Chapter XII: Conclusion

I have now proved, I hope, that the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_ is entirely mythical except for a few suggestions derived from historical events of 1596–97. I have shown, and Colonel Elliot agrees, that refusal of aid by Buccleuch (or by Elliot of Stobs) is impossible, and that the ballad, if it existed without this incident, must have been a Scott, and could not be an Elliot ballad. No farmer in Ettrick would pay protection-money to an Elliot on Liddel, while he had a Scott at Branksome. I have also disproved the existence of a _Jamie Telfer_ as farmer at “Dodhead or Dodbank” in the late sixteenth century.

As to the character of Sir Walter Scott, I have proved, I hope, that he worked on a copy of the ballad which was not the Elliot version, or the Sharpe copy; so that this copy may have represented the Scotts as taking the leading part; while for the reasons given, it is apparently earlier than the Elliot version—cannot, at least, be proved to be later—and is topographically the more correct of the two. I have given antique examples of the same sort of perversions in _Otterburn_. If I am right, Colonel Elliot’s charge against Scott lacks its base—that Scott knew none but the Sharpe copy, whence it is inferred that he not only decorated the song (as is undeniable), but perverted it in a way far from sportsmanlike.

I may have shaken Colonel Elliot’s belief in the historicity of the ballad. His suspicions of Scott I cannot hope to remove, and they are very natural suspicions, due to Scott’s method of editing ballads and habit of “giving them a cocked hat and a sword,” as he did to stories which he heard; and repeated, much improved.

Absolute proof that Scott did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing on the matter are discovered.

But, I repeat, as may be read in the chapter on _The Ballad of Otterburne_, such inversions and perversions of ballads occurred freely in the sixteenth century, and, in the seventeenth, the process may have been applied to _Jamie Telfer_. {125a}

KINMONT WILLIE

IF there be, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, a ballad which is still popular, or, at least, is still not forgotten, it is _Kinmont Willie_. This hero was an Armstrong, and one of the most active of that unbridled clan. He was taken prisoner, contrary to Border law, on a day of “Warden’s Truce,” by Salkeld of Corby on the Eden, deputy of Lord Scrope, the English Warden; and, despite the written remonstrances of Buccleuch, he was shut up in Carlisle Castle. Diplomacy failing, Buccleuch resorted to force, and, by a sudden and daring march, he surprised Carlisle Castle, rescued Willie, and returned to Branksome. The date of the rescue is 13th April 1596. The dispatches of the period are full of this event, and of the subsequent negotiations, with which we are not concerned.

The ballad is worthy of the cool yet romantic gallantry of the achievement. Kinmont Willie was a ruffian, but he had been unlawfully seized. This was one of many studied insults passed by Elizabeth’s officials on Scotland at that time, when the English Government, leagued with the furious pulpiteers of the Kirk, and with Francis Stewart, the wild Earl of Bothwell, was persecuting and personally affronting James VI.

In Buccleuch, the Warden of the March, England insulted the man who was least likely to pocket a wrong. Without causing the loss of an English life, Buccleuch repaid the affront, recovered the prisoner, broke the strong Castle of Carlisle, made Scrope ridiculous and Elizabeth frantic.

In addition to _Kinmont Willie_ there survive two other ballads on rescues of prisoners in similar circumstances. One is _Jock o’ the Side_, of which there is an English version in the Percy MSS., _John a Side_. Scott’s version, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, is from Caw’s _Museum_, published at Hawick in 1784. Scott leaves out Caw’s last stanza about a punch-bowl. There are other variations. Four Armstrongs break into Newcastle Tower. Jock, heavily ironed, is carried downstairs on the back of one of them; they ride a river in spait, where the English dare not follow.

_Archie o’ Cafield_, another rescue, Scott printed in 1802 from a MS. of Mr. Riddell of Glenriddell, a great collector, the friend of Burns. He omitted six stanzas, and “made many editorial improvements, besides Scotticising the spelling.” In the edition published after his death (1833) he “has been enabled to add several stanzas from recitation.” Leyden appears to have collected the copy whence the additional stanzas came; the MS., at Abbotsford, is in his hand. In this ballad the Halls, noted freebooters, rescue Archie o’ Cafield from prison in Dumfries. As in _Jock o’ the Side_ and _Kinmont Willie_, they speak to their friend, asking how he sleeps; they carry him downstairs, irons and all, and, as in the two other ballads, they are pursued, cross a flooded river, banter the English, and then, in a version in the Percy MSS., “communicated to Percy by Miss Fisher, 1780,” the English lieutenant says—

I think some witch has bore thee, Dicky,
Or some devil in hell been thy daddy.
I would not swam that wan water, double-horsed,
For a’ the gold in Christenty.

Manifestly here was a form of Lord Scrope’s reply to Buccleuch, in the last stanza of _Kinmont Willie_—

He is either himself a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch may be,
I wadna hae ridden that wan water
For a’ the gowd in Christentie.

Scott writes, in a preface to _Archie o’ Cafield_ and _Jock o’ the Side_, that there are, with _Kinmont Willie_, three ballads of rescues, “the incidents in which nearly resemble each other; though the poetical description is so different, that the editor did not feel himself at liberty to reject any one of them, as borrowed from the others. As, however, there are several verses, which, in recitation, are common to all these three songs, the editor, to prevent unnecessary and disagreeable repetition, has used the freedom of appropriating them to that in which they have the best poetical effect.” {129a}

Consequently the verse quoted from the Percy MS. of _Archie o’ Cafield_ may be improved and placed in the lips of Lord Scrope, in _Kinmont Willie_. But there is no evidence that Scott ever saw or even heard of this Percy MS., and probably he got the verse from recitation.

