + these particulars in 1765; but in 1767--_Sir John Hope Bruce + having died in the interval_ (June 1766)--they were + communicated to him. It looks as if the secret had hung on + the life of this venerable gentleman. + +The question as to the authorship of _Hardyknute_ was once more raised +in 1794, when Sir Charles Halket, grandson of Mary, third daughter of +Lady Wardlaw, wrote a letter to Dr Stenhouse of Dunfermline, containing +the following passage: 'The late Mr Hepburn of Keith often declared he +was in the house with Lady Wardlaw when she wrote _Hardyknute_.' He +also gave the following particulars in a manuscript account of his +family, as reported by George Chalmers (_Life of Allan Ramsay_, 1800): +'Miss Elizabeth Menzies, daughter of James Menzies, Esq., of Woodend, +in Perthshire, by Elizabeth, the daughter of Sir Henry Wardlaw [second +baronet], wrote to Sir Charles Halket that her mother, who was +sister-in-law to Lady Wardlaw, told her that Lady Wardlaw was the real +authoress of _Hardyknute_; that Mary, the wife of Charles Wedderburn, +Esq., of Gosford, told Miss Menzies that her mother, Lady Wardlaw, +wrote _Hardyknute_. Sir Charles Halket and Miss Elizabeth Menzies +concur in saying that Lady Wardlaw was a woman of elegant +accomplishments, _who wrote other poems_, and practised drawing, and +cutting paper with her scissors, and _who had much wit and humour_, +with great sweetness of temper.' + +In the middle of the last century appeared two editions of a brochure +containing the now well-known ballad of _Gil Morrice_; the date of the +second was 1755. Prefixed to both was an advertisement setting forth +that the preservation of this poem was owing 'to a lady, who favoured +the printers with a copy, as it was carefully collected from the mouths +of old women and nurses;' and 'any reader that can render it more +correct or complete,' was desired to oblige the public with such +improvements. Percy adopted the poem into his collection, with four +additional verses, which meanwhile had been 'produced and handed about +in manuscript,' but which were in a florid style, glaringly incongruous +with the rest of the piece. He at the same time mentioned that there +existed, in his folio manuscript, (supposed) of Elizabeth's time, an +imperfect copy of the same ballad, under the title of _Child Maurice_. + +This early ballad of _Child Maurice_, which Mr Jamieson afterwards +printed from Percy's manuscript, gives the same story of a gentleman +killing, under jealousy, a young man, who proved to be a son of his +wife by a former connection. But it is a poor, bald, imperfect +composition, in comparison with _Gil Morrice_. It was evident to Percy +that there had been a '_revisal_' of the earlier poem, attended by +'_considerable improvements_.' + +Now, by whom had this improving revisal been effected? Who was the +'lady' that favoured the printers with the copy? I strongly suspect +that the reviser was Lady Wardlaw, and that the poem was communicated +to the printers either by her or by some of her near relations. The +style of many of the verses, and even some of the particular +expressions, remind us strongly of _Sir Patrick Spence_; while +other verses, again, are more in the stiff manner of _Hardyknute_. +The poem opens thus: + + Gil Morrice was an earl's son, + His name it waxed wide; + It was na for his great riches, + Nor yet his mickle pride; + But it was for a lady gay, + That lived on Carron side. + + 'Whar sall I get a bonny boy, + That will win hose and shoon; + That will gae to Lord Barnard's ha', + And bid his lady come? + + 'And ye maun rin my errand, Willie, + And ye may rin wi' pride, + When other boys gae on their foot, + On horseback ye sall ride.' + + 'O no! O no! my master dear, + I dare nae for my life; + I'll ne gae to the bauld baron's, + For to tryst forth his wife.' + + 'O say na sae, my master dear, + For I fear a deadly storm.' + +What next follows is like _Hardyknute_: + + 'But, O my master dear,' he cried, + In green wood ye're your lane; + Gie ower sic thoughts, I wad ye reid, + For fear ye should be tane.' + 'Haste, haste! I say, gae to the ha'; + Bid her come here wi' speed: + If ye refuse my heigh command, + I'll gar your body bleed.' + +When the boy goes in and pronounces the fatal message before Lord +Barnard: + + Then up and spak the wily nurse, + The bairn upon her knee: + 'If it be come frae Gil Morrice, + It's dear welcome to me.' + +Compare this with the second verse of _Sir Patrick Spence_: + + O up and spak an eldern knight, + Sat at the king's right knee, &c. + +The messenger replies to the nurse: + + 'Ye lied, ye lied, ye filthy nurse, + Sae loud I heard ye lie,' &c. + +Identical with Sir Patrick's answer to the taunt of the Norwegian +lords: + + 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, + Fu' loud I hear ye lie.' + +When the youth has been slain by Lord Barnard, the lady explains that +he was her son, and exclaims: + + 'To me nae after days nor nichts + Will e'er be saft or kind; + I'll fill the air wi' heavy sighs, + And greet till I am blind.' + +How nearly is this the same with the doleful complaint of the wounded +knight in _Hardyknute_! + + 'To me nae after day nor night + Can e'er be sweet or fair,' &c. + +Lord Barnard pours out his contrition to his wife: + + 'With waefu' wae I hear your plaint, + Sair, sair I rue the deed, + That e'er this cursed hand of mine + Had garred his body bleed.' + +'Garred his body bleed' is a quaint and singular expression: it occurs +in _Hardyknute_, and nowhere else: + + 'To lay thee low as horse's hoof, + My word I mean to keep:' + Syne with the first stroke e'er he strake, + He garred his body bleed. + +Passages and phrases of one poem appear in another from various +causes--plagiarism and imitation; and in traditionary lore, it is easy +to understand how a number of phrases might be in general use, as part +of a common stock. But the parallel passages above noted are confined +to a particular group of ballads--they are not to such an extent +_beauties_ as to have been produced by either plagiarism or imitation; +it is submitted that they thus appear by an overwhelmingly superior +likelihood as the result of a common authorship in the various pieces. + +Having so traced a probable common authorship, and that modern, from +_Hardyknute_ to _Sir Patrick Spence_, and from these two to the revised +and improved edition of _Gil Morrice_, I was tempted to inquire if +there be not others of the Scottish ballads liable to similar suspicion +as to the antiquity of their origin? May not the conjectured author of +these three have written several of the remainder of that group of +compositions, so remarkable as they likewise are for their high +literary qualities? Now, there is in Percy a number of Scottish ballads +equally noteworthy for their beauty, and for the way in which they came +to the hands of the editor. There is _Edward, Edward_, 'from a +manuscript copy transmitted from Scotland;' the _Jew's Daughter_, 'from +a manuscript copy sent from Scotland;' _Gilderoy_, 'from a written copy +that appears to have received some modern corrections;' likewise, +_Young Waters_, 'from a copy printed not long since at Glasgow, in one +sheet octavo,' for the publication of which the world was 'indebted to +Lady Jean Home, sister to the Earl of Home;' and _Edom o' Gordon_, +which had been put by Sir David Dalrymple to Foulis's press in 1755, +'as it was preserved in the memory of a lady that is now dead'--Percy, +however, having in this case improved the ballad by the addition of a +few stanzas from a fragment in his folio manuscript. Regarding the +_Bonny Earl of Murray_, the editor tells us nothing beyond calling it +'a Scottish song.' Of not one of these seven ballads, as published by +Percy, has it ever been pretended that any ancient manuscript exists, +or that there is any proof of their having had a being before the +eighteenth century, beyond the rude and dissimilar prototypes (shall we +call them?) which, _in two instances_, are found in the folio +manuscript of Percy. No person was cited at first as having been +accustomed to recite or sing them; and they have not been found +familiar to the common people since. Their style is elegant, and free +from coarsenesses, while yet exhibiting a large measure of the ballad +simplicity. In all literary grace, they are as superior to the +generality of the homely traditionary ballads of the rustic population, +as the romances of Scott are superior to a set of chap-books. Indeed, +it might not be very unreasonable to say that these ballads have done +more to create a popularity for Percy's _Reliques_ than all the other +contents of the book. There is a community of character throughout all +these poems, both