A Collection of Ballads Part 40

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

d.i.c.kIE MACPHALION

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

A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE

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

THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN

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

The line

"I wish that ye may sink for sin"

occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle--

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

MAY COLVEN

From Herd's MS. Versions occur in Polish, German, Magyar, Portuguese, Scandinavian, and in French. The ballad is here localised on the Carrick coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. Bugge regards this widely diffused ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes.

If so, the legend is diablement change en route. More probably the origin is a Marchen of a kind of Rakshasa fatal to women. Mr.

Child has collected a vast ma.s.s of erudition on the subject, and by no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge's ingenious hypothesis.

JOHNIE FAA

From Pinkerton's Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend of the house of Ca.s.silis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical.

"Sir John Faa," in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently, is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett's novel, The Raiders, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as is known, in Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany.

HOBBIE n.o.bLE

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

THE TWA SISTERS

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

MARY AMBREE

Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection. The girl warrior is a favourite figure in popular romance. Often she slays a treacherous lover, as in Billy Taylor. Nothing is known of Mary Ambree as an historical personage; she may be as legendary as fair maiden Lilias, of Liliarid's Edge, who "fought upon her stumps."

In that case the local name is demonstrably earlier than the mythical Lilias, who fought with such tenacity.

ALISON GROSS

Jamieson gave this ballad from a ma.n.u.script, altering the spelling in conformity with Scots orthography. Mr. Child prints the ma.n.u.script; here Jamieson's more familiar spelling is retained.

The idea of the romance occurs in a Romaic Marchen, but, in place of the Queen of Faery, a more beautiful girl than the sorceress (Nereid in Romaic), restores the youth to his true shape. Mr.

Child regarded the tale as "one of the numerous wild growths" from Beauty and the Beast. It would be more correct to say that Beauty and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular "wild growth" which first appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius.

Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little a.n.a.logy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan "Fairy Queen Proserpina,"

as Campion calls her.

THE HEIR OF LYNNE

From Percy's Folio Ma.n.u.script. There is a cognate Greek epigram--

[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]

GORDON OF BRACKLEY

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

EDWARD

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

YOUNG BENJIE

From the Border Minstrelsy. That corpses MIGHT begin to "thraw,"

if carelessly watched, was a prevalent superst.i.tion. Scott gives an example: the following may be added, as less well known. The watchers had left the corpse alone, and were dining in the adjoining room, when a terrible noise was heard in the chamber of death. None dared enter; the minister was sent for, and pa.s.sed into the room. He emerged, asked for a pair of tongs, and returned, bearing in the tongs A b.l.o.o.d.y GLOVE, and the noise ceased. He always declined to say what he had witnessed.