Now the affair of the rescue of Kinmont Willie was much more important and resonant than the two other rescues, and was certain to give rise to a ballad, which would contain much the same formulæ as the other two. The ballad-maker, like Homer, always uses a formula if he can find one. But _Kinmont Willie_ is so much superior to the two others, so epic in its speed and concentration of incidents, that the question rises, had Scott even fragments of an original ballad of the Kinmont, “much mangled by reciters,” as he admits, or did he compose the whole? No MS. copies exist at Abbotsford. There is only one hint. In a list of twenty-two ballads, pasted into a commonplace book, eleven are marked X (as if he had obtained them), and eleven others are unmarked, as if they were still to seek. Unmarked is _Kinmount Willie_.

Did he find it, or did he make it all?

In 1888, in a note to _Kinmont Willie_, I wrote: “There is a prose account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells’ _History of the Name of Scott_” (1688). Satchells’ long-winded story is partly in unrhymed and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not write, possibly could not read.

Colonel Elliot “believes that Sir Walter wrote the whole from beginning to end, and that it is, in fact, a clever and extremely beautiful paraphrase of Satchells’ rhymes.” {130a}

This thorough scepticism is not a novelty, as Colonel Elliot quotes me I had written years ago, “In _Kinmont Willie_, Scott has been suspected of making the whole ballad.” I did not, as the Colonel says, “mention the names of the sceptics or the grounds of their suspicions.” “The sceptics,” or one of them, was myself: I had “suspected” on much the same grounds as Colonel Elliot’s own, and I shall give my reasons for adopting a more conservative opinion. One reason is merely subjective. As a man, by long familiarity with ancient works of art, Greek gems, for example, acquires a sense of their authenticity, or the reverse, so he does in the case of ballads—or thinks he does—but of course this result of experience is no ground of argument: experts are often gulled. The ballad varies in many points from Satchells’, which Colonel Elliot explains thus: “I think that the cause for the narrative at times diverging from that recorded by the rhymes (of Satchells), is due, partly to artistic considerations, partly to the author having wished to bring it more or less into conformity with history.” {131a}

Colonel Elliot quotes Scott’s preface to the ballad: “In many things Satchells agrees with the ballads current in his time” (1643–88), “from which in all probability he derived most of his information as to past events, and from which he occasionally pirates whole verses, as we noticed in the annotations upon the _Raid of the Reidswire_. In the present instance he mentions the prisoner’s large spurs (alluding to fetters), and some other little incidents noticed in the ballad, which therefore was probably well known in his day.”

As Satchells was born in 1613, while the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ by Buccleuch, out of Carlisle Castle, was in 1596, and as Satchells’ father was in that adventure (or so Satchells says) he probably knew much about the affair from fresh tradition. Colonel Elliot notices this, and says: “The probability of Satchells having obtained information from a hypothetical ballad is really quite an inadmissible argument.”

This comes near to begging the question. As contemporary incidents much less striking and famous than the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ were certainly recorded in ballads, the opinion that there was a ballad of _Kinmont Willie_ is a legitimate hypothesis, which must be tested on its merits. For example, we shall ask, Does Satchells’ version yield any traces of ballad sources?

My own opinion has been anticipated by Mr. Frank Miller in his _The Poets of Dumfriesshire_ (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well equipped. He says: “The balance of probability seems to be in favour of the originality of _Kinmont Willie_,” rather than of Satchells (he means, not of our _Kinmont Willie_ as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning the Kinmont). “Captain Walter Scott’s” (of Satchells) “_True History_ was certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as out of formal histories, and his account of the assault on the Castle reads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay.”

Does Satchells’ version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay? Undoubtedly it does.

Satchells’ prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie—

It fell about the Martinmas
When kine was in the prime

that Willie “brought a prey out of Northumberland.” The old ballad, disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula. Lord Scrope vowed vengence:—

Took Kinmont the self-same night.

If he had had but ten men more,
That had been as stout as he,
Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta’en
With all his company.

Scott’s ballad (stanza i.) says that “fause Sakelde” and Scrope took Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby _did_), and

Had Willie had but twenty men,
But twenty men as stout as he,
Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta’en,
Wi’ eight score in his cumpanie.

Manifestly either Satchells is here “pirating” a verse of a ballad (as Scott holds) or Scott, if he had _no_ ballad fragments before him, is “pirating” a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.

In my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like _Jamie Telfer_, “It fell about the Martinmas tyde,” or, like _Otterburn_, “It fell about the Lammas tide,” and he opened with this formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, “If he had had but ten men more,” which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott’s ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satchells is again reminiscent of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.

In the ballad (iii.–viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table. Satchells also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises to “take his leave” of Scrope before he quits the Castle.

In Scott’s ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).

Before ye cross my castle yate,
I trow ye shall take fareweel o’ me.

Willie replies—

I never yet lodged in a hostelrie,
But I paid my lawing before I gaed.

In Satchells, Lord Scrope says—

“Before thou goest away thou must
Even take thy leave of me?”
“By the cross of my sword,” says Willie then,
“I’ll take my leave of thee.”

Now, had Scott been pirating Satchells, I think he would have kept “By the cross of my sword,” which is picturesque and probable, Willie being no good Presbyterian. In _Otterburne_, Scott, _altering Hogg’s copy_, makes Douglas swear “By the might of Our Ladye.”