as to forms of expression and style of thought and +feeling--jealousy in husbands of high rank, maternal tenderness, tragic +despair, are prominent in them, though not in them all. In several, +there is the same kind of obscure and confused reference to known +events in Scottish history, which editors have thought they saw in _Sir +Patrick Spence_. + +Let us take a cursory glance at these poems. + +_Young Waters_ is a tale of royal jealousy. It is here given entire. + + About Yule, when the wind blew cool, + And the round tables began, + A! there is come to our king's court + Mony a well-favoured man. + + The queen looked ower the castle-wa', + Beheld baith dale and down, + And then she saw Young Waters + Come riding to the town. + + His footmen they did rin before, + His horsemen rade behind, + Ane mantel o' the burning gowd + Did keep him frae the wind. + + Gowden graithed his horse before, + And siller shod behind; + The horse Young Waters rade upon + Was fleeter than the wind. + + But then spak a wily lord, + Unto the queen said he: + 'O tell me wha's the fairest face + Rides in the company?' + + 'I've seen lord, and I've seen laird, + And knights of high degree; + But a fairer face than Young Waters + Mine een did never see.' + + Out then spak the jealous king, + And an angry man was he: + 'O if he had been twice as fair, + You might have excepted me.' + + 'You're neither lord nor laird,' she says, + 'But the king that wears the crown; + There's not a knight in fair Scotland, + But to thee maun bow down.' + + For a' that she could do or say, + Appeased he wadna be, + But for the words which she had said, + Young Waters he maun dee. + + They hae tane Young Waters, and + Put fetters to his feet; + They hae tane Young Waters, and + Thrown him in dungeon deep. + + Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, + In the wind but and the weet, + But I ne'er rade through Stirling town + Wi' fetters at my feet. + + Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, + In the wind both and the rain, + But I ne'er rade through Stirling town + Ne'er to return again. + + They hae tane to the heading-hill + His young son in his cradle; + They hae tane to the heading-hill + His horse both and his saddle. + + They hae tane to the heading-hill + His lady fair to see; + And for the words the queen had spoke, + Young Waters he did dee. + +Now, let the parallel passages be here observed. In verse second, the +lady does exactly like the mother of Gil Morrice, of whom it is said: + + The lady sat on the castle-wa', + Beheld baith dale and down, + And there she saw Gil Morrice' head + Come trailing to the town. + +Dale and down, let it be observed in passing, are words never used in +Scotland; they are exotic English terms. The mantle of the hero in +verse third recalls that of Gil Morrice, which was 'a' gowd but the +hem'--a specialty, we may say, not likely to have occurred to a male +mind. What the wily lord does in verse fifth is the exact counterpart +of the account of the eldern knight in _Sir Patrick Spence_: + + Up and spak an eldern knight, + Sat at the king's right knee. + +Observe the description of the king's jealous rage in _Young Waters_; +how perfectly the same is that of the baron in _Gil Morrice_: + + Then up and spak the bauld baron, + An angry man was he * * + + 'Nae wonder, nae wonder, Gil Morrice, + My lady lo'es thee weel, + The fairest part of my bodie + Is blacker than thy heel.' + +Even in so small a matter as the choice of rhymes, especially where +there is any irregularity, it may be allowable to point out a +parallelism. Is there not such between those in the verse descriptive +of Young Waters's fettering, and those in the closing stanza of _Sir +Patrick Spence_? It belongs to the idiosyncrasy of an author to make +_feet_ rhyme twice over to _deep_. Finally, let us observe how like the +tone as well as words of the last lines of _Young Waters_ to a certain +verse in _Hardyknute_: + + The fainting corps of warriors lay, + Ne'er to rise again. + +Percy surmised that _Young Waters_ related to the fate of the Earl of +Moray, slain by the Earl of Huntly in 1592, not without the concurrence, +as was suspected, of the king, whose jealousy, it has been surmised, +was excited against the young noble by indiscreet expressions of the +queen. To the same subject obviously referred the ballad of the _Bonny +Earl of Murray_, which consists, however, of but six stanzas, the last +of which is very like the second of _Young Waters_: + + O lang will his lady + Look ower the Castle Downe, + Ere she see the Earl of Murray + Come sounding through the town. + +_Edom o' Gordon_ is only a modern and improved version of an old ballad +which Percy found in his folio manuscript under the name of _Captain +Adam Carre_. It clearly relates to a frightful act of Adam Gordon of +Auchindown, when he maintained Queen Mary's interest in the north in +1571--the burning of the house of Towie, with the lady and her family +within it. All that can be surmised here is that the revision was the +work of the same pen with the pieces here cited--as witness, for +example, the opening stanzas: + + It fell about the Martinmas, + When the wind blew shrill and cauld,[14] + Said Edom o' Gordon to his men: + 'We maun draw till a hauld. + + 'And what a hauld shall we draw till, + My merry men and me? + We will gae to the house o' Rodes, + To see that fair ladye.' + + The lady stood on her castle-wa', + Beheld baith dale and down; + There she was 'ware of a host of men + Come riding towards the town.[15] + + 'O see ye not, my merry men a',[16] + O see ye not what I see?' &c. + +In the _Jew's Daughter_ there is much in the general style to remind us +of others of this group of ballads; but there are scarcely any parallel +expressions. One may be cited: + + She rowed him in a cake of lead, + Bade him lie still and sleep, + She cast him in a deep draw-well, + Was fifty fadom deep. + + [14] _Young Waters_ opens in the same manner: + + About Yule, when the wind blew cool. + + [15] We have seen the same description in both _Young Waters_ + and the _Bonny Earl of Murray_. + + [16] Compare this with _Sir Patrick Spence_: + + 'Mak haste, mak haste, my merry men a'.' + +This must remind the reader of _Sir Patrick Spence_: + + Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, + It's fifty fathom deep. + +_Gilderoy_, in the version printed by Percy, is a ballad somewhat +peculiar, in a rich dulcet style, and of very smooth versification, but +is only an improved version of a rude popular ballad in the same +measure, which was printed in several collections long before,[17] and +was probably a street-ditty called forth by the hanging of the real +robber, Patrick Macgregor, commonly called Gilderoy,[18] in 1636. The +concluding verses of the refined version recall the peculiar manner of +the rest of these poems: + + [17] In a _Collection of Old Ballads_, printed for J. + Roberts, London, 1723; also in Thomson's _Orpheus + Caledonius_, 1733. + + [18] The appellative, Gilderoy, means the ruddy-complexioned + lad. + + Gif Gilderoy had done amiss, + He might hae banished been; + Ah what sair cruelty is this, + To hang sic handsome men: + To hang the flower o' Scottish land, + Sae sweet and fair a boy; + Nae lady had sae white a hand + As thee, my Gilderoy. + + Of Gilderoy sae 'fraid they were, + They bound him mickle strong; + Till Edinburgh they led him there, + And on a gallows hung: + They hung him high aboon the rest, + He was sae trim a boy; + There died the youth whom I lo'ed best, + My handsome Gilderoy. + + Thus having yielded up his breath, + I bare his corpse away; + With tears that trickled for his death, + I washed his comely clay. + And sicker in a grave sae deep, + I laid the dear-lo'ed boy; + And now for ever maun I weep + My winsome Gilderoy. + +If any one will compare the Percy version of this ballad with the +homely and indecorous ones printed before, he will not be the more +disposed to go back to antiquity and a humble grade of authorship for +what is best in the Scottish ballads.