Chapter 1

Transcribed from the 1910 Chapman and Hall editionby David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Book cover]

A COLLECTION OF BALLADS

* * * * *

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY ANDREW LANG

* * * * *

LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED

* * * * *

_First Published in 1897_ _Reprinted 1910_

* * * * *

CONTENTS

PAGE INTRODUCTION ix SIR PATRICK SPENS 1 BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE 5 TAM LIN 10 THOMAS THE RHYMER 16 “SIR HUGH; OR THE JEW’S DAUGHTER” 19 SON DAVIE! SON DAVIE! 22 THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL 24 THE TWA CORBIES 26 THE BONNIE EARL MORAY 27 CLERK SAUNDERS 30 WALY, WALY 35 LOVE GREGOR; OR, THE LASS OF LOCHROYAN 37 THE QUEEN’S MARIE 41 KINMONT WILLIE 45 JAMIE TELFER 52 THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY 59 THE BONNY HIND 62 YOUNG BICHAM 65 THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD BATEMAN 69 THE BONNIE HOUSE O’ AIRLY 73 ROB ROY 75 THE BATTLE OF KILLIE-CRANKIE 77 ANNAN WATER 79 THE ELPHIN NOURRICE 81 COSPATRICK 82 JOHNNIE ARMSTRANG 87 EDOM O’ GORDON 92 LADY ANNE BOTHWELL’S LAMENT 98 JOCK O THE SIDE 101 LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET 107 FAIR ANNIE 111 THE DOWIE DENS OF YARROW 116 SIR ROLAND 119 ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY 123 THE BATTLE OF HARLAW—EVERGREEN VERSION 131 TRADITIONARY VERSION 138 DICKIE MACPHALION 142 A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE 143 THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN 145 MAY COLVEN 147 JOHNIE FAA 150 HOBBIE NOBLE 152 THE TWA SISTERS 157 MARY AMBREE 160 ALISON GROSS 165 THE HEIR OF LYNNE 167 GORDON OF BRACKLEY 172 EDWARD, EDWARD 175 YOUNG BENJIE 177 AULD MAITLAND 180 THE BROOMFIELD HILL 189 WILLIE’S LADYE 193 ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK 196 ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER 209 ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER 221 NOTES 227

INTRODUCTION

WHEN the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads, from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with European _Märchen_, or children’s tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech in Genesis—

“I have slain a man to my wounding, And a young man to my hurt.”

Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil, Skarphedin, are always singing. In _Kidnapped_, Mr. Stevenson introduces “The Song of the Sword of Alan,” a fine example of Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danæ in Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriate magical and mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among Australian blacks. “The deeds of men” were chanted by heroes, as by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls, like Homer’s Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs.

These practices are world-wide, and world-old. The thoroughly popular songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a professional class of minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic age of Greece. A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the people. In either case, this class of men developed more regular and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the _laisse_ of the _Chansons de Geste_; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediæval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in professional and literary hands. The mediæval minstrels and _jongleurs_ (who may best be studied in Léon Gautier’s Introduction to his _Epopées Françaises_) sang in Court and Camp. The poorer, less regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners. The foreign newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English verse. But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing.

Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary poetry. The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the same as those of some literary mediæval romances. But these plots and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final literary form of _märchen_, myths and inventions originally _popular_, and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more polished and complex _genres_ of literature. Thus, when a literary romance and a ballad have the same theme, the ballad may be a popular degradation of the romance; or, it may be the original popular shape of it, still surviving in tradition. A well-known case in prose, is that of the French fairy tales.

Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them literary and courtly shape. But _Cendrillon_ or _Chaperon Rouge_ in the mouth of a French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional version, uncontaminated by the refinements of Perrault, despite Perrault’s immense success and circulation. Thus tradition preserves pre-literary forms, even though, on occasion, it may borrow from literature. Peasant poets have been authors of ballads, without being, for all that, professional minstrels. Many such poems survive in our ballad literature.

The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical. The former class is based on one of the primeval invented situations, one of the elements of the _Märchen_ in prose. Such tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance, and may also inspire ballads. Popular superstitions, the witch, metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part. The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted, sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on Darnley’s murder and the youth of James VI.

In the romantic class, we may take _Tamlane_. Here the idea of fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by clinging to them through all transformations. A classical example is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern Cretan example. The dipping in milk and water, I may add, has precedent in ancient Egypt (in _The Two Brothers_), and in modern Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. {0a} Now, in literary forms and romance, as in _Ogier le Danois_, persons are carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole subject the curious may consult “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies,” by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies.

