A Collection of Ballads Part 41

Ministers were exorcists in the last century, and the father of James Thomson, the poet, died suddenly in an interview with a guest, in a haunted house. The house was pulled down, as being uninhabitable.

AULD MAITLAND

From The Border Minstrelsy. This ballad is inserted, not for its merit, still less for its authenticity, but for the problem of its puzzling history. Scott certainly got it from the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd's father had been a grown- up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The Shepherd himself (then a most unsophisticated person) said, in a letter of June 30, 1801, that he was "surprized to hear this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; the contrary will be best proved by most of the old people, here about, having a great part of it by heart." The two last lines of verse seven were, confessedly, added by Hogg, to fill a lacuna. They are especially modern in style. Now thus to fill up sham lacunae in sham ballads of his own, with lines manifestly modern, was a favourite trick of Surtees of Mainsforth. He used the device in "Barthram's Dirge,"

which entirely took in Sir Walter, and was guilty of many other supercheries, especially of the "Fray of Suport Mill." Could the unlettered Shepherd, fond of hoaxes as he was, have invented this stratagem, sixteen years before he joined the Blackwood set? And is it conceivable that his old mother, entering into the joke, would commit her son's fraudulent verses to memory, and recite them to Sir Walter as genuine tradition? She said to Scott, that the ballad "never was printed i' the world, for my brothers and me learned it and many mae frae auld Andrew Moore, and he learned it frae auld Baby Mettlin" (Maitland?) "wha was housekeeper to the first laird o' Tushilaw." (On Ettrick, near Thirlestane. She doubtless meant the first of the Andersons of Tushielaw, who succeeded the old lairds, the Scotts.) "She was said to hae been another or a guid ane, and there are many queer stories about hersel', but O, she had been a grand singer o' auld songs an'

ballads." (Hogg's Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott, p. 61, 1834.)

"Maitland upon auld beird gray" is mentioned by Gawain Douglas, in his Palice of Honour, which the Shepherd can hardly have read, and Scott identified this Maitland with the ancestor of Lethington; his date was 1250-1296. On the whole, even the astute Shepherd, in his early days of authorship, could hardly have laid a plot so insidious, and the question of the authenticity and origin of the ballad (obvious interpolations apart) remains a mystery. Who could have forged it? It is, as an exercise in imitation, far beyond Hardyknute, and at least on a level with Sir Roland. The possibility of such forgeries is now very slight indeed, but vitiates early collections.

If we suspect Leyden, who alone had the necessary knowledge of antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the authenticity of the ballad, and Hogg is, certainly, a dubious source. He took in Jeffrey with the song of "Donald Macgillavray," and instantly boasted of his triumph. He could not have kept his secret, after the death of Scott. These considerations must not be neglected, however suspicious "Auld, Maitland" may appear.

THE BROOMFIELD HILL

From Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland. There are Elizabethan references to the poem, and a twelfth century romance turns on the main idea of sleep magically induced. The lover therein is more fortunate than the hero of the ballad, and, finally, overcomes the spell. The idea recurs in the Norse poetry.

WILLIE'S LADYE

Scott took this ballad from Mrs. Brown's celebrated Ma.n.u.script.

The kind of spell indicated was practised by Hera upon Alcmena, before the birth of Heracles. a.n.a.logous is the spell by binding witch-knots, practised by Simaetha on her lover, in the second Idyll of Theocritus. Montaigne has some curious remarks on these enchantments, explaining their power by what is now called "suggestion." There is a Danish parallel to "Willie's Ladye,"

translated by Jamieson.

ROBIN HOOD BALLADS

There is plentiful "learning" about Robin Hood, but no real knowledge. He is first mentioned in literature, as the subject of "rhymes," in Piers Plowman (circ. 1377). As a topic of ballads he must be much older than that date. In 1439 his name was a synonym for a bandit. Wyntoun, the Scots chronicler, dates the outlaw in the time of Edward I. Major, the Scots philosopher and master of John Knox, makes a guess (taken up by Scott in Ivanhoe) as the period of Richard I. Kuhn seeks to show that Hood is a survival of Woden, or of his Wooden, "wooden horse" or hobby horse. The Robin Hood play was parallel with the May games, which, as Mr. Frazer shows in his Golden Bough, were really survivals of a world-wide religious practice. But Robin Hood need not be confused with the legendary May King. Mr. Child judiciously rejects these mythological conjectures, based, as they are, on far-fetched etymologies and a.n.a.logies. Robin is an idealized bandit, reiver, or Klepht, as in modern Romaic ballads, and his adventures are precisely such as popular fancy everywhere attaches to such popular heroes. An historical Robin there may have been, but premit nox alta.

ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK

This copy follows in Mr. Child's early edition, "from the second edition of Ritson's Robin Hood, as collated by Sir Frederic Madden." It is conjectured to be "possibly as old as the reign of Edward II." That the murder of a monk should be pardoned in the facile way described is manifestly improbable. Even in the lawless Galloway of 1508, McGhie of Phumpton was fined six merks for "throwing William Schankis, monk, from his horse." (History of Dumfries and Galloway, by Sir Herbert Maxwell, p. 155.)

ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER

Published by Ritson, from a Cambridge MS., probably of the reign of Henry VII.

ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER

Published by Ritson, from a Black Letter copy in the collection of Anthony Wood, the Oxford antiquary.

Footnotes:

{1} See Pitcairn, Case of Alison Pearson, 1586.

{2} Translated in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France.--A. L.

{3} "Kinnen," rabbits.

{4} "Nicher," neigh.

{5} "Gilt," gold.

{6} "Dow," are able to.

{7} "Ganging," going.

{8} "Targats", ta.s.sels.

{9} "Blink sae brawly," glance so bravely.

{10} "Fechting," fighting.

{11} "Kirsty," Christopher.

{12} "Hald," hold.

{13} "Reek," smoke.

{14} "Freits," omens.

{15} "Wighty," valiant.

{16} "Wroken," revenged.

{17} "Mudie," bold.