[19] + + [19] Professor Aytoun says of this ballad, that 'it was + adapted from the original by Sir Alexander Halket--at least, + such was the general understanding until lately, when it + became a mania with some literary antiquaries [a glance at + the opinions of the present writer] to attribute the + authorship of the great bulk of the Scottish ballads to Sir + Alexander's sister, Lady Wardlaw, on the single ground that + she was the composer of _Hardyknute_.' My learned friend is + here very unlucky, for Lady Wardlaw had no brother, nor does + any Sir Alexander Halket appear in her family history. This, + however, is not all. It was a song to the _tune of Gilderoy_ + which was attributed to Sir Alexander Halket (Johnson's + _Scots Musical Museum_)--namely, the well-known _Ah, + Chloris_, which turns out to be a composition of Sir Charles + Sedley, inserted by him in a play entitled the _Mulberry + Garden_, which was acted in 1668. + +_Edward, Edward_, which Percy received from Sir David Dalrymple, and +placed among his oldest pieces, in affectedly old spelling, is a +striking melodramatic composition: + + 'Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, + Edward, Edward? + Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, + And why sae sad gang ye, O?' + 'O, I hae killed my hawk sae guid, + Mother, mother: + O, I hae killed my hawk sae guid, + And I had nae mair but he, O.' + + 'Your hawk's bluid was never sae reid, + Edward, Edward; + Your hawk's bluid was never sae reid, + My dear son, I tell ye, O.' + 'O, I hae killed my reid-roan steed, + Mother, mother; + O, I hae killed my reid-roan steed, + That erst was sae fair and free, O.' + + 'Your steed was auld, and ye hae gat mair, + Edward, Edward; + Your steed was auld, and ye hae gat mair, + Some other dool ye drie, O.' + 'O, I hae killed my father dear, + Mother, mother; + O, I hae killed my father dear, + Alas, and wae is me, O.' + + 'And whaten penance will ye drie for that, + Edward, Edward? + And whaten penance will ye drie for that, + My dear son, now tell me, O?' + 'I'll set my feet in yonder boat, + Mother, mother; + I'll set my feet in yonder boat, + And I'll fare over the sea, O.' + + * * * + + 'And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife, + Edward, Edward? + And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife, + When ye gang over the sea, O?' + 'The warld's room, let them beg through life, + Mother, mother; + The warld's room, let them beg through life, + For them never mair will I see, O.' + + 'And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear, + Edward, Edward; + And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear, + My dear son, now tell me, O?' + 'The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear, + Mother, mother; + The curse of hell frae me sall ye bear, + Sic counsels ye gave me, O.' + +It seems unaccountable how any editor of Percy's discernment could ever +have accepted this as old poetry. There is certainly none prior to 1700 +which exhibits this kind of diction. Neither did any such poetry at any +time proceed from a rustic uneducated mind. + +When we continue our search beyond the bounds of Percy's _Reliques_, we +readily find ballads passing as old, which are not unlike the above, +either in regard to their general beauty, or special strains of thought +and expression. There are five which seem peculiarly liable to +suspicion on both grounds--namely, _Johnie of Bradislee_, _Mary +Hamilton_, the _Gay Gos-hawk_, _Fause Foodrage_, and the _Lass o' +Lochryan_. + +In _Johnie o' Bradislee_, the hero is a young unlicensed huntsman, who +goes out to the deer-forest against his mother's advice, and has a +fatal encounter with seven foresters. Observe the description of the +youth: + + His cheeks were like the roses red, + His neck was like the snaw; + He was the bonniest gentleman + My eyes they ever saw. + + His coat was o' the scarlet red, + His vest was o' the same; + His stockings were o' the worset lace, + And buckles tied to the same. + + The shirt that was upon his back + Was o' the Holland fine; + The doublet that was over that + Was o' the Lincoln twine. + + The buttons that were upon his sleeve + Were o' the gowd sae guid, &c. + +This is mercery of the eighteenth, and no earlier century. Both +Gilderoy and Gil Morrice are decked out in a similar fashion; and we +may fairly surmise that it was no man's mind which revelled so +luxuriously in the description of these three specimens of masculine +beauty, or which invested them in such elegant attire. Johnie kills the +seven foresters, but receives a deadly hurt. He then speaks in the +following strain: + + 'O is there a bird in a' this bush + Would sing as I would say, + Go home and tell my auld mother + That I hae won the day? + + 'Is there ever a bird in a' this bush + Would sing as I would say, + Go home and tell my ain true love + To come and fetch Johnie away? + + 'Is there a bird in this hale forest + Would do as mickle for me, + As dip its wing in the wan water, + And straik it ower my ee-bree?' + + The starling flew to his mother's bower-stane, + It whistled and it sang; + And aye the owerword o' its tune + Was, 'Johnie tarries lang.' + +The mother says in conclusion: + + 'Aft hae I brought to Bradislee + The less gear and the mair; + But I ne'er brought to Bradislee + What grieved my heart sae sair.' + +Now, first, is not the literary beauty of the above expressions of the +young huntsman calculated to excite suspicion? It may be asked, is +there anything in the older Scottish poets comparable to them? Second, +how like is the verse regarding the starling to one in _Gil +Morrice_! + + Gil Morrice sat in guid green wood, + He whistled and he sang; + 'O what mean a' the folk coming? + My mother tarries lang.' + +Then, as to the last verse, how like to one in _Young Waters_! + + Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, + In the wind both and the rain, + But I ne'er rade through Stirling town + Ne'er to return again. + +_Mary Hamilton_ describes the tragic fate of an attendant on Queen +Mary, brought to the gallows for destroying her own infant. The +reflections of the heroine at the last sad moment are expressed in the +same rich strain of sentiment as some of the passages of other ballads +already quoted, and with remarkable parallelisms in terms: + + 'O aften hae I dressed my queen, + And put gowd in her hair; + But now I've gotten for my reward + The gallows tree to share. + + * * * + + 'I charge ye all, ye mariners, + When ye sail ower the faem, + Let neither my father nor mother get wit + But that I 'm coming hame. + + * * * + + 'O little did my mother think + That day she cradled me, + What lands I was to travel ower, + What death I was to die!' + +The Scottish ladies sit bewailing the loss of Sir Patrick Spence's +companions, 'wi' the gowd kaims in their hair.' Sir Patrick tells his +friends before starting on his voyage, 'Our ship must sail the faem;' +and in the description of the consequences of his shipwreck, we find +'Mony was the feather-bed that flattered on the faem.' No old poet +would use foam as an equivalent for the sea; but it was just such a +phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would love to use in that sense. +The first of the above verses is evidently a cast from the same mould +of thought as Bradislee's mother's concluding lament, and Young +Waters's last words just quoted. The resemblance is not of that kind +which arises from the use of literary commonplaces or stock phrases: +the expressions have that identity which betrays their common source in +one mind, a mind having a great command of rich and simple pathos. + +In the _Gay Gos-hawk_, a gentleman commissions the bird to go on a +mission to his mistress, who is secluded from him among her relations, +and tell her how he dies by long waiting for her; whereupon she returns +an answer by the same messenger, to the effect that she will presently +meet him at Mary's Kirk for the effecting of their nuptials. The +opening of the poem is just a variation of Bradislee's apostrophe to +_his_ bird-messenger: + + 'O waly, waly, my gay gos-hawk, + Gin your feathering be sheen!' + 'And waly, waly, my master dear, + Gin ye look pale and lean! + + 'Oh, have ye tint at tournament + Your sword, or yet your spear? + Or mourn ye for the southern lass, + Whom ye may not win near?' + + 'I have not tint at tournament + My sword, nor yet my spear; + But sair I mourn for my true love, + Wi' mony a bitter tear. + + 'But weel's me on you, my gay gos-hawk, + Ye can both speak and flie; + Ye sall carry a letter to my love, + Bring an answer back to me.' + +_Hardyknute_, _Sir Patrick Spence_, and _Gil Morrice_, all open, it +will be recollected, with the sending away of a message. Here is a +fourth instance, very like one artist's work, truly. + +The lover describes his mistress in terms recalling _Bradislee_: + + 'The red that is on my true love's cheek + Is like blood-draps on the snaw; + The white that is on her breast bare, + Like the down o' the white sea-maw.' + +The bird arrives at the lady's abode: + + And first he sang a low, low note, + And syne he sang a clear; + And aye the owerword o' the sang + Was, 'Your love can no win here.' + +_Gil Morrice_ has: + + Aye the owerword o' his sang + Was, 'My mother tarries lang.' + +The lady feigns death, after the device of Juliet: + + Then up and rose her seven brethren, + And hewed