It is a question of opinion; but I do think that if Scott were merely paraphrasing and pirating Satchells, he could not have helped putting into his version the Catholic, “‘By the cross of my sword,’ then Willy said,” as given by Satchells. To do this was safe, as Scott had said that Satchells does pirate ballads. On the other hand, Satchells, composing in black 1688, when Catholicism had been stamped out on the _Scottish Border_, was not apt to invent “By the cross of my sword.” It _looks_ like Scott’s work, for he, of course, knew how Catholicism lingered among the spears of Bothwell, himself a Catholic, in 1596. But it is _not_ Scott’s work, it is in Satchells. In both Satchells and the ballad, news comes to Buccleuch. Here Satchells again balladises—

“It is that way?” Buckcleugh did say;
“Lord Scrope must understand
That he has not only done me wrong
But my Sovereign, James of Scotland.

“My Sovereign Lord, King of Scotland,
Thinks not his cousin Queen,
Will offer to invade his land
Without leave asked and gi’en.”

I do not see how Satchells could either invent or glean from tradition the gist of Buccleuch’s diplomatic remonstrances, first with Salkeld, for Scrope was absent at the time of Willie’s capture, then with Scrope. Buccleuch, in fact, wrote that the taking of Willie was “to the touch of the King,” a stain on his honour, says a contemporary manuscript. {135a}

In a _contemporary_ ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would be known and reported. But at this point (at Buccleuch’s reception of the news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity, and, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.

O is my basnet a widow’s curch?
Or my lance a wand o’ the willow tree?

and so on. Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is only sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other grounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza xiii.

O were there war between the lands,
As well I wot that there is none,
I would slight Carlisle castle high,
Tho’ it were built o’ marble stone!

Thence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made “harmonious,” as Hogg put it) ran into stanza xxxi., where Scott probably introduced the Elliot tune (if it be ancient)—

O wha dare meddle wi’ me?

Satchells next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch’s correspondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all their names and estates, with remarks on their relationships. He thinks himself a historian and a genealogist. The stuff is partly in prose lines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths. There are two or three more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too bad for any author but Satchells.

Scott’s ballad “cuts” all that, omits even what Satchells gives—mentions of Harden, and goes on (xv.)—

He has called him forty marchmen bauld,
I trow they were of his own name.
Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called
The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.

Now I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that “stall-copy” stanza! Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the ballad-faker should avoid being too poetical. The ballad-faker _should_ shun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott did not know this, nor did Hogg. We can always track them by their too decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.

The ballad next gives (xvi.–xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the Border—

There were five and five before them a’,
Wi’ hunting horns and bugles bright;
And five and five came wi’ Buccleuch,
Like Warden’s men arrayed for fight.

And five and five like a mason gang,
That carried the ladders lang and hie;
And five and five like broken men,
And so they reached the Woodhouselee.

—a house in Scotland, within “a lang mile” of Netherby, in England, the seat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the Scottish cause. They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain of Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.

Now in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to Salkeld by each gang, till Dicky o’ Dryhope (a real person) replies with a spear-thrust—

“For never a word o’ lear had he,”

are not an invention of Scott’s (who knew that Salkeld was not met and slain), but a fantasy of the original ballad. Here I have only familiarity with the romantic perversion of facts that marks all ballads on historical themes to guide me.

Salkeld is met—

“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”

The ballad does not specify the crossing of Esk, nor say that Salkeld was on the English side; nor is there any blunder in the reply of the “mason gang”—

“We gang to harry a corbie’s nest,
That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.”

Whether on English or Scottish soil the masons say not, and their pretence is derisive, bitterly ironical.

Colonel Elliot makes much of the absence of mention of the Esk, and says “it is _after_ they are in England that the false reports are spread.” {139a} But the ballad does not say so—read it! All passes with judicious vagueness.

“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”

Satchells knows that the ladders were made at Woodhouselee; it took till nightfall to finish them. The ballad, swift and poetical, takes the ladders for granted—as a matter of fact, chronicled in the dispatches, the Grahams of Netherby harboured Buccleuch: Netherby was his base.

“I could nought have done that matter without great friendship of the Grames of Eske,” wrote Buccleuch, in a letter which Scrope intercepted. {139b}

In Satchells, Buccleuch leaves half his men at the “Stonish bank” (Staneshaw bank) “_for fear they had made noise or din_.” An old soldier should have known better, and the ballad (his probable half-remembered source here) _does_ know better—

“And there the laird garr’d leave our _steeds_,
For fear that they should stamp and nie,”

and alarm the castle garrison. Each man of the post on the ford would hold two horses, and also keep the ford open for the retreat of the advanced party. The ballad gives the probable version; Satchells, when offering as a reason for leaving half the force, lest they should make “noise or din,” is maundering. Colonel Elliot does not seem to perceive this obvious fact, though he does perceive Buccleuch’s motive for dividing his force, “presumably with the object of protecting his line of retreat,” and also to keep the horses out of earshot, as the ballad says. {140a}

In Satchells the river is “in no great rage.” In the ballad it is “great and meikle o’ spait.” And it really was so. The MS. already cited, which Scott had not seen when he published the song, says that Buccleuch arrived at the “Stoniebank beneath Carleile brig, the water being at the tyme, through raines that had fallen, weill thick.”

In Scott’s _original_ this river, he says, was the Esk, in Satchells it is the Eden, and Scott says he made this necessary correction in the ballad. In Satchells the storming party

Broke a sheet of leid on the castle top.

In the ballad they

Cut a hole through a sheet o’ lead.

