Chapter I: WENT to the mill, but the miller was gone, (3)

Founded on an event in the wars between Kingsmen and Queensmen, in the minority of James VI., while Queen Mary was imprisoned in England. “Edom” was Adam Gordon of Auchindown, brother of Huntley, and a Queen’s man. He, by his retainer, Car, or Ker, burned Towie House, a seat of the Forbes’s. Ker recurs in the long and more or less literary ballad of _The Battle of Balrinnes_. In variants the localities are much altered, and, in one version, the scene is transferred to Ayrshire, and Loudoun Castle. All the ballads of fire-raising, a very usual practice, have points in common, and transference was easy.

LADY ANNE BOTHWELL’S LAMENT.—p. 98

Tradition has confused the heroine of this piece with the wife of Bothwelhaugh, who slew the Regent Murray. That his motive was not mere political assassination, but to avenge the ill-treatment and death of his wife, seems to be disproved by Maidment. The affair, however, is still obscure. This deserted Lady Anne of the ballad was, in fact, not the wife of Bothwelhaugh, but the daughter of the Bishop of Orkney; her lover is said to have been her cousin, Alexander Erskine, son of the Earl of Mar. Part of the poem (Mr. Child points out) occurs in Broome’s play, _The Northern Lass_ (1632). Though a popular favourite, the piece is clearly of literary origin, and has been severely “edited” by a literary hand. This version is Allan Ramsay’s.

JOCK O’ THE SIDE.—p. 101

A Liddesdale chant. Jock flourished about 1550–1570, and is commemorated as a receiver by Sir Richard Maitland in a poem often quoted. The analogies of this ballad with that of “Kinmont Willie” are very close. The reference to a punch-bowl sounds modern, and the tale is much less plausible than that of “Kinmont Willie,” which, however, bears a few obvious marks of Sir Walter’s own hand. A sceptical editor must choose between two theories: either Scott of Satchells founded his account of the affair of “Kinmont Willie” on a pre-existing ballad of that name, or the ballad printed by Scott is based on the prose narrative of Scott of Satchells. The former hypothesis, everything considered, is the more probable.

LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET.—p. 107

Published in Percy’s _Reliques_, from a Scotch manuscript, “with some corrections.” The situation, with various differences in detail and conclusion, is popular in Norse and Romaic ballads, and also in many _Märchen_ of the type of _The Black Bull of Norraway_.

FAIR ANNIE.—p. 111

From _The Border Minstrelsy_. There are Danish, Swedish, Dutch, and German versions, and the theme enters artistic poetry as early as Marie de France (_Le Lai del Freisne_). In Scotch the Earl of Wemyss is a recent importation: the earldom dates from 1633. Of course this process of attaching a legend or _Märchen_ to a well-known name, or place, is one of the most common in mythological evolution, and by itself invalidates the theory which would explain myths by a philological analysis of the proper names in the tale. These may not be, and probably are not, the original names.

THE DOWNIE DENS OF YARROW.—p. 116

From _The Border Minstrelsy_. Scott thought that the hero was Walter Scott, third son of Thirlestane, slain by Scott of Tushielaw. The “monument” (a standing stone near Yarrow) is really of a very early, rather Post-Roman date, and refers to no feud of Thirlestane, Oakwood, Kirkhope, or Tushielaw. The stone is not far from Yarrow Krik, near a place called Warrior’s Rest. Hamilton of Bangour’s version is beautiful and well known. Quite recently a very early interment of a corpse, in the curved position, was discovered not far from the standing stone with the inscription. Ballad, stone, and interment may all be distinct and separate.

SIR ROLAND.—p. 119

From Motherwell’s _Minstrelsy_. The authenticity of the ballad is dubious, but, if a forgery, it is a very skilled one for the early nineteenth century. Poets like Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Rossetti, and Mrs. Marriot Watson have imitated the genuine popular ballad, but never so closely as the author of “Sir Roland.”

ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY.—p. 123

From the Jamieson-Brown MS., originally written out by Mrs. Brown in 1783: Sir Waiter made changes in _The Border Minstrelsy_. The ballad is clearly a composite affair. Robert Chambers regarded Mrs. Brown as the Mrs. Harris of ballad lore, but Mr. Norval Clyne’s reply was absolutely crushing and satisfactory.

THE BATTLE OF HARLAW.—p. 131

Fought on July 24, 1411. This fight broke the Highland force in Scotland. The first version is, of course, literary, perhaps a composition of 1550, or even earlier. The second version is traditional, and was procured by Aytoun from Lady John Scott, herself the author of some beautiful songs. But the best ballad on the Red Harlaw is that placed by Scott in the mouth of Elspeth, in _The Antiquary_. This, indeed, is beyond all rivalry the most splendid modern imitation of the ancient popular Muse.

DICKIE MACPHALION.—p. 142

A great favourite of Scott’s, who heard it sung at Miss Edgeworth’s, during his tour in Ireland (1825). One verse recurs in a Jacobite chant, probably of 1745–1760, but the bibliography of Jacobite songs is especially obscure.

A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE.—p. 143

From the _Border Minstrelsy_. The ideas are mainly pre-Christian; the Brig o’ Dread occurs in Islamite and Iroquois belief, and in almost all mythologies the souls have to cross a River. Music for this dirge is given in Mr. Harold Boulton’s and Miss Macleod’s _Songs of the North_.

THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN.—p. 145

This version was taken down by Sir Walter Scott from his mother’s recitation, for Jamieson’s book of ballads. Jamieson later quarrelled bitterly with Sir Walter, as letters at Abbotsford prove. A variant is given by Kinloch, and a longer, less poetical, but more historically accurate version is given by Buchan. The House of Waristoun is, or lately was, a melancholy place hanging above a narrow lake, in the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, near the Water of Leith. Kincaid was the name of the Laird; according to Chambers, the more famous lairds of Covenanting times were Johnstons. Kincaid is said to have treated his wife cruelly, wherefore she, or her nurse, engaged one Robert Weir, an old servant of her father (Livingstone of Dunipace), to strangle the unhappy man in his own bedroom (July 2, 1600). The lady was beheaded, the nurse was burned, and, later, Weir was also executed. The line

“I wish that ye may sink for sin”

occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle—

“And that all for the black dinner
Earl Douglas got therein.”

MAY COLVEN.—p. 147

From Herd’s MS. Versions occur in Polish, German, Magyar, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and in French. The ballad is here localised on the Carrick coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. Bugge regards this widely diffused ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes. If so, the legend is _diablement changé en route_. More probably the origin is a _Märchen_ of a kind of _Rakshasa_ fatal to women. Mr. Child has collected a vast mass of erudition on the subject, and by no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge’s ingenious hypothesis.

JOHNIE FAA.—p. 150

From Pinkerton’s Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical. “Sir John Faa,” in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently, is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett’s novel, _The Raiders_, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as is known, in Ramsay’s _Tea Table Miscellany_.

HOBBIE NOBLE.—p. 152

The hero recurs in _Jock o’ the Side_, and Jock o’ the Mains is an historical character, that is, finds mention in authentic records, as Scott points out. The Armstrongs were deported in great numbers, as “an ill colony,” to Ulster, by James I. Sir Herbert Maxwell’s _History of Dumfries and Galloway_ may be consulted for these and similar reivers.

THE TWA SISTERS.—p. 157

A version of “Binnorie.” The ballad here ends abruptly; doubtless the fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady’s hair, and a fiddle of her breast-bone, while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty of the sister. Other extant versions are composite or interpolated, so this fragment (Sharpe’s) has been preferred in this place.

MARY AMBREE.—p. 160

Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection. The girl warrior is a favourite figure in popular romance. Often she slays a treacherous lover, as in _Billy Taylor_. Nothing is known of Mary Ambree as an historical personage; she may be as legendary as fair maiden Lilias, of Liliarid’s Edge, who “fought upon her stumps.” In that case the local name is demonstrably earlier than the mythical Lilias, who fought with such tenacity.