to her a bier; + They hewed frae the solid aik, + Laid it ower wi' silver clear. + + Then up and gat her seven sisters, + And sewed to her a kell; + And every steek that they put in + Sewed to a silver bell. + +Here we have the same style of luxurious description of which we have +already seen so many examples--so different from the usually bald style +of the real homely ballads of the people. It is, further, very +remarkable that in _Clerk Saunders_ it is seven brothers of the heroine +who come in and detect her lover; and in the _Douglas Tragedy_, when +the pair are eloping, Lord William spies his mistress's + + ... seven brethren bold + Come riding o'er the lee. + +Both of these ballads, indeed, shew a structure and a strain of +description and sentiment justifying the strongest suspicions of their +alleged antiquity, and pointing to the same source as the other pieces +already noticed. + +The ballad of _Fause Foodrage_, which Sir Walter Scott printed for the +first time, describes a successful conspiracy by Foodrage and others +against King Honour and his queen. The king being murdered, the queen +is told, that if she brings forth a son, it will be put to death +likewise; so she escapes, and, bringing a male child into the world, +induces the lady of Wise William to take charge of it as her own, while +she herself takes charge of the lady's daughter. The unfortunate queen +then arranges a future conduct for both parties, in language violently +figurative: + + 'And ye maun learn my gay gos-hawk, + Right weel to breast a steed; + And I sall learn your turtle-dow + As weel to write and read. + + 'And ye maun learn my gay gos-hawk, + To wield both bow and brand; + And I sall learn your turtle-dow + To lay gowd wi' her hand. + + 'At kirk and market, when we meet, + We'll dare make nae avowe, + But--Dame, how does my gay gos-hawk? + Madam, how does my dow?' + +When the royal youth grows up, Wise William reveals to him his history, +and how his mother is still in confinement in Foodrage's hands. 'The +boy stared wild like a gray gos-hawk' at hearing the strange +intelligence, but soon resolves on a course of action: + + He has set his bent bow to his breast, + And leapt the castle-wa', + And soon he has seized on Fause Foodrage, + Wha loud for help 'gan ca'. + +The slaying of Foodrage and marriage of the turtle-dow wind up the +ballad. Now, is not the adoption of the term, 'gay gos-hawk' in this +ballad, calculated to excite a very strong suspicion as to a community +of authorship with the other, in which a gay gos-hawk figures so +prominently? But this is not all. 'The boy stared wild like a gray +gos-hawk,' is nearly identical with a line of _Hardyknute_: + + Norse e'en like gray gos-hawk stared wild. + +Scott was roused by this parallelism into suspicion of the authenticity +of the ballad, and only tranquillised by finding a lady of rank who +remembered hearing in her infancy the verses which have here been +quoted. He felt compelled, he tells us, 'to believe that the author of +_Hardyknute_ copied from the old ballad, if the coincidence be not +altogether accidental.' Finally, the young prince's procedure in +storming the castle, is precisely that of Gil Morrice in gaining access +to that of Lord Barnard: + + And when he cam to Barnard's yett, + He would neither chap nor ca', + But set his bent bow to his breast, + And lightly lap the wa'. + +It may fairly be said that, in ordinary literature, coincidences like +this are never 'accidental.' It may be observed, much of the narration +in _Fause Foodrage_ is in a stiff and somewhat hard style, recalling +_Hardyknute_. It was probably one of the earlier compositions of its +author. + +The _Lass o' Lochryan_ describes the hapless voyage of a maiden mother +in search of her love Gregory. In the particulars of sea-faring and the +description of the vessel, _Sir Patrick Spence_ is strongly recalled. + + She has garred build a bonny ship; + It's a' covered o'er wi' pearl; + And at every needle-tack was in't + There hung a siller bell. + +Let the reader revert to the description of the bier prepared for the +seeming dead lady in the _Gay Gos-hawk_. + + She had na sailed a league but twa, + Or scantly had she three, + Till she met wi' a rude rover, + Was sailing on the sea. + +The reader will remark in _Sir Patrick_: + + They had na sailed a league, a league, + A league but barely three, &c. + +The rover asks: + + 'Now, whether are ye the queen hersel, + Or ane o' her Maries three, + Or are ye the Lass o' Lochryan, + Seeking love Gregory?'[20] + + [20] The above three verses are in the version printed in + Lawrie and Symington's collection, 1791. + +The queen's Maries are also introduced in _Mary Hamilton_, who, indeed, +is represented as one of them: + + Yestreen the queen she had four Maries; + The night, she has but three; + There was Mary Seton and Mary Beaton, + And Mary Carmichael and me. + +On arriving at love Gregory's castle, beside the sea, the lady calls: + + 'Oh, open the door, love Gregory; + Oh, open and let me in; + For the wind blaws through my yellow hair, + And the rain draps o'er my chin.' + +He being in a dead sleep, his mother answers for him, and turns from +the door the forlorn applicant, who then exclaims: + + 'Tak down, tak down the mast o' gowd; + Set up a mast o' tree; + It disna become a forsaken lady + To sail sae royallie. + + 'Tak down, tak down the sails o' silk; + Set up the sails o' skin; + Ill sets the outside to be gay, + When there's sic grief within.' + +Gregory then awakes: + + O quickly, quickly raise he up, + And fast ran to the strand, + And there he saw her, fair Annie, + Was sailing frae the land. + + * * * + + The wind blew loud, the sea grew rough, + And dashed the boat on shore; + Fair Annie floated on the faem, + But the babie raise no more. + + * * * + + And first he kissed her cherry cheek, + And syne he kissed her chin; + And syne he kissed her rosy lips-- + There was nae breath within. + +The resemblance of these verses to several of the preceding +ballads,[21] and particularly to _Sir Patrick Spence_, and their +superiority in delicacy of feeling and in diction to all ordinary +ballad poetry, is very striking. It chances that there is here, as in +_Sir Patrick_, one word peculiarly _detective_--namely, strand, as +meaning the shore. In the Scottish language, strand means a rivulet, or +a street-gutter--never the margin of the sea. + + [21] A passage in _Hardyknute_ maybe quoted as bearing a + marked resemblance to one of the above verses: + + Take aff, take aff his costly jupe, + Of gold well was it twined, &c. + +There is a considerable number of other ballads which are scarcely less +liable to suspicion as modern compositions, and which are all marked +more or less by the peculiarities seen in the above group. Several of +them are based, like the one just noticed, on irregular love, which +they commonly treat with little reproach, and usually with a romantic +tenderness. _Willie and May Margaret_[22] describes a young lover +crossing the Clyde in a flood to see his mistress, and as denied access +by her mother in a feigned voice, after which he is drowned in +recrossing the river; the ballad being thus a kind of counterpart of +the _Lass of Lochryan_. In _Young Huntin_, otherwise called _Earl +Richard_, the hero is killed in his mistress's bower through jealousy, +and we have then a verse of wonderful power--such as no rustic and +unlettered bard ever wrote, or ever will write: + + [22] Called, in Professor Aytoun's collection, _The Mother's + Malison_; and in Mr Buchan's, _The Drowned Lovers_. + + 'O slowly, slowly wanes the night, + And slowly daws the day: + There is a dead man in my bower, + I wish he were away.' + +One called _Fair Annie_ relates how a mistress won upon her lover, and +finally gained him as a husband, by patience, under the trial of seeing +a new bride brought home.[23] In the latter, the behaviour of the +patient mistress is thus described: + + [23] A ballad named _Burd Ellen_, resembling _Fair Annie_ in + the general cast of the story, is a Scottish modification of + the ballad of _Child Waters_, published by Percy, from his + folio manuscript, 'with some corrections.' It probably came + through the same mill as _Gil Morrice_, though with less + change--a conjecture rendered the more probable, for reasons + to be seen afterwards, from its having been obtained by Mr + Jamieson from Mrs Brown of Falkland. + + O she has served the lang tables + Wi' the white bread and the wine; + And aye she drank the wan water, + To keep her colour fine. + +The expression, the wan water, occurs in several of this group of +ballads. Thus, in _Johnie of Bradislee_: + + Is there ever a bird in this hale forest + Will do as mickle for me, + As dip its wing in the wan water, + And straik it o'er my ee-bree? + +And in the _Douglas Tragedy_: + + O they rade on, and on they rade, + And a' by the light o' the moon, + Until they cam to yon wan water, + And there they lighted down. + +See further in _Young Huntin_: + + And they hae ridden along, along, + All the long summer's tide, + Until they came to the wan water, + The deepest place in Clyde. + +The circumstance is very suspicious, for we find this phrase in no +other ballads. + +In _Clerk Saunders_, the hero is slain in his mistress's bower, by the +rage of one of her seven brothers, whose act is described in precisely +the same terms as the slaughter of _Gil Morrice_ by the bold baron: + + He's ta'en out his trusty brand, + And straikt it on the strae, + And through and through Clerk Saunders' side + He's gart it come and gae.