Both stories are erroneous; the ladders were too short; the rescuers broke into a postern door. Scrope told this to his Government on the day after the deed, 14th April. {140b}

In xxxi. the ballad makes Buccleuch sound trumpets when the castle-roof was scaled; in fact it was not scaled. The ladders were too short, and the Scots broke in a postern door. The Warden’s trumpet blew “O wha dare meddle wi’ me,” and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author. Here Colonel Elliot enters into learning about “Wha dare meddle wi’ me?” a “Liddesdale tune,” and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of Satchells’ “the trumpets sounded ‘Come if ye dare.’”

Satchells makes the trumpets sound when the rescuers bring Kinmont Willie to the castle-top on the ladder (which they did not), and again when the rescuers reach the ground by the ladder. They made no use at all of the ladders, which were too short, and Willie, says the ballad, lay “in the _lower_ prison.” They came in and went out by a door; but the trumpets are not apocryphal. They, and the shortness of the ladders, are mentioned in a MS. quoted by Scott, and in Birrell’s contemporary _Diary_, i. p. 57. In the MS. Buccleuch causes the trumpets to be sounded from below, by a detachment “in the plain field,” securing the retreat. His motive is to encourage his party, “and to terrify both castle and town by imagination of a greater force.” Buccleuch again “sounds up his trumpet before taking the river,” in the MS. Colonel Elliot may claim stanza xxxi. for Scott, and also the tune “Wha dare meddle wi’ me?” he may even claim here a suggestion from Satchells’ “Come if ye dare.” Colonel Elliot says that no tune of this title ever existed, a thing not easy to prove. {142a}

In the conclusion, with differences, there are resemblances in the ballad and Satchells. Colonel Elliot goes into them very minutely. For example, he says that Kinmont is “made to ride off; not on horseback, but on Red Rowan’s back!”

The ballad says not a word to that effect. Kinmont’s speech about Red Rowan as “a rough beast” to ride, is made immediately after the stanza,

“Then shoulder high, with shout and cry,
We bore him down the ladder lang;
At every stride Red Rowan made,
I wot the Kinmont’s airns played clang.” {142b}

After this verse Kinmont makes his speech (xl.–xli.). But if he _did_ ride on Red Rowan’s back to Staneshaw bank, it was the best thing that a heavily ironed man could do. In the ballad (xxvii.) no horses of the party were waiting at the castle, _all_ horses were left behind at Staneshaw bank (Satchells brings horses, or at least a horse for Willie, to the castle). On what could Willie “ride off,” except on Red Rowan? {142c}

Stanzas xxxv., xxxvi. and xliv. are related, we have seen, to passages in _Jock o’ the Side_ and _Archie o’ Cafield_, but ballads, like Homer, employ the same formulæ to describe the same circumstances: a note of archaism, as in Gaelic poetic passages in _Märchen_.

I do not pretend always to know how far Scott kept and emended old stanzas mangled by reciters: there are places in which I am quite at a loss to tell whether he is “making” or copying.

I incline to hold that Satchells was occasionally reminiscent of a ballad for the reasons and traces given, and I think that Scott when his and Satchells’ versions coincide, did not borrow direct from Satchells, but that both men had a ballad source.

That ballad was later than the popular belief, held by Satchells, that Gilbert Elliot was at the time (1596) laird of Stobs, which he did not acquire till after the Union (1603), and that he (the only man not a Scot, says Satchells, wrongly) rode with Buccleuch. Elliot is not accused of doing so in Scrope’s dispatches, but he may have come as far as Staneshaw bank, where half the company were left behind, says Satchells, with the horses, which were also left, says the ballad. In that case Elliot would not be observed in or near the Castle. Yet it may have been known in Scotland that he was of the party.

He was, as Satchells says, a cousin, he was also a friend of Buccleuch’s, and he may conceivably have taken a part in this glorious adventure, though he could not, _at the moment_, be called laird of Stobs. Were I an Elliot, this opinion would be welcome to me! Really, Salkeld was in a good position to know whether Elliot rode with Buccleuch or not.

The whole question is not one on which I can speak dogmatically. A person who suspects Scott intensely may believe that there were no ballad fragments of Kinmont in his possession. The person who, like myself, thinks Satchells, with his “It fell about the Martinmas,” knew a ballad vaguely, believes that Satchells _had_ some ballad sources bemuddled in his old memory.

A person who cannot conceive that Scott wrote

Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, called
The laird of Stobs, I mean the same,

will hold that Scott knew some ballad fragments, _disjecta membra_. But I quite agree with Colonel Elliot, that the ballad, _as it stands_ (with the exception, to my mind, of some thirty stanzas, themselves emended), “belongs to the early nineteenth century, not to the early seventeenth.” The time for supposing the poem, _as it stands_, to be “saturated with the folk-spirit” all through is past; the poem is far too much contaminated by the genius of Scott itself; like Burns’ transfiguration of “the folk-spirit” at its best.

Near the beginning of this paper I said, in answer to a question of Colonel Elliot’s, that I myself was the person who had suspected Scott of composing the whole of _Kinmont Willie_, and I have given my reasons for not remaining constant to my suspicions. But in a work which Colonel Elliot quotes, the abridged edition of Child’s great book by Mrs. Child-Sargent and Professor Kittredge (1905), the learned professor writes, “_Kinmont Willie_ is under vehement suspicion of being the work of Sir Walter Scott.” Mr. Kittredge’s entire passage on the matter is worth quoting. He first says—“The traditional ballad appears to be inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,” “the efforts of poets and poetasters” end in “invariable failure.”