ALISON GROSS.—p. 165

Jamieson gave this ballad from a manuscript, altering the spelling in conformity with Scots orthography. Mr. Child prints the manuscript; here Jamieson’s more familiar spelling is retained. The idea of the romance occurs in a Romaic _Märchen_, but, in place of the Queen of Faery, a more beautiful girl than the sorceress (Nereid in Romaic), restores the youth to his true shape. Mr. Child regarded the tale as “one of the numerous wild growths” from _Beauty and the Beast_. It would be more correct to say that _Beauty and the Beast_ is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular “wild growth” which first appears (in literary form) as _Cupid and Psyche_, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan “Fairy Queen Proserpina,” as Campion calls her.

THE HEIR OF LYNNE.—p. 167

From Percy’s Folio Manuscript. There is a cognate Greek epigram—

Χρυσὸν ἀνὴρ εὗρων ἔλιπε βρόχον αὐτὰρ ὁ χρυσόν
Ὅν λίπεν, οὐχ εὑρών, ἥφεν τον εὗρε βρόχον.

GORDON OF BRACKLEY.—p. 172

This, though probably not the most authentic, is decidedly the most pleasing version; it is from Mackay’s collection, perhaps from his pen.

EDWARD.—p. 175

Percy got this piece from Lord Hailes, with pseudo-antiquated spelling. Mr. Swinburne has published a parallel ballad “From the Finnish.” There are a number of parallel ballads on Cruel Brothers, and Cruel Sisters, such as _Son Davie_, which may be compared. Fratricides and unconscious incests were motives dear to popular poetry.

YOUNG BENJIE.—p. 177

From the _Border Minstrelsy_. That corpses _might_ begin to “thraw,” if carelessly watched, was a prevalent superstition. Scott gives an example: the following may be added, as less well known. The watchers had left the corpse alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the minister was sent for, and passed into the room. He emerged, asked for a pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs _a bloody glove_, and the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed. Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James Thomson, the poet, died suddenly in an interview with a guest, in a haunted house. The house was pulled down, as being uninhabitable.

AULD MAITLAND.—p. 180

From _The Border Minstrelsy_. This ballad is inserted, not for its merit, still less for its authenticity, but for the problem of its puzzling history. Scott certainly got it from the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd’s father had been a grown-up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The Shepherd himself (then a most unsophisticated person) said, in a letter of June 30, 1801, that he was “surprized to hear this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; the contrary will be best proved by most of the old people, here about, having a great part of it by heart.” The two last lines of verse seven were, confessedly, added by Hogg, to fill a _lacuna_. They are especially modern in style. Now thus to fill up sham _lacunæ_ in sham ballads of his own, with lines manifestly modern, was a favourite trick of Surtees of Mainsforth. He used the device in “Barthram’s Dirge,” which entirely took in Sir Walter, and was guilty of many other _supercheries_, especially of the “Fray of Suport Mill.” Could the unlettered Shepherd, fond of hoaxes as he was, have invented this stratagem, sixteen years before he joined the _Blackwood_ set? And is it conceivable that his old mother, entering into the joke, would commit her son’s fraudulent verses to memory, and recite them to Sir Walter as genuine tradition? She said to Scott, that the ballad “never was printed i’ the world, for my brothers and me learned it and many mae frae auld Andrew Moore, and he learned it frae auld Baby Mettlin” (Maitland?) “wha was housekeeper to the first laird o’ Tushilaw.” (On Ettrick, near Thirlestane. She doubtless meant the first of the Andersons of Tushielaw, who succeeded the old lairds, the Scotts.) “She was said to hae been another or a guid ane, and there are many queer stories about hersel’, but O, she had been a grand singer o’ auld songs an’ ballads.” (Hogg’s _Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott_, p. 61, 1834.)

“Maitland upon auld beird gray” is mentioned by Gawain Douglas, in his _Palice of Honour_, which the Shepherd can hardly have read, and Scott identified this Maitland with the ancestor of Lethington; his date was 1250–1296. On the whole, even the astute Shepherd, in his early days of authorship, could hardly have laid a plot so insidious, and the question of the authenticity and origin of the ballad (obvious interpolations apart) remains a mystery. Who could have forged it? It is, as an exercise in imitation, far beyond _Hardyknute_, and at least on a level with _Sir Roland_. The possibility of such forgeries is now very slight indeed, but vitiates early collections.