[24] + +_Sweet William's Ghost_, a fine superstitious ballad, first published +in Ramsay's _Tea-table Miscellany_, 1724, is important as the earliest +printed of all the Scottish ballads after the admittedly modern +_Hardyknute_: + + There came a ghost to Margaret's door, + With many a grievous groan; + And aye he tirled at the pin, + But answer made she none. + + * * * + + 'O sweet Margaret! O dear Margaret! + I pray thee, speak to me; + Give me my faith and troth, Margaret, + As I gave it to thee.' + + 'Thy faith and troth thou 's never get, + Nor yet will I thee lend, + Till that thou come within my bower, + And kiss my cheek and chin.'[25] + + 'If I should come within thy bower, + I am no earthly man; + And should I kiss thy rosy lips, + Thy days will not be lang. + + * * * + + 'My bones are buried in yon kirk-yard, + Afar beyond the sea; + And it is but my spirit, Margaret, + That's now speaking to thee.' + + She stretched out her lily hand, + And for to do her best, + 'Ha'e there's your faith and troth, Willie; + God send your soul good rest.' + + Now she has kilted her robes of green + A piece below her knee, + And a' the live-lang winter night, + The dead corp followed she. + + 'Is there any room at your head, Willie, + Or any room at your feet? + Or any room at your side, Willie, + Wherein that I may creep?' + + 'There's no room at my head, Margaret; + There's no room at my feet; + There's no room at my side, Margaret; + My coffin's made so meet.'[26] + + Then up and crew the red, red cock, + And up then crew the gray, + ''Tis time, 'tis time, my dear Margaret, + That you were going away.' + + * * * + + [24] + + Now he has ta'en his trusty brand, + And slait it on the strae, + And through Gil Morrice's fair bodie + He garred cauld iron gae.--_Gil Morrice._ + + [25] + + And first he kissed her cherry cheek, + And syne he kissed her chin; + And syne he kissed her rosy lips-- + There was nae breath within.--_Lass o' Lochryan._ + + To kiss cheek and chin in succession is very peculiar; and it + is by such peculiar ideas that identity of authorship is + indicated. + + [26] That is, so exactly measured. + +So far, the ballad appears as composed in the style of those already +noticed--a style at once simple and poetical--neither shewing the +rudeness of the common peasant's ballad, nor the formal refinement of +the modern English poet. But next follow two stanzas, which manifestly +have been patched on by some contemporary of Ramsay: + + No more the ghost to Margaret said, + But with a grievous groan + Evanished in a cloud of mist, + And left her all alone, &c. + +No such conclusion, perhaps, was needed, for it may be suspected that +the verse here printed _sixth_ is the true _finale_ of the story, +accidentally transferred from its proper place. + +There is a slight affinity between the above and a ballad entitled _Tam +Lane_, to which Scott drew special attention in his _Border Minstrelsy_, +by making it a peg for eighty pages of prose dissertation _On the +Fairies of Popular Superstition_. It describes a lover as lost to his +mistress, by being reft away into fairy-land, and as recovered by an +effort of courage and presence of mind on her part. It opens thus: + + O I forbid ye maidens a', + That wear gowd in your hair, + To come or gae by Carterhaugh, + For the young Tam Lane is there. + +It may be remarked how often before we have seen maidens described as +wearing gold in their hair. One maiden defies the prohibition: + + Janet has kilted her green kirtle + A little aboon her knee, + And she has braided her yellow hair + A little aboon her bree. + +This, it will be observed, is all but the very same description applied +to Margaret in the preceding ballad. The narrative goes on: + + She had na pu'd a red, red rose, + A rose but barely three, + Till up and starts a wee, wee man + At Lady Janet's knee. + +Remember Sir Patrick's voyage: + + They had na sailed a league, a league, + A league but barely three. + +Let it also here be noted that the eldern knight in that ballad sits +'at the king's knee,' and the nurse in _Gil Morrice_ is not very +necessarily described as having 'the bairn upon her knee.' Why the knee +on these occasions, if not a habitual idea of one poet?[27] + + [27] In _Childe Maurice_, in Percy's folio manuscript, the + hero says: + + '... come hither, thou little foot-page, + That runneth lowly by my knee.' + + The author of _Sir Patrick Spence_, and the other ballads in + question, might have known this version, and from it caught + this expression. + +The consequences of the visit having been fatal to Lady Janet's health +and peace, she goes back to see her elfin lover, Tam Lane, who +instructs her how to recover him from his bondage to the queen of +fairy-land. + + 'The night it is good Halloween, + When fairy folk will ride; + And they that wad their true love win, + At Miles Cross they maun bide.' + + 'But how shall I thee ken, Tam Lane, + Or how shall I thee knaw, + Amang so many unearthly knights, + The like I never saw?' + + 'The first company that passes by, + Say na, and let them gae; + The next company that passes by, + Say na, and do right sae; + The third company that passes by, + Then I'll be ane o' thae. + + 'First let pass the black, Janet, + And syne let pass the brown; + But grip ye to the milk-white steed, + And pu' the rider down.' + +Compare the first two of these stanzas with the queries put by the gay +gos-hawk to his master: + + 'But how shall I your true love find, + Or how suld I her know? + I bear a tongue ne'er wi' her spoke, + An eye that ne'er her saw.' + + 'O weel sall ye my true love ken, + Sae sore as ye her see,' &c. + +As to the latter three stanzas, they exhibit a formula of description, +which appears in several of the suspected ballads, consisting of a +series of nearly identical statements, apparently for the sake of +amplitude. For example, the progress of the seeming funeral of the lady +in the _Gay Gos-hawk_: + + At the first kirk of fair Scotland, + They gart the bells be rung; + At the second kirk of fair Scotland, + They gart the mass be sung. + + At the third kirk of fair Scotland, + They dealt gold for her sake; + And the fourth kirk of fair Scotland, + Her true love met them at. + +Or the following, in _Sweet Willie and Fair Annie_, which is almost the +same incident and relation of circumstances as the said seeming +funeral; only the lady in this case is dead: + + The firsten bower that he cam till, + There was right dowie wark; + Her mother and her sisters three + Were making to Annie a sark. + + The next bower that he cam till, + There was right dowie cheer; + Her father and her seven brethren + Were making to Annie a bier. + + The lasten bower that he cam till, + O heavy was his care; + The waxen lights were burning bright, + And fair Annie streekit there. + +In Scott's version of _Tam Lane_ there are some stanzas of so modern a +cast as to prove that this poem has been at least tampered with. For +example, the account of fairy life: + + 'And all our wants are well supplied + From every rich man's store, + Who thankless sins the gifts he gets, + And vainly grasps for more.' + +Without regard, however, to such manifest patches, the general +structure and style of expression must be admitted to strongly recall +the other ballads which have been already commented on. + +Only a wish to keep this dissertation within moderate bounds forbids me +to analyse a few other ballads, as the _Douglas Tragedy_, _Sweet Willie +and Fair Annie_, _Lady Maiery_, the _Clerk's Two Sons of Owsenford_, +and a Scotch _Heir of Linne_ lately recovered by Mr J. H. Dixon, all of +which, besides others which must rest unnamed, bear traces of the same +authorship with the ballads already brought under notice. + +It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the successors of +Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a particle of +positive evidence for their having existed before the eighteenth +century. Overlooking the one given by Ramsay in his _Tea-table +Miscellany_, we have neither print nor manuscript of them before the +reign of George III. They are not in the style of old literature. They +contain no references to old literature. As little does old literature +contain any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting +diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collection of +Scottish poetry in 1706-1711, wholly overlooks them. Ramsay, as we see, +caught up only one. Even Herd, in 1769, only gathered a few fragments +of some of these poems. It was reserved for Sir Walter Scott and Robert +Jamieson, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to obtain copies +of the great bulk of these poems--that is, the ballads over and above +the few published by Percy--from A LADY--a certain 'Mrs Brown of +Falkland,' who seems to have been the wife of the Rev. Andrew Brown, +minister of that parish in Fife--is known to have been the daughter of +Professor Thomas Gordon, of King's College, Aberdeen--and is stated to +have derived her stores of legendary lore from the memory of her aunt, +a Mrs Farquhar, the wife of a small proprietor in Braemar, who had +spent the best part of her life among flocks and herds, but lived +latterly in Aberdeen. At the suggestion of Mr William Tytler, a son of +Mrs Brown wrote down a parcel of the ballads which her aunt had heard +in her youth from the recitation of nurses and old women.[28] Such were +the external circumstances, none of them giving the least support to +the assumed antiquity of the pieces, but rather exciting some suspicion +to the contrary effect. + + [28] _Minstrelsy Scot. Border_, I. cxxvi. + +When we come to consider the internal evidence, what do we find? We +find that these poems, in common with those published by Percy, are +composed in a style of romantic beauty and elevation distinguishing +them from all other remains of Scottish traditionary poetry. They are +quite unlike the palpably old historical ballads, such as the _Battle +of Otterbourne_ and the _Raid of the Reidswire_. They are unlike the +Border ballads, such as _Dick o' the Cow_, and _Jock o' the Syde_, +commemorating domestic events of the latter part of the sixteenth +century. They are strikingly unlike the _Burning of Frendraught_, the +_Bonny House o' Airly_, and the _Battle of Bothwell Bridge_, +contemporaneous metrical chronicles of events of the seventeenth +century. Not less different are they from a large mass of ballads, +which have latterly been published by Mr Peter Buchan and others, +involving romantic incidents, it is true, or eccentricities in private +life, but in such rude and homely strains as speak strongly of a +plebeian origin. In the ballads here brought under question, the +characters are usually persons of condition, generally richly dressed, +often well mounted, and of a dignified bearing towards all inferior +people. The page, the nurse, the waiting-woman, the hound, the hawk, +and other animals connected with the pageantry of high life, are +prominently introduced. Yet the characters and incidents are alike +relieved from all clear connection with any particular age: they may be +said to form a world of their own, of no particular era, wherein the +imagination of the reader may revel, as that of the author has done. It +may be allowably said, there is a tone of _breeding_ throughout these +ballads, such as is never found in the productions of rustic genius. +One marked feature--the pathos of deep female affections--the sacrifice +and the suffering which these so often involve--runs through nearly the +whole. References to religion and religious ceremonies and fanes are of +the slightest kind. We hear of bells being rung and mass sung, but only +to indicate a time of day. Had they been old ballads continually +changing in diction and in thought, as passed down from one reciter to +another, they could not have failed to involve some considerable trace +of the intensely earnest religious life of the seventeenth century; but +not the slightest tincture of this enthusiastic feeling appears in +them, a defect the more marked, as they contain abundant allusion to +the superstitions which survived into the succeeding time of religious +indifference, and indeed some of their best _effects_ rest in a +dexterous treatment of these weird ideas. There is but one exception to +what has been observed on the obscurity of the epoch pointed to for the +incidents--the dresses, properties, and decorations, are sometimes of a +modern cast. The writer--if we may be allowed to speculate on a single +writer--seems to have been unable to resist an inclination to indulge +in description of the external furnishings of the heroes and heroines, +or rather, perhaps, has been desirous of making out _effect_ from these +particulars; but the finery of the court of Charles II. is the furthest +point reached in the retrospect--although, I must admit, this is in +general treated with a vagueness that helps much to conceal the want of +learning. + +Another point of great importance in the matter of internal evidence, +is the isolatedness of these ballads in respect of English traditionary +literature. The Scottish muse has not always gone hand in hand with the +English in point of time, but she has done so in all other respects. +Any literature we had from the beginning of the seventeenth century +downwards, was always sensibly tinged by what had immediately before +been in vogue in the south. Nor is it easy to see how a people +occupying part of the same island, and speaking essentially the same +language, should have avoided this communion of literary taste; but the +ballads in question are wholly unlike any English ballads. Look over +Percy, Evans, or Mr Collier's suite of _Roxburghe Ballads_, giving +those which were popular in London during the seventeenth century, and +you find not a trace of the style and manner of these Scottish romantic +ballads. Neither, it would appear, had one of them found its way into +popularity in England before the time of Percy; for, had it been +otherwise, he would have found them either in print or in the mouths of +the people.[29] + + [29] Robert Jamieson found in the _Koempe Viser_, a Danish + collection of ballads published in 1695, one resembling the + Scottish ballad of _Fair Annie_ (otherwise called _Lady + Jane_), and on this ground he became convinced that many of + our traditionary ballads were of prodigious antiquity, though + they had been intermediately subjected to many alterations. + Mr Jamieson's belief seems remarkably ill supported, and as + it has never obtained any adherents among Scottish ballad + editors, I feel entitled to pass it over with but this slight + notice. + +Upon all of these considerations, I have arrived at the conclusion, +that the high-class romantic ballads of Scotland are not ancient +compositions--are not older than the early part of the eighteenth +century--and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind. + +Whose was this mind, is a different question, on which no such +confident decision may for the present be arrived at; but I have no +hesitation in saying that, from the internal resemblances traced on +from _Hardyknute_ through _Sir Patrick Spence_ and _Gil Morrice_ to the +others, there seems to me a great _likelihood_ that the whole were the +composition of the authoress of that poem--namely, Elizabeth Lady +Wardlaw of Pitreavie. + +It may be demanded that something should be done to verify, or at least +support, the allegation here made as to the peculiar literary character +of the suspected ballads. This is, of course, a point to be best made +out by a perusal of the entire body of this class of compositions, and +scarcely by any other means. Still, it is a difference so striking, +that even to present one typical ballad of true rustic origin, could +not fail to make a considerable impression on the reader, after he has +read specimens of those which are here attributed to a higher source. +Be it observed, when an uneducated person speaks of knights, lords, and +kings, or of dames and damosels, he reduces all to one homely level. He +indulges in no diplomatic periphrases. It is simply, the king said +this, and the lord said that--this thing was done, and that thing was +done--the catastrophe or _denouement_ comes by a single stroke. This we +find in the true stall-ballads. A vulgar, prosaic, and drawling +character pervades the whole class, with few exceptions--a fact which +ought to give no surprise, for does not all experience shew, that +literature of any kind, to have effect, requires for its production a +mind of some cultivation, and