I do not think that they need end in failure except for one reason. The poet or poetaster cannot, now, except by flat lying and laborious forgery of old papers, produce any documentary evidence to prove the _authenticity_ of his attempt at imitation. Without documentary evidence of antiquity, no critic can approach the imitation except in a spirit of determined scepticism. He knows, certainly, that the ballad is modern, and, knowing that, he easily finds proofs of modernism even where they do not really exist. I am convinced that to imitate a ballad that would, except for the lack of documentary evidence, beguile the expert, is perfectly feasible. I even venture to offer examples of my own manufacture at the close of this volume. I can find nothing suspicious in them, except the deliberate insertion of formulæ which occur in genuine ballads. Such _wiederholungen_ are not reasons for rejection, in my opinion; but they are _suspect_ with people who do not understand that they are a natural and necessary feature of archaic poetry, and this fact Mr. Kittredge does understand.

Mr. Kittredge speaks of Sir Walter’s unique success with _Kinmont Willie_; but is Sir Walter successful? Some of his stanzas I, for one, can hardly accept, even as emended traditional verses.

Mr. Kittredge writes—“Sir Walter’s success, however, in a special kind of balladry for which he was better adapted by nature and habit of mind than for any other, would only emphasise the universal failure. And it must not be forgotten that _Kinmont Willie_, if it be Scott’s work, is not made out of whole cloth; it is a working over of one of the best traditional ballads known (_Jock o’ the Side_), with the intention of fitting it to an historical exploit of Buccleuch. Further, the subject itself was of such a nature that it might well have been celebrated in a ballad,—indeed, one is tempted to say, it must have been so celebrated.”

Not a doubt of _that_!

“And, finally, Sir Walter Scott felt towards ‘the Kinmont’ and ‘the bold Buccleuch’ precisely as the moss-trooping author of such a ballad would have felt. For once, then, the miraculous happened. . . . ” {146a} Or did not happen, for the exception is “solitary though doubtful,” and “under vehement suspicion.” But Mr. Kittredge must remember that no known Scottish ballad “is made out of whole cloth.” All have, in various degrees, the successive modifications wrought by centuries of oral tradition, itself, in some cases, modifying a much modified printed “stall-copy” or “broadside.”

Take _Jock o’ the Side_. The oldest version is in the Percy MS. {147a} As Mr. Henderson says, “it contains many evident corruptions,”

“Jock on his lively bay, Wat’s on his white horse behind.”

There is an example of what the original author could not have written!

We do not know how good _Jock_ was when he left his poet’s hands; and Scott has not touched him up. We cannot estimate the original excellence of any traditional poem by the state in which we find it,

Corrupt by every beggar-man,
And soiled by all ignoble use.

CONCLUSIONS

WE have now examined critically the four essentially _Border_ ballads which Sir Walter is suspected of having “edited” in an unrighteous manner. Now he helps to forge, and issues _Auld Maitland_. Now he, or somebody, makes up _Otterburne_, “partly of stanzas from Percy’s _Reliques_, which have undergone emendations calculated to disguise the source from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern fabrication, and partly of a few stanzas and lines from Herd’s version.” {148a} Thirdly, Scott, it is suggested, knew only what I call “the Elliot version” of _Jamie Telfer_, perverted that by transposing the _rôles_ of Buccleuch and Stobs, and added picturesque stanzas in glorification of his ancestor, Wat of Harden. Fourthly, he is suspected of “writing the whole ballad” of _Kinmont Willie_, “from beginning to end.”

Of these four charges the first, and most disastrous, we have absolutely disproved. Scott did not write one verse of the _Auld Maitland_; he edited it with unusual scrupulosity, for he had but one copy, and an almost identical recitation. He could not “eke and alter” by adding verses from other texts, as he did in _Otterburne_.

Secondly, Scott did not make up _Otterburne_ in the way suggested by his critic. He took Hogg’s MS., and I have shown minutely what that MS. was, and he edited it in accordance with his professed principles. He made “a standard text.” It is only to be regretted that Hogg did not take down _verbatim_ the words of his two reciters and narrators, and that Scott did not publish Hogg’s version, with his letter, in his notes; but that was not his method, nor the method of his contemporaries.

Thirdly, as to _Jamie Telfer_, long ago I wrote, opposite

“The lyart locks of Harden’s hair,”

_aut Jacobus aut Diabolus_, meaning that either James Hogg or the devil composed that stanza. I was wrong. Hogg had nothing to do with it; on internal evidence Scott was the maker. But that he transposed the Scott and Elliot _rôles_ is incapable of proof; and I have shown that such perversions were made in very early times, where national, not clan prejudices were concerned. I have also shown that Scott’s version contains matter not in the Elliot version, matter injurious to the poem, as in one stanza, certainly not composed by himself, the stanza being an inappropriate stray formula from other ballads. But, in the absence of manuscript materials I can only produce presumptions, not proofs.

Lastly, _Kinmont Willie_, and Scott’s share in it, is matter of presumption, not of proof. He had been in quest of the ballad, as we know from his list of _desiderata_; he says that what he got was “mangled” by reciters, and that, in what he got, one river was mentioned where topography requires another. He also admits that, in the three ballads of rescues, he placed passages where they had most poetical appropriateness. My arguments to show that Satchells had memory of a Kinmont ballad will doubtless appeal with more or less success, or with none, to different students. That an indefinite quantity of the ballad, and improvements on the rest, are Scott’s, I cannot doubt, from evidence of style.

