Part 1

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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_.