Letter III. (or VIII.) and Letter IV. I have translated, in the body of

this book, from the copies of the French originals.

In Letter V. the copy of the French original enables us to clear up the sense. It is a question about a maid or lady in waiting, whom Bothwell, or somebody else, wishes Mary to dismiss. The French is, ‘et si vous ne me mondes [mandez] ce soir ce que volles que j’en fasse, Je mendeferay [m’en deferay] au hazard de _la_ fayre entreprandre ce qui pourroit nuire à ce à quoy nous tandons tous deus.’ The Scots has ‘I will red myself of _it_, and cause _it_ to be interprysit and takin in hand, quhilk micht be hurtful to that quhair unto we baith do tend.’ The English is the Scots, Anglified.

The real sense, of course, is ‘if you do not let me know to-night what step you want me to take, I shall get rid of _her_, at the risk of making _her_ attempt something which might harm our project.’ We have no other known contemporary English translations. Of the four known, two (I. II.) are made with a frequent glance at the Scots, two are merely the Scots done into English, without any reference to the French. Nothing but the hasty careless manner of the whole inquiry accounts for these circumstances.

The most curious point connected with the translations is Crawford’s deposition. It was handed in on December 9, 1568. Whoever did it out of Crawford’s Scots into English had obviously both the Scots and English versions of Letter II. before him. Where the deposition is practically identical with the corresponding passages of Letter II., the transcriber of it into English usually followed the Scots version of Letter II. But there is a corrected draft in the Lennox MSS. at Cambridge, which proves that the Angliciser of Crawford’s Scots occasionally altered it into harmony with the English version of Letter II. Thus, in the first paragraph, the original draft of Crawford in English has, like the Scots version of Letter II., ‘the _rude_ words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’ But, in the official copy, in English, of Crawford, and in the Lennox draft of it, ‘rude’ is changed into ‘_sharpe_ wordes,’ and so on. The part of Crawford which corresponds with Letter II. is free from obvious literal renderings of the French idiom, as Mr. Henderson remarks.[426] These abound in the English version of the corresponding part of Letter II., but are absent here in the Scots translation. It is, therefore, open to argument that Crawford did make notes of Darnley’s and Mary’s talk; that these were done into ‘the original French,’ and thence retranslated into the Scots (free from French idiom here) and into the English, where traces of French idiom in this passage are frequent.

THE CASKET LETTERS

I print the Scots Texts with one or two variations from C (the Cambridge MS.) and Y (the Yelverton MS.). The English Texts are given, where they are not merely taken direct from the Scots translations; these and Crawford’s Deposition are from MSS. in the Record Office and Hatfield Calendar.