“Sir Walter Scott it is impossible to assail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove,” says Mr. Kittredge. {150a} Not much is to be taken by assailing him! “Business first, pleasure afterwards,” as, according to Sam Weller, Richard III. said, when he killed Henry VI. before smothering the princes in the Tower. I proceed to pleasure in the way of presenting imitations of “the traditional ballad” which “appears to be inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,” according to Mr. Kittredge.

IMITATIONS OF BALLADS

The three following ballads are exhibited in connection with Mr. Kittredge’s opinion that neither poet nor poetaster can imitate, to-day, the traditional ballad. Of course, not one of my three could now take in an expert, for he would ask for documentary evidence of their antiquity. But I doubt if Mr. Kittredge can find any points in my three imitations which infallibly betray their modernity.

The first, _Simmy o’ Whythaugh_, is based on facts in the Border despatches. Historically the attempt to escape from York Castle failed; after the prisoners had got out they were recaptured.

The second ballad, _The Young Ruthven_, gives the traditional view of the slaying of the Ruthvens in their own house in Perth, on 5th August 1600.

The third, _The Dead Man’s Dance_, combines the horror of the ballads of _Lizzy Wan_ and _The Bonny Hind_, with that of the Romaic ballad, in English, _The Suffolk Miracle_ (Child, No. 272).

I—SIMMY O’ WHYTHAUGH

O, will ye hear o’ the Bishop o’ York,
O, will ye hear o’ the Armstrongs true,
How they hae broken the Bishop’s castle,
And carried himsel’ to the bauld Buccleuch?

They were but four o’ the Lariston kin,
They were but four o’ the Armstrong name,
Wi’ stout Sim Armstrong to lead the band,
The Laird o’ Whythaugh, I mean the same.

They had done nae man an injury,
They had na robbed, they had na slain,
In pledge were they laid for the Border peace,
In the Bishop’s castle to dree their pain.

The Bishop he was a crafty carle,
He has ta’en their red and their white monie,
But the muddy water was a’ their drink,
And dry was the bread their meat maun be.

“Wi’ a ged o’ airn,” did Simmy say,
“And ilka man wi’ a horse to ride,
We aucht wad break the Bishop’s castle,
And carry himsel’ to the Liddel side.

“The banks o’ Whythaugh I sall na see,
I never sall look upon wife and bairn;
I wad pawn my saul for my gude mear, Jean,
I wad pawn my saul for a ged o’ airn.”

There was ane that brocht them their water and bread;
His gude sire, he was a kindly Scot,
Says “Your errand I’ll rin to the Laird o’ Cessford,
If ye’ll swear to pay me the rescue shot.”

Then Simmy has gi’en him his seal and ring,
To the Laird o’ Cessford has ridden he—
I trow when Sir Robert had heard his word
The tear it stood in Sir Robert’s e’e.

“And sall they starve him, Simmy o’ Whythaugh,
And sall his bed be the rotten strae?
I trow I’ll spare neither life nor gear,
Or ever I live to see that day!

“Gar bring up my horses,” Sir Robert he said,
“I bid ye bring them by three and three,
And ane by ane at St. George’s close,
At York gate gather your companie.”

Oh, some rade like corn-cadger men,
And some like merchants o’ linen and hose;
They slept by day and they rade by nicht,
Till they a’ convened at St. George’s close.

Ilka mounted man led a bridded mear,
I trow they had won on the English way;
Ilka belted man had a brace o’ swords,
To help their friends to fend the fray.

Then Simmy he heard a hoolet cry
In the chamber strang wi’ never a licht;
“That’s a hoolet, I ken,” did Simmy say,
“And I trow that Teviotdale’s here the nicht!”

They hae grippit a bench was clamped wi’ steel,
Wi’ micht and main hae they wrought, they four,
They hae burst it free, and rammed wi’ the bench,
Till they brake a hole in the chamber door.

“Lift strae frae the beds,” did Simmy say;
To the gallery window Simmy sped,
He has set his strength to a window bar,
And bursten it out o’ the binding lead.

He has bursten the bolts o’ the Elliot men,
Out ower the window the strae cast he,
For they bid to loup frae the window high,
And licht on the strae their fa’ would be.

To the Bishop’s chamber Simmy ran;
“Oh, sleep ye saft, my Lord!” says he;
“Fu’ weary am I o’ your bread and water,
Ye’se hae wine and meat when ye dine wi’ me.”

He has lifted the loon across his shoulder;
“We maun leave the hoose by the readiest way!”
He has cast him doon frae the window high,
And a’ to hansel the new fa’n strae!

Then twa by twa the Elliots louped,
The Armstrongs louped by twa and twa.
“I trow, if we licht on the auld fat Bishop,
That nane the harder will be the fa’!”

They rade by nicht and they slept by day;
I wot they rade by an unkenned track;
“The Bishop was licht as a flea,” said Sim,
“Or ever we cam’ to the Liddel rack.”

Then “Welcome, my Lord,” did Simmy say,
“We’ll win to Whythaugh afore we dine,
We hae drunk o’ your cauld and ate o’ your dry,
But ye’ll taste o’ our Liddesdale beef and wine.”

II—THE YOUNG RUTHVEN

The King has gi’en the Queen a gift,
For her May-day’s propine,
He’s gi’en her a band o’ the diamond-stane,
Set in the siller fine.

The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird,
Beside the hollans green,
And there she saw the bonniest man
That ever her eyes had seen.

His coat was the Ruthven white and red,
Sae sound asleep was he
The Queen she cried on May Beatrix,
That bonny lad to see.