If we suspect Leyden, who alone had the necessary knowledge of antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the authenticity of the ballad, and Hogg is, certainly, a dubious source. He took in Jeffrey with the song of “Donald Macgillavray,” and instantly boasted of his triumph. He could not have kept his secret, after the death of Scott. These considerations must not be neglected, however suspicious “Auld, Maitland” may appear.

THE BROOMFIELD HILL.—p. 189

From Buchan’s _Ballads of the North of Scotland_. There are Elizabethan references to the poem, and a twelfth century romance turns on the main idea of sleep magically induced. The lover therein is more fortunate than the hero of the ballad, and, finally, overcomes the spell. The idea recurs in the Norse poetry.

WILLIE’S LADYE.—p. 193

Scott took this ballad from Mrs. Brown’s celebrated Manuscript. The kind of spell indicated was practised by Hera upon Alcmena, before the birth of Heracles. Analogous is the spell by binding witch-knots, practised by Simaetha on her lover, in the second Idyll of Theocritus. Montaigne has some curious remarks on these enchantments, explaining their power by what is now called “suggestion.” There is a Danish parallel to “Willie’s Ladye,” translated by Jamieson.

ROBIN HOOD BALLADS.—p. 196

There is plentiful “learning” about Robin Hood, but no real knowledge. He is first mentioned in literature, as the subject of “rhymes,” in _Piers Plowman_ (_circ._ 1377). As a topic of ballads he must be much older than that date. In 1439 his name was a synonym for a bandit. Wyntoun, the Scots chronicler, dates the outlaw in the time of Edward I. Major, the Scots philosopher and master of John Knox, makes a guess (taken up by Scott in _Ivanhoe_) as the period of Richard I. Kuhn seeks to show that Hood is a survival of Woden, or of his _Wooden_, “wooden horse” or hobby horse. The Robin Hood play was parallel with the May games, which, as Mr. Frazer shows in his _Golden Bough_, were really survivals of a world-wide religious practice. But Robin Hood need not be confused with the legendary May King. Mr. Child judiciously rejects these mythological conjectures, based, as they are, on far-fetched etymologies and analogies. Robin is an idealized bandit, reiver, or Klepht, as in modern Romaic ballads, and his adventures are precisely such as popular fancy everywhere attaches to such popular heroes. An historical Robin there may have been, but _premit nox alta_.

ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK.—p. 196

This copy follows in Mr. Child’s early edition, “from the second edition of Ritson’s _Robin Hood_, as collated by Sir Frederic Madden.” It is conjectured to be “possibly as old as the reign of Edward II.” That the murder of a monk should be pardoned in the facile way described is manifestly improbable. Even in the lawless Galloway of 1508, McGhie of Phumpton was fined six merks for “throwing William Schankis, monk, from his horse.” (History of Dumfries and Galloway, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, p. 155.)

ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER.—p. 209

Published by Ritson, from a Cambridge MS., probably of the reign of Henry VII.

ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER.—p. 221

Published by Ritson, from a Black Letter copy in the collection of Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquary.

FOOTNOTES

{0a} See Pitcairn, Case of Alison Pearson, 1586.

{0b} Translated in _Ballads and Lyrics of Old France_.—A. L.

{87} “Kinnen,” rabbits.

{88a} “Nicher,” neigh.

{88b} “Gilt,” gold.

{88c} “Dow,” are able to.

{88d} “Ganging,” going.

{90a} “Targats”, tassels.

{90b} “Blink sae brawly,” glance so bravely.

{90c} “Fechting,” fighting.

{91} “Kirsty,” Christopher.

{92} “Hald,” hold.

{94} “Reek,” smoke.

{95} “Freits,” omens.

{96a} “Wighty,” valiant.

{96b} “Wroken,” revenged.

{97} “Mudie,” bold.