really good verse flowing from an +uninstructed source is what never was, is not now, and never will be? +With these remarks, I usher in a typical ballad of the common +class--one taken down many years ago from the singing of an old man in +the south of Scotland: + + JAMES HATELIE. + + It fell upon a certain day, + When the king from home he chanced to be, + The king's jewels they were stolen all, + And they laid the blame on James Hatelie. + + And he is into prison cast, + And I wat he is condemned to _dee_; + For there was not a man in all the court + To speak a word for James Hatelie. + + But the king's eldest daughter she loved him well, + But known her love it might not be; + And she has stolen the prison keys, + And gane in and discoursed wi' James Hatelie. + + 'Oh, did you steal them, James?' she said; + 'Oh, did not you steal them, come tell to me? + For I'll make a vow, and I'll keep it true, + You's never be the worse of me.' + + 'I did not steal them,' James he said; + 'And neither was it intended by me, + For the English they stole them themselves, + And I wat they've laid the blame on me.' + + Now she has hame to her father gane, + And bowed her low down on her knee, + 'I ask--I ask--I ask, father,' she said, + 'I ask--I ask a boon of thee; + I never asked one in my life, + And one of them you must grant to me.' + + 'Ask on, ask on, daughter,' he said; + 'And aye weel answered ye shall be; + For if it were my whole estate, + Naysaid, naysaid you shall not be.' + + 'I ask none of your gold, father, + As little of your white monie; + But all the asken that I do ask, + It is the life of James Hatelie.' + + 'Ask on, ask on, daughter,' he said; + 'And aye weel answered ye shall be; + For I'll mak a vow, and keep it true-- + James Hatelie shall not hanged be.' + + 'Another asken I ask, father; + Another asken I ask of thee-- + Let Fenwick and Hatelie go to the sword, + And let them try their veritie.' + + 'Ask on, ask on, daughter,' he said; + 'And aye weel answered you shall be; + For before the morn at twelve o'clock, + They both at the point of the sword shall be.' + + James Hatelie was eighteen years of age, + False Fenwick was thirty years and three; + He lap about, and he strack about, + And he gave false Fenwick wounds three. + + 'Oh, hold your hand, James Hatelie,' he said; + 'And let my breath go out and in; + Were it not for the spilling of my noble blood + And the shaming of my noble kin. + + 'Oh, hold your hand, James Hatelie,' he said; + Oh, hold your hand, and let me be; + For I'm the man that stole the jewels, + And a shame and disgrace it was to me.' + + Then up bespoke an English lord, + I wat but he spoke haughtilie: + 'I would rather have lost all my lands, + Before they had not hanged James Hatelie.' + + Then up bespoke a good Scotch lord, + I wat a good Scotch lord was he: + 'I would rather have foughten to the knees in blood, + Than they had hanged James Hatelie.' + + Then up bespoke the king's eldest son: + 'Come in, James Hatelie, and dine with me; + For I'll make a vow, and I'll keep it true-- + You'se be my captain by land and sea.' + + Then up bespoke the king's eldest daughter: + 'Come in, James Hatelie, and dine with me; + For I'll make a vow, and I'll keep it true-- + I'll never marrie a man but thee.' + +Here is love, and here is innocence in difficulties--two things of high +moral interest; yet how homely is the whole narration; how unlike the +strains of the ballads which have been passed before the reader's view! +And be it observed, the theory as to our ballads is, that they have +been transmitted from old time, undergoing modifications from the +minds of nurses, and other humble reciters, as they came along. If so, +they ought to have presented the same plebeian strain of ideas and +phraseology as _James Hatelie_; but we see they do not: they are, on +the contrary, remarkably poetical, pure, and dignified. + +Here I may, once for all, in opposition to Professor Aytoun and others, +express my belief that the ballads in question are for the most part +printed nearly, and, in some instances, entirely, in the condition in +which they were left by the author. In _Edward_, I question if a line +has been corrupted or a word altered. _Sir Patrick Spence_ and +_Gilderoy_ are both so rounded and complete, so free, moreover, +from all vulgar terms, that I feel nearly equally confident about them. +All those which Percy obtained in manuscripts from Scotland, are neat +finished compositions, as much so as any ballad of Tickell or +Shenstone. Those from Mrs Brown's manuscript have also an author's +finish clearly impressed on them. It is a mere assumption that they +have been sent down, with large modifications, from old times. Had it +been true, the ballads would have been full of vulgarisms, as we find +to be the condition of certain of them which Peter Buchan picked up +among the common people, after (shall we say) seventy or eighty years +of traditionary handling. Now, no such depravation appears in the +versions printed by Percy, Scott, and Jamieson. + +It may be objected to the arguments founded on the great number of +parallel passages, that these are but the stock phraseology of all +ballad-mongers, and form no just proof of unity of authorship. If this +were true, it might be an objection of some force; but it is not true. +The _formulae_ in question are to be found hardly at all in any of the +rustic or homely ballads. They are not to be found in any ballads which +there is good reason to believe so old as the early part of the +seventeenth century. They are to be found in no ballads which may even +doubtfully be affiliated to England. All this, of course, can only be +fully ascertained by a careful perusal of some large collection of +ballads. Yet, even in such a case, a few examples may be viewed with +interest, and not unprofitably. Of the plebeian ballads, a specimen has +just been adduced. Let us proceed, then, to exemplify the ballads of +the seventeenth century. First, take _Fair Margaret and Sweet William_, +which Percy brought forward from a stall copy as, apparently, the +ballad quoted in Fletcher's _Knight of the Burning Pestle_; though +subjected to some alteration during the intermediate century and a +half. It is as follows: + + As it fell out on a long summer day, + Two lovers they sat on a hill; + They sat together that long summer day, + And could not take their fill. + + 'I see no harm by you, Margaret, + And you see none by me; + Before to-morrow at eight o'clock, + A rich wedding you shall see.' + + Fair Margaret sat in her bouir window, + Combing her yellow hair; + There she spied sweit William and his bride, + As they were a-riding near. + + Then doun she layed her ivorie combe, + And braided her hair in twain: + She went alive out of her bouir, + But never cam alive in't again. + + When day was gone, and nicht was come, + And all men fast asleip, + Then came the spirit of fair Margaret, + And stood at William's feet. + + 'Are you awake, sweit William?' she said; + 'Or, sweit William, are you asleip? + God give you joy of your gay bride-bed, + And me of my winding-sheet!' + + When day was come, and nicht was gone, + And all men waked from sleip, + Sweit William to his lady said: + 'My deir, I have cause to weep. + + 'I dreimt a dreim, my dear ladye; + Such dreims are never good: + I dreimt my bouir was full of red swine, + And my bride-bed full of blood.' + + 'Such dreims, such dreims, my honoured sir, + They never do prove good; + To dreim thy bouir was full of red swine, + And thy bride-bed full of blood.' + + He called up his merry-men all, + By one, by two, and by three; + Saying: 'I'll away to fair Margaret's bouir, + By the leave of my ladye.' + + And when he came to fair Margaret's bouir, + He knockit at the ring; + And who so ready as her seven brethren + To let sweit William in. + + Then he turned up the covering sheet: + 'Pray, let me see the deid; + Methinks, she looks all pale and wan; + She hath lost her cherry red. + + 'I'll do more for thee, Margaret, + Than any of thy kin, + For I will kiss thy pale wan lips, + Though a smile I cannot win.' + + With that bespake the seven brethren, + Making most piteous moan: + 'You may go kiss your jolly brown bride, + And let our sister alone.' + + 'If I do kiss my jolly brown bride, + I do but what is right; + I ne'er made a vow to yonder poor corpse, + By day nor yet by night. + + 'Deal on, deal on, my merry-men all; + Deal on your cake and your wine: + For whatever is dealt at her funeral to-day, + Shall be dealt to-morrow at mine.' + + Fair Margaret died to-day, to-day, + Sweit William died to-morrow; + Fair Margaret died for pure true love, + Sweit William died for sorrow. + + Margaret was buried in the lower