“Oh! wha sleeps here, May Beatnix,
Without the leave o’ me?”
“Oh! wha suld it be but my young brother
Frae Padua ower the sea!

“My father was the Earl Gowrie,
An Earl o’ high degree,
But they hae slain him by fause treason,
And gar’d my brothers flee.

“At Padua hae they learned their leir
In the fields o’ Italie;
And they hae crossed the saut sea-faem.
And a’ for love o’ me!”

* * * *

The Queen has cuist her siller band
About his craig o’ snaw;
But still he slept and naething kenned,
Aneth the hollans shaw.

The King was walking thro’ the yaird,
He saw the siller shine;
“And wha,” quo’ he, “is this galliard
That wears yon gift o’ mine?”

The King has gane till the Queen’s ain bower,
An angry man that day;
But bye there cam’ May Beatrix
And stole the band away.

And she’s run in by the little black yett,
Straight till the Queen ran she:
“Oh! tak ye back your siller band,
On it gar my brother dee!”

The Queen has linked her siller band
About her middle sma’;
And then she heard her ain gudeman
Come sounding through the ha’.

“Oh! whare,” he cried, “is the siller band
I gied ye late yestreen?
The knops was a’ o’ the diamond-stane,
Set in the siller sheen.”

“Ye hae camped birling at the wine,
A’ nicht till the day did daw;
Or ye wad ken your siller band
About my middle sma’!”

The King he stude, the King he glowered,
Sae hard as a man micht stare:
“Deil hae me! Like is a richt ill mark,—
Or I saw it itherwhere!

“I saw it round young Ruthven’s neck
As he lay sleeping still;
And, faith, but the wine was wondrous guid,
Or my wife is wondrous ill!”

There was na gane a week, a week,
A week but barely three;
The King has hounded John Ramsay out,
To gar young Ruthven dee!

They took him in his brother’s house,
Nae sword was in his hand,
And they hae slain him, young Ruthven,
The bonniest in the land!

And they hae slain his fair brother,
And laid him on the green,
And a’ for a band o’ the siller fine
And a blink o’ the eye o’ the Queen!

Oh! had they set him man to man,
Or even ae man to three,
There was na a knight o’ the Ramsay bluid
Had gar’d Earl Gowrie dee!

III—THE DEAD MAN’S DANCE

“The dance is in the castle ha’,
And wha will dance wi’ me?”
“There’s never a man o’ living men,
Will dance the nicht wi’ thee!”

Then Margaret’s gane within her bower,
Put ashes on her hair,
And ashes on her bonny breast
And on hen shoulders bare.

There cam’ a knock to her bower-door,
And blythe she let him in;
It was her brother frae the wars,
She lo’ed abune her kin.

“Oh, Willie, is the battle won?
Or are you fled?” said she,
“This nicht the field was won and lost,
A’ in a far countrie.

“This nicht the field was lost and won,
A’ in a far countrie,
And here am I within your bower,
For nane will dance with thee.”

“Put gold upon your head, Margaret,
Put gold upon your hair,
And gold upon your girdle-band,
And on your breast so fair!”

“Nay, nae gold for my breast, Willie,
Nay, nae gold for my hair,
It’s ashes o’ oak and dust o’ earth,
That you and I maun wear!

“I canna dance, I mauna dance,
I daurna dance with thee.
To dance atween the quick and the deid,
Is nae good companie.”

* * *

The fire it took upon her cheek,
It took upon her chin,
Nae Mass was sung, nor bells was rung,
For they twa died in deidly sin.

FOOTNOTES

{0a} Child, part vi. p. 513.

{0b} Child, part x. p. 294.

{1a} Hogg to Scott, 30th June 1802, given later in full.

{2a} See _De Origine_, _Moribus_, _et Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, p. 60 (1578).

{4a} Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 60 (1839).

{8a} Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 130–135 (1839).

{10a} _Minstrelsy_, iii. 186–198.

{15a} Child, part ix., 187.

{17a} _Further Essays_, p. 184.

{18a} Child, vol. i. p. xxx.

{19a} _Minstrelsy_, 2nd edition, vol iii. (1803).

{19b} _Further Essays_, pp. 247, 248.

{21a} Carruthers, “Abbotsford Notanda,” in R. Chambers’s _Life of Scott_, pp. 115–117 (1891).

{21b} _Ibid._, _p._ 118.

{23a} Carruthers, “Abbotsford Notanda,” in R. Chambers’s _Life of Scott_, pp. 115–117 (1891).

{23b} Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 99.

{24a} Lockhart, _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, _Bart._, vol. ii. pp. 99, 100 (1829).

{25} Ritson of 10th April 1802, in his _Letters of Joseph Ritson_, _Esq._, vol. ii. p. 218. Letter of 10th June 1802, _Ibid._, p. 207. Ritson returned the original manuscript of _Auld Maitland_ on 28th February 1803, _Ibid._, p. 230.

{26a} Carruthers, pp. 128, 131.

{30a} _Sweet William’s Ghost_.

{31a} _Further Essays_, pp. 225, 226.

{32a} _Further Essays_, pp. 227–234.

{41a} _Minstrelsy_, vol. iii. pp. 307–310 (1833).

{41b} _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 314.

{44a} _Publications of the Modern Language Association of America_, xxi. 4, pp. 804–806.

{47a} _Further Essays_, p. 237.

{47b} Carruthers, p. 128.

{47c} Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 67, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79.

{48a} Craig Brown, _History of Selkirkshire_.

{49a} Child, part ix. p. 185.

{51a} Scott to Laidlaw, 21st January 1803; Carruthers, pp. 121, 122.

