Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 14

My own opinion has been antic.i.p.ated by Mr. Frank Miller in his The Poets of Dumfriesshire (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well equipped. He says: "The balance of probability seems to be in favour of the originality of Kinmont Willie," rather than of Satch.e.l.ls (he means, not of our Kinmont Willie as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning the Kinmont). "Captain Walter Scott's" (of Satch.e.l.ls) "True History was certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as out of formal histories, and his account of the a.s.sault on the Castle reads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay."

Does Satch.e.l.ls' version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay?

Undoubtedly it does.

Satch.e.l.ls' prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie -

It fell about the Martinmas When kine was in the prime

that Willie "brought a prey out of Northumberland." The old ballad, disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula.

Lord Scrope vowed vengence:-

Took Kinmont the self-same night.

If he had had but ten men more, That had been as stout as he, Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta'en With all his company.

Scott's ballad (stanza i.) says that "fause Sakelde" and Scrope took Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby DID), and

Had Willie had but twenty men, But twenty men as stout as he, Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta'en, Wi' eight score in his c.u.mpanie.

Manifestly either Satch.e.l.ls is here "pirating" a verse of a ballad (as Scott holds) or Scott, if he had NO ballad fragments before him, is "pirating" a verse from Satch.e.l.ls, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.

In my opinion, Satch.e.l.ls had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like Jamie Telfer, "It fell about the Martinmas tyde," or, like Otterburn, "It fell about the Lammas tide," and he opened with this formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, "If he had had but ten men more," which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott's ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satch.e.l.ls is again reminiscent of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.

In the ballad (iii.-viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table.

Satch.e.l.ls also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises to "take his leave" of Scrope before he quits the Castle.

In Scott's ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).

Before ye cross my castle yate, I trow ye shall take fareweel o' me.

Willie replies -

I never yet lodged in a hostelrie, But I paid my lawing before I gaed.

In Satch.e.l.ls, Lord Scrope says -

"Before thou goest away thou must Even take thy leave of me?"

"By the cross of my sword," says Willie then, "I'll take my leave of thee."

Now, had Scott been pirating Satch.e.l.ls, I think he would have kept "By the cross of my sword," which is picturesque and probable, Willie being no good Presbyterian. In Otterburne, Scott, ALTERING HOGG'S COPY, makes Douglas swear "By the might of Our Ladye."

It is a question of opinion; but I do think that if Scott were merely paraphrasing and pirating Satch.e.l.ls, he could not have helped putting into his version the Catholic, "'By the cross of my sword,' then w.i.l.l.y said," as given by Satch.e.l.ls. To do this was safe, as Scott had said that Satch.e.l.ls does pirate ballads. On the other hand, Satch.e.l.ls, composing in black 1688, when Catholicism had been stamped out on the Scottish Border, was not apt to invent "By the cross of my sword." It LOOKS like Scott's work, for he, of course, knew how Catholicism lingered among the spears of Bothwell, himself a Catholic, in 1596.

But it is NOT Scott's work, it is in Satch.e.l.ls. In both Satch.e.l.ls and the ballad, news comes to Buccleuch. Here Satch.e.l.ls again balladises -

"It is that way?" Buckcleugh did say; "Lord Scrope must understand That he has not only done me wrong But my Sovereign, James of Scotland.

"My Sovereign Lord, King of Scotland, Thinks not his cousin Queen, Will offer to invade his land Without leave asked and gi'en."

I do not see how Satch.e.l.ls could either invent or glean from tradition the gist of Buccleuch's diplomatic remonstrances, first with Salkeld, for Scrope was absent at the time of Willie's capture, then with Scrope. Buccleuch, in fact, wrote that the taking of Willie was "to the touch of the King," a stain on his honour, says a contemporary ma.n.u.script. {135a}

In a CONTEMPORARY ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would be known and reported. But at this point (at Buccleuch's reception of the news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity, and, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.

O is my basnet a widow's curch?

Or my lance a wand o' the willow tree?

and so on. Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is only sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other grounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza xiii.

O were there war between the lands, As well I wot that there is none, I would slight Carlisle castle high, Tho' it were built o' marble stone!

Thence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made "harmonious," as Hogg put it) ran into stanza x.x.xi., where Scott probably introduced the Elliot tune (if it be ancient) -

O wha dare meddle wi' me?

Satch.e.l.ls next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch's correspondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all their names and estates, with remarks on their relationships. He thinks himself a historian and a genealogist. The stuff is partly in prose lines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths. There are two or three more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too bad for any author but Satch.e.l.ls.

Scott's ballad "cuts" all that, omits even what Satch.e.l.ls gives-- mentions of Harden, and goes on (xv.) -

He has called him forty marchmen bauld, I trow they were of his own name.

Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.

Now I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that "stall- copy" stanza! Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the ballad-faker should avoid being too poetical. The ballad-faker SHOULD shun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott did not know this, nor did Hogg. We can always track them by their too decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.

The ballad next gives (xvi.-xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the Border -

There were five and five before them a', Wi' hunting horns and bugles bright; And five and five came wi' Buccleuch, Like Warden's men arrayed for fight.