Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 8

Had we twa been upon the green, And never an eye to see, I should hae had ye flesh and fell, But your sword shall gae wi' me.

That rings true! Moreover, had either Hogg or Scott tampered here (Scott excised), either would have made Douglas carry off--not Percy's SWORD, but the historic captured PENNON of Percy. Scott really could not have resisted the temptation had he been interpolating a son devis.

But your PENNON shall gae wi' me!

It was easy to write in that!

Percy had challenged Douglas thus -

But gae ye up to Otterburn, And there wait days three (xi.),

as in the English (xiii.). In the English, Percy, we saw, promises game enough there; in Hogg, Douglas demurs (xii., xiii., xiv.). There are no supplies at Otterburn, he says -

To feed my men and me.

The deer rins wild frae dale to dale, The birds fly wild frae tree to tree, And there is neither bread nor kale, To fend my men and me.

These seem to me sound true ballad lines, like -

My hounds may a' rin masterless My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,

in Child's variant of Young Beichan. The speakers, we see, are "inverted." Percy, in the English, promises Douglas's men pheasants-- absurd provision for the army of 40,000 men of the English ballad. In the Ettrick text Douglas says that there are no supplies, merely ferae naturae, but he will wait at Otterburn to give Percy his chance.

Colonel Elliot takes the inversion of parts as a proof of modern pilfering and deliberate change to hide the theft; at least he mentions them, and the "prettier verses," with a note of exclamation (!). {73a} But there are, we repeat, similar inversions in the English and in Herd's old copy, and n.o.body says that Scott or Hogg or any modern faker made the inversions in Herd's text. The differences and inversions in the English and in Herd are very ancient; by 1550 "the Percy and the Montgomery met," in the line quoted in The Complaynte of Scotland. At about the same period (1550) it was the Percy and the Douglas who met, in the English version. Manifestly there pre-existed, by 1550, an old ballad, which either a Scot then perverted from the English text, or an Englishman from the Scots. Thus the inversions in the Ettrick and English version need not be due (they are not due) to a MODERN "faker."

In the Hogg MS. (xxiii.), Percy wounds Douglas "till backwards he did flee." Hogg was too good a Scot to interpolate the flight of Douglas; and Scott was so good a Scot that--what do you suppose he did?--he excised "till backwards he did flee" from Hogg's text, and inserted "that he fell to the ground" FROM THE ENGLISH TEXT!

In the Hogg MS. (xviii., xix.), in Scott xvii., xviii., Douglas, at Otterburn, is roused from sleep by his page with news of Percy's approach. Douglas says that the page lies (compare Herd, where Douglas doubts the page) -

For Percy hadna' men yestreen To dight my men and me.

There is nothing in this to surprise any one who knows the innumerable variants in traditional ballads. But now comes in a very curious variation (Hogg MS. xx., Scott, xix.). Douglas says (Hogg MS. xx.) -

But I have seen a dreary dream Beyond the Isle o' Skye, I saw a dead man won the fight, And I think that man was I.

Here is something not in Herd, and as remote from the manner of the English poet, with his

The Chronicle will not lie,

as Heine is remote from, say,--Milman. The verse is magical, it has haunted my memory since I was ten years old. G.o.dscroft, who does not approve of the story of Douglas's murder by one of his men, writes that the dying leader said:-

"First do yee keep my death both from our own folke and from the enemy"

(Froissart, "Let neither friend nor foe know of my estate"); "then that ye suffer not my standard to be lost or cast downe" (Froissart, "Up with my standard and call DOUGLAS!";) "and last, that ye avenge my death" (also in Froissart). "Bury me at Melrose Abbey with my father.

If I could hope for these things I should die with the greater contentment; for long since I HEARD A PROPHESIE THAT A DEAD MAN SHOULD WINNE A FIELD, AND I HOPE IN G.o.d IT SHALL BE I." {75a}

I saw a dead man won the fight, And I think that man was I!

G.o.dscroft, up to the mention of Melrose and the prophecy, took his tale direct from Froissart, or, if he took it from George Buchanan's Latin History, Buchanan's source was Froissart, but Froissart's was evidence from Scots who were in the battle.

But who changed the prophecy to a dream of Douglas, and who versified G.o.dscroft's "a dead man shall winne a field, and I hope in G.o.d it shall be I"? Did G.o.dscroft take that from the ballad current in his time and quoted by him? Or did a remanieur of G.o.dscroft turn HIS words into

I saw a dead man win the fight, And I think that man was I?

Scott did not make these two n.o.ble lines out of G.o.dscroft, he found them in Hogg's copy from recitation, only altering "I saw" into "I dreamed," and the ungrammatic "won" into "win"; and "THE fight" into "A fight."

The whole dream stanza occurs in a part of the ballad where Hogg confesses to no alteration or interpolation, and I doubt if the Shepherd of Ettrick had read a rare old book like G.o.dscroft. If he had not, this stanza is purely traditional; if he had, he showed great genius in his use of G.o.dscroft.

In Hogg's