{53a} _Further Essays_, p. 45.

{53b} Child, part viii. pp. 499–502.

{53c} _Further Essays_, p. 10, where only two references to sources are given.

{54a} Child, part vi. p. 292.

{54b} _Ibid._, part ix. p. 243. Herd, 1776; also C. K. Sharpe’s MS.

{59a} Bain, _Calendar_, vol. iv. pp. 87–93.

{62a} This is scarcely accurate. Hogg, in fact, made up one copy, in two parts, from the recitation of two old persons, as we shall see.

{62b} _Further Essays_, pp. 12–27.

{63a} _Further Essays_, p. 37.

{67a} Scott to Laidlaw, Carruthers, p. 129.

{69a} English version, xi.–xv.

{70a} _Further Essays_, p. 58.

{73a} _Further Essays_, p. 31.

{75a} Godscroft, ed. 1644, p. 100; Child, part vi. p. 295.

{79a} _The Hunting of the Cheviot_, and Herd’s _Otterburn_.

{83a} Herd, and _Complaynte of Scotland_, 1549.

{84a} Child, part ix. p. 244, stanza xiii.

{84b} _Further Essays_, p. 27.

{89} _Further Essays on Border Ballads_, p. 184. Andrew Elliot, 1910. To be quoted as _F. E. B. B._ The other work on the subject is Colonel Elliot’s _The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_. Blackwoods, 1906.

{91a} _F. E. B. B._, _p._ 199.

{91b} _F. E. B. B._, _p._ 200.

{93a} _Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_, p. vi.

{95a} Satchells, pp. 13, 14. Edition of 1892.

{95b} _Ibid._, p. 14.

{95c} _Ibid._, part ii. pp. 35, 36.

{97a} _F. E. B. B._, p. 200.

{98a} Child, _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, part viii. p. 518. He refers to “Letters I. No. 44” in MS.

{98b} See Sargent and Kittredge’s reduced edition of Child, p. 467, 1905. They publish this Elliot version only. The version has modern spelling. On this version and its minor variations from Scott’s, I say more later; Colonel Elliot gives no critical examination of the variations which seem to me essential.

{99a} _F. E. B. B._, p. 184.

{101a} Robert Scott (the poet Satchells’s father) “had Southinrigg for his service” to Buccleuch, says Sir William Fraser, in his _Memoirs of the House of Buccleuch_. (See Satchells, 1892, pp. vii., viii.) But the “fathers” of Satchells “having dilapidate and engaged their Estate by Cautionary,” poor Satchells was brought up as a cowherd, till he went to the wars, and never learned to write, or even, it seems, to read; as he says in the Dedication of his book to Lord Yester.

{102a} _The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_, opp. p. 36.

{103a} _Border Papers_, vol. i. pp. 120–127.

{104a} _Border Papers_, vol. i. p. 106.

{106a} Scrope, in _Border Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 148–152.

{106b} _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 307, No. 606.

{107a} _Border Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 299–303

{108a} _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 356.

{108b} _F. E. B. B._, p. 161.

{110a} See his _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. ii. p. 15.

{110b} _F. E. B. B._, p. 156.

{111a} _T. B. B._, p. 14.

{112a} _T. B. B._, p. 12.

{112b} _T. B. B._, p. 12.

{113a} _Memoirs of Robert Carey_, p. 98, 1808.

{114a} _T. B. B._, pp. 19, 20.

{115} _T. B. B._, p. 20.

{120a} Child, part vii. p. 5.

{120b} Variant E is a patched-up thing from five or six MS. sources and a printed “stall copy.” Jamieson published it in 1817. Motherwell had heard a _cantefable_, or version in alternate prose and verse, which contained the stanza. It is not identical with stanza xxxii. in Scott’s _Jamie Telfer_, but runs thus—

My hounds they all go masterless,
My hawks they fly from tree to tree,
My younger brother will heir my lands,
Fair England again I’ll never see.

Child, part ii. p. 454 _et seqq._ The speaker is young Beichan, a prisoner in the dungeon of a professor of the Moslem faith.

{122a} _F. E. B. B._, pp. 179–185.

{123a} Child, part viii. p. 518.

{125a} Aytoun, in _The Ballads of Scotland_ (vol. i. p. 211), says that his copy of _Jamie Telfer_ “is almost _verbatim_ the same as that given in the _Border Minstrelsy_.” He does not tell us where he got his copy; or why the Captain’s bride’s speech (Sharpe, stanza xxxvi.) differs from the version in Scott and Sharpe. He gives the stanza which comes last in Scott’s copy, and is too bad and enfeebling to be attributed to Scott’s pen. He omits the stanza which has strayed in from other ballads,

“My hounds may a’ rin masterless.”

But as Aytoun confessedly rejected such inappropriate stanzas, he may have found it in his copy and excised it.

{129a} _Minstrelsy_, vol. iii. p. 76, 1803.

{130a} _Further Essays_, p. 112.

{131a} _Further Essays_, p. 112.

{135a} In _Minstrelsy_, vol. ii. p. 35 (1833).

{139a} _Further Essays_, p. 124.

{139b} _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 367.

{140a} _Further Essays_, pp. 123, 124.

{140b} _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 121.

{142a} _Further Essays_, p. 125.

{142b} Birrell’s _Diary_ vouches for the irons.

{142c} _Further Essays_, p. 128.

{146a} Sargent and Kittredge, pp. xxix., xxx.

{147a} Hales and Furnivall, ii. pp. 205–207.

{148a} _Further Essays_, p. 45.

{150a} _Ballads_, p. xxix.