Thus, in _Tamlane_, the whole _donnée_ is popular. But the current version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by incongruous modernisms. Burns’s version, from tradition, already localizes the events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow. But Burns’s version does not make the Earl of Murray father of the hero, nor the Earl of March father of the heroine. Roxburgh is the hero’s father in Burns’s variant, which is more plausible, and the modern verses do not occur. This ballad apparently owes nothing to literary romance.

In _Mary Hamilton_ we have a notable instance of the Historical Ballad. No Marie of Mary Stuart’s suffered death for child murder.

She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four Maries, though a lady of the latter name was at her court. But early in the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen’s was hanged, with her paramour, an apothecary, for slaying her infant. Knox mentions the fact, which is also recorded in letters from the English ambassador, uncited by Mr. Child. Knox adds that there were ballads against the Maries. Now, in March 1719, a Mary Hamilton, of Scots descent, a maid of honour of Catherine of Russia, was hanged for child murder (_Child_, vi. 383). It has therefore been supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long ago, later by Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our ballad is of 1719, or later, and deals with the Russian, not the Scotch, tragedy.

To this we may reply (1) that we have no example of such a throwing back of a contemporary event, in ballads. (2) There is a version (_Child_, viii. 507) in which Mary Hamilton’s paramour is a “pottinger,” or apothecary, as in the real old Scotch affair. (3) The number of variants of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to its antiquity and wide distribution. Now only _Sir Patrick Spens_ has so many widely different variants as _Mary Hamilton_. These could hardly have been evolved between 1719 and 1790, when Burns quotes the poem as an old ballad. (4) We have no example of a poem so much in the old ballad manner, for perhaps a hundred and fifty years before 1719. The style first degraded and then expired: compare _Rob Roy_ and _Killiecrankie_, in this collection, also the ballads of _Loudoun Hill_, _The Battle of Philiphaugh_, and others much earlier than 1719. New styles of popular poetry on contemporary events as _Sherriffmuir_ and _Tranent Brae_ had arisen. (5) The extreme historic inaccuracy of _Mary Hamilton_ is paralleled by that of all the ballads on real events. The mention of the Pottinger is a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian affair, and there is no room, says Professor Child, for the supposition that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist, to tally with the narrative in Knox’s History.

On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear in the variants of the ballad. The lady is there spoken of generally as Mary Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth. Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom, she is not abroad, but in Edinburgh town. Nothing can be less probable than that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719, telling the tale of a yesterday’s tragedy in Russia, should throw the time back by a hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to Scotland (the heart of the sorrow would be Mary’s exile), and, above all, should compose a ballad in a style long obsolete. This is not the method of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as _Hardyknute_ show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.

We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard _Mary Hamilton_ as an old example of popular perversion of history in ballad, not as “one of the very latest,” and also “one of the very best” of Scottish popular ballads.

_Rob Roy_ shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. Indeed a kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.

Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin, composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused among and altered by popular reciters. In England they soon won their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled and moralized by the hack editors.

No ballad has a stranger history than _The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman_, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence. Bateman, a captive of “this Turk,” is beloved by the Turk’s daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by her released. The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local bride, but “orders another marriage,” and sends home his bride “in a coach and three.” This incident is stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic. {0b}

Now Lord Bateman is _Young Bekie_ in the Scotch ballads, who becomes _Young Beichan_, _Young Bichem_, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how _his_ Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester’s _Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket_, Percy Society. See Child’s Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and _Motherwell’s Minstrelsy_, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example in the state of _Cantefable_, alternate prose and verse, like _Aucassin and Nicolette_. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the twelfth century.

Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad. The examples selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the spirit of the Border raids which they record. A few notes are added in an appendix. The text is chosen from among the many variants in Child’s learned but still unfinished collection, and an effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry with most signs of uncontaminated originality. In a few cases Sir Walter Scott’s versions, though confessedly “made up,” are preferred. Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does not merely plough with Professor Child’s heifer, but has made a study of ballads from his boyhood.

This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic American critics, from “the common blame of a plagiary.” Indeed, as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas here set forth.

So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child’s regretted death. He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads, with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research, and a distinguished honour to American scholarship. We are not told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic, with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the Ballads: as to the influences which directed the selection of certain themes of _Märchen_ for poetic treatment, and the processes by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe. No one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of Professor Child. It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it unfinished.

SIR PATRICK SPENS

(_Border Minstrelsy_.)

THE king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine o: “O whare will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship of mine o?”

O up and spake an eldern-knight, Sat at the king’s right knee: “Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor That ever saild the sea.”

