Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 6

I tell you withouten dread,

is his favourite phrase, and he cites historical authority -

The cronykle wyll not layne (lie).

Scottish ballads do not appeal to chroniclers! A patriotic and imbecile effort is made by the Englishman to represent Percy as captured, indeed, but released without ransom -

There was then a Scottysh prisoner tayne, Sir Hew Mongomery was his name; For sooth as I yow saye, He borrowed the Persey home agayne.

This is obscure, and in any case false. Percy WAS taken, and towards his ransom Richard II. paid 3000 pounds. {59a}

It may be well to quote the openings of each ballad, English and Scots.

ENGLISH (1550)

I.

It fell about the Lammas tyde, When husbands win their hay, The doughty Douglas bound him to ride, In England to take a prey.

II.

The Earl of Fife, withouten strife, He bound him over Solway; The great would ever together ride That race they may rue for aye.

III.

Over Hoppertop hill they came in, And so down by Rodcliff crag, Upon Green Linton they lighted down, Stirring many a stag.

IV.

And boldly brent Northumberland, And harried many a town, They did our Englishmen great wrong, To battle that were not boune.

V.

Then spake a berne upon the bent . .

SCOTTISH, HERD (1776)

I.

It fell and about the Lammas time, When hushandmen do win their hay; Earl Douglas is to the English woods, And a' with him to fetch a prey.

II.

He has chosen the Lindsays light, With them the gallant Gordons gay; And the Earl of Fyfe, withouten strife, And Hugh Montgomery upon a grey.

(THE LAST LINE IS OBVIOUSLY A RECITER'S STOPGAP.)

III.

They have taken Northumberland, And sae hae they THE NORTH SHIRE, And the Otterdale they hae burned hale, And set it a' into fire.

IV.

Out then spak a bonny boy;

Manifestly these copies, so far, are not independent. But now Herd's copy begins to vary much from the English.

In both ballads a boy or "berne" speaks up. In the English he recommends to the Scots an attack on Newcastle; in the Scots he announces the approach of an English host. Douglas promises to reward the boy if his tale be true, to hang him if it be false. THE SCENE IS OTTERBURN. The boy stabs Douglas, in a stanza which is a common ballad formula of frequent occurrence -

The boy's taen out his little pen knife, That hanget low down by his gare, And he gaed Earl Douglas a deadly wound, Alack! a deep wound and a sare.

Douglas then says to Sir Hugh Montgomery -

Take THOU the vanguard of the three, And bury me at yon bracken bush, That stands upon yon lilly lea. (Herd, 4-8.)

Hume of G.o.dscroft (about 1610), author of the History of the Douglases, was fond of quoting ballads. He gives a form of the first verse in Otterburn which is common to Herd and the English copy. He says that, according to some, Douglas was treacherously slain by one of his own men whom he had offended. "But this narration is not so probable," and the fact is fairly meaningless in Herd's fragment (the boy has no motive for stabbing Douglas, for if his report is true, he will be rewarded). The deed is probably based on the tradition which G.o.dscroft thought "less probable,"--the treacherous murder of the Earl.

In the English ballad, Douglas marches on Newcastle, where Percy, without fighting, makes a tryst to meet and combat him at Otterburn, on his way home from Newcastle to Scotland. Thither Douglas goes, and is warned by a Scottish knight of Percy's approach: as in Herd, he is sceptical, but is convinced by facts. (This warning of Douglas by a scout who gallops up is narrated by Froissart, from witnesses engaged in the battle.) After various incidents, Percy and Douglas encounter each other, and Douglas is slain. After a desperate fight, Sir Hugh Montgomery, a prisoner of the English,

Borrowed the Percy home again.

This is absurd. The Scots fought on, took Percy, and won the day.

Walsingham, the contemporary English chronicler (in Latin), says that Percy slew Douglas, so do Knyghton and the continuator of Higden.

Meanwhile we observe that the English ballad says nothing of Douglas's chivalrous fort.i.tude, and soldier-like desire to have his death concealed. Here every Scottish version follows Froissart. In Herd's fragment, Montgomery now attacks Percy, and bids him "yield thee to yon bracken bush," where the dead Douglas's body lies concealed. Percy does yield--to Sir Hugh Montgomery. The fragment has but fourteen stanzas.

In 1802, Scott, correcting by another MS., published Herd's copy. In 1806 he gave another version, for "fortunately two copies have since been obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest." {62a}

Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of recitations, so styled, {62b} and gives his suggestions about the copy being made up from the Reliques. When Scott's copy of 1806 agrees with the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person, familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in WITH DIFFERENCES. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the actual words. When Scott's version touches on an incident known in history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or remaniements which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).

So Colonel Elliot says, "We are not told, either in The Minstrelsy or in any of Scott's works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the transcribers were." {63a} We very seldom are told by Scott who the reciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic's information is here mournfully limited--by his own lack of study. Colonel Elliot goes on to criticise a very curious feature in Scott's version of 1806, and finds certain lines "beautiful" but "without a note of antiquity," that he can detect, while the sentiment "is hardly of the kind met with in old ballads."

To understand the position we must remember that, IN THE ENGLISH, Percy and Douglas fight each other thus (1.) -