chancel, + And William in the higher; + Out of her breast there sprang a rose, + And out of his a brier. + + They grew till they grew unto the church-top, + And then they could grow no higher; + And there they tied in a true lovers' knot, + Which made all the people admire. + + Then came the clerk of the parish, + As you the truth shall hear, + And by misfortune cut them down, + Or they had now been there. + +Here, it will be observed, beyond the expression, 'my merry-men all,' +there is no trace of the phraseology so marked in the group of ballads +under our notice. Take, also, a ballad which, from the occurrences +referred to, may be considered as antecedent to the epoch of +_Hardyknute_, and we shall observe an equal, if not more complete, +absence of the phraseology and manner of this class of ballads. It +relates to a tragic love-story of 1631, as ascertained from the +grave-stone of the heroine in the kirk-yard of Fyvie, Aberdeenshire: + + Lord Fyvie had a trumpeter, + His name was Andrew Lammie; + He had the art to gain the heart + Of Mill-o'-Tifty's Annie. + + * * * + + She sighed sore, but said no more, + Alas, for bonny Annie! + She durst not own her heart was won + By the trumpeter of Fyvie. + + At night when they went to their beds, + All slept full sound but Annie; + Love so opprest her tender breast, + Thinking on Andrew Lammie. + + 'Love comes in at my bed-side, + And love lies down beyond me, + Love has possessed my tender breast, + And wastes away my body. + + 'At Fyvie yetts there grows a flower, + It grows baith braid and bonny; + There is a daisy in the midst o' it. + And it's ca'd by Andrew Lammie. + + 'O gin that flower were in my breast, + For the love I bear the laddie, + I wad kiss it, and I wad clap it, + And daut it for Andrew Lammie. + + 'The first time I and my love met + Was in the woods of Fyvie; + His lovely form and speech so sweet + Soon gained the heart of Annie. + + 'Oh, up and down, in Tifty's den, + Where the burns run clear and bonny, + I've often gone to meet my love, + My bonny Andrew Lammie. + + 'He kissed my lips five thousand times, + And aye he ca'd me bonny; + And a' the answer he gat frae me, + Was, "My bonny Andrew Lammie!"' + + But now, alas! her father heard + That the trumpeter of Fyvie + Had had the art to gain the heart + Of Tifty's bonny Annie. + + And he has syne a letter wrote, + And sent it on to Fyvie, + To tell his daughter was bewitched + By his servant, Andrew Lammie. + + When Lord Fyvie this letter read, + O dear, but he was sorry; + 'The bonniest lass in Fyvie's land + Is bewitched by Andrew Lammie.' + + Then up the stair his trumpeter + He called soon and shortly; + 'Pray tell me soon what's this you've done + To Tifty's bonny Annie?' + + 'In wicked art I had no part, + Nor therein am I canny; + True love alone the heart has won + Of Tifty's bonny Annie. + + 'Woe betide Mill-o'-Tifty's pride, + For it has ruined many; + He'll no hae't said that she should wed + The trumpeter of Fyvie.' + + * * * + + 'Love, I maun gang to Edinburgh; + Love, I maun gang and leave thee.' + She sighed sore, and said no more, + But, 'Oh, gin I were wi' ye!' + + 'I'll buy to thee a bridal goun; + My love, I'll buy it bonny!' + 'But I'll be dead, ere ye come back + To see your bonny Annie.' + + 'If you'll be true, and constant too, + As my name's Andrew Lammie, + I shall thee wed when I come back, + Within the kirk of Fyvie.' + + 'I will be true, and constant too, + To thee, my Andrew Lammie; + But my bridal-bed will ere then be made + In the green kirk-yard of Fyvie.' + + He hied him hame, and having spieled + To the house-top of Fyvie, + He blew his trumpet loud and shrill, + 'Twas heard at Mill-o'-Tifty. + + Her father locked the door at night, + Laid by the keys fu' canny; + And when he heard the trumpet sound, + Said: 'Your cow is lowing, Annie.' + + 'My father, dear, I pray forbear, + And reproach no more your Annie; + For I'd rather hear that cow to low + Than hae a' the kine in Fyvie. + + 'I would not for your braw new gown, + And a' your gifts sae many, + That it were told in Fyvie's land + How cruel you are to me.' + + Her father struck her wondrous sore, + As also did her mother; + Her sisters always did her scorn, + As also did her brother. + + Her brother struck her wondrous sore, + With cruel strokes and many; + He brak her back in the hall-door, + For loving Andrew Lammie. + + 'Alas, my father and mother dear, + Why are you so cruel to Annie? + My heart was broken first by love, + Now you have broken my bodie. + + 'Oh, mother dear, make ye my bed, + And lay my face to Fyvie; + There will I lie, and thus will die, + For my love, Andrew Lammie.' + + Her mother she has made her bed, + And laid her face to Fyvie; + Her tender heart it soon did break, + And she ne'er saw Andrew Lammie. + + When Andrew home from Edinburgh came, + With mickle grief and sorrow: + 'My love has died for me to-day, + I'll die for her to-morrow.' + + He has gone on to Tifty's den, + Where the burn runs clear and bonny; + With tears he viewed the Bridge of Heugh, + Where he parted last with Annie. + + Then he has sped to the church-yard, + To the green church-yard of Fyvie; + With tears he watered his true love's grave, + And died for Tifty's Annie. + +Let me repeat my acknowledgment that, while these extracts occupy more +space than can well be spared, they form an imperfect means of +establishing the negative evidence required in the case. But let the +reader peruse the ballads of Buchan's collection known to relate to +incidents of the seventeenth century, and he will find that they are +all alike free from the favourite expressions of the unknown, or dimly +known ballad-writer in question. + +Let it never be objected that, if any one person living in the reigns +of Queen Anne and George I. had composed so many fine poems, he or she +could not have remained till now all but unknown. In the first half of +the present century, there appeared in Scotland a series of fugitive +pieces--songs--which attained a great popularity, without their being +traced to any author. Every reader will remember _The Land of the +Leal_, _Caller Herring_, _The Laird o' Cockpen_, _The Auld House_, and +_He's ower the Hills that I lo'e weel_. It was not till after many +years of fame that these pieces were found to be the production of a +lady of rank, Carolina Baroness Nairn, who had passed through a life of +seventy-nine years without being known as a song-writer to more than +one person. It was the fate of this songstress to live in days when +there was an interest felt in such authorships, insuring that she +should sooner or later become known; but, had she lived a hundred years +earlier, she might have died and left no sign, as I conjecture to have +been the case with the author of this fine group of ballads; and future +Burnses might have pondered over her productions, with endless regret +that the names of their _authors_ were 'buried among the wreck of +things that were.' + +If there be any truth or force in this speculation, I shall be +permitted to indulge in the idea that a person lived a hundred years +before Scott, who, with his feeling for Scottish history, and the +features of the past generally, constructed out of these materials a +similar romantic literature. In short, Scotland appears to have had a +Scott a hundred years before the actual person so named. And we may +well believe that if we had not had the first, we either should not +have had the second, or he would have been something considerably +different, for, beyond question, Sir Walter's genius was fed and +nurtured on the ballad literature of his native country. From his _Old +Mortality_ and _Waverley_, back to his _Lady_ _of the Lake and +Marmion_; from these to his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_; from that to +his _Eve of St John_ and _Glenfinlas_; and from these, again, to the +ballads which he collected, mainly the produce (as I surmise) of an +individual precursor, is a series of steps easily traced, and which no +one will dispute. Much significance there is, indeed, in his own +statement, that _Hardyknute_ was the first poem he ever learned, and +the last he should forget. Its author--if my suspicion be correct--was +his literary foster-mother, and we probably owe the direction of his +genius, and all its fascinating results, primarily to her. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their +Epoch and Authorship, by Robert Chambers + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS *** + +***** This file should be named 35602.txt or 35602.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/6/0/35602/ + +Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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