Our king has written a braid letter, And seald it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand.

“To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway oer the faem; The king’s daughter of Noroway, ’Tis thou maun bring her hame.”

The first word that Sir Patrick read, Sae loud, loud laughed he; The neist word that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee.

“O wha is this has done this deed, And tauld the king o me, To send us out, at this time of the year, To sail upon the sea?”

“Be it wind, be it weet, be it hall, 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 hadna been a week, a week In Noroway but twae, When that the lords o Noroway Began aloud to say:

“Ye Scottishmen spend a’ our king’s goud, And a’ our queenis fee.” “Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud! Fu’ loud I hear ye lie!

“For I brought as much white monie As gane my men and me, And I brought a half-fou’ o’ gude red goud, Out o’er the sea wi’ me.

“Make ready, make ready, my merry-men a’! Our gude ship sails the morn.” “Now ever alake, my master dear, I fear a deadly storm!

I saw the new moon, late yestreen, Wi’ the auld moon in her arm; And if we gang to sea, master, I fear we’ll come to harm.”

They hadna sail’d 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 top-masts lap, It was sic a deadly storm; And the waves cam o’er the broken ship, Till a’ her sides were torn.

“O where will I get a gude sailor, To take my helm in hand, Till I get up to the tall top-mast; To see if I can spy land?”

“O here am I, a sailor gude, To take the helm in hand, Till you go up to the tall top-mast But I fear you’ll ne’er spy land.”

He hadna gane a step, a step, A step but barely ane, When a bout flew out of our goodly ship, And the salt sea it came in.

“Gae, fetch a web o’ the silken claith, Another o’ the twine, And wap them into our ship’s side, And let na the sea come in.”

They fetchd a web o the silken claith, Another o the twine, And they wapped them roun that gude ship’s side But still the sea came in.

O laith, laith, were our gude Scots lords To weet their cork-heel’d shoon! But lang or a the play was play’d They wat their hats aboon,

And mony was the feather-bed That fluttered on the faem, And mony was the gude lord’s son That never mair cam hame.

The ladyes wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair, A’ for the sake of their true loves, For them they’ll see na mair.

O lang, lang may the ladyes sit, Wi’ their fans into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens Come sailing to the strand!

And lang, lang may the maidens sit, Wi’ their goud kaims in their hair, A’ waiting for their ain dear loves! For them they’ll see na mair.

O forty miles off Aberdeen, ’Tis fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens, Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.

BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE

(_Child_, vol. vi.)

IT fell about the Lammas tide, When the muir-men win their hay, The doughty Douglas bound him to ride Into England, to drive a prey.

He chose the Gordons and the Graemes, With them the Lindesays, light and gay; But the Jardines wald nor with him ride, And they rue it to this day.

And he has burn’d the dales of Tyne, And part of Bambrough shire: And three good towers on Reidswire fells, He left them all on fire.

And he march’d up to Newcastle, And rode it round about: “O wha’s the lord of this castle? Or wha’s the lady o’t?”

But up spake proud Lord Percy then, And O but he spake hie! “I am the lord of this castle, My wife’s the lady gaye.”

“If thou’rt the lord of this castle, Sae weel it pleases me! For, ere I cross the Border fells, The tane of us sall die.”

He took a lang spear in his hand, Shod with the metal free, And for to meet the Douglas there, He rode right furiouslie.

But O how pale his lady look’d, Frae aff the castle wa’, When down, before the Scottish spear, She saw proud Percy fa’.

“Had we twa been upon the green, And never an eye to see, I wad hae had you, flesh and fell; But your sword sall gae wi’ mee.”

“But gae ye up to Otterbourne, And wait there dayis three; And, if I come not ere three dayis end, A fause knight ca’ ye me.”

“The Otterbourne’s a bonnie burn; ’Tis pleasant there to be; But there is nought at Otterbourne, To feed my men and me.

“The deer rins wild on hill and dale, The birds fly wild from tree to tree; But there is neither bread nor kale, To feed my men and me.

“Yet I will stay it Otterbourne, Where you shall welcome be; And, if ye come not at three dayis end, A fause lord I’ll ca’ thee.”

“Thither will I come,” proud Percy said, “By the might of Our Ladye!”— “There will I bide thee,” said the Douglas, “My troth I plight to thee.”

They lighted high on Otterbourne, Upon the bent sae brown; They lighted high on Otterbourne, And threw their pallions down.

And he that had a bonnie boy, Sent out his horse to grass, And he that had not a bonnie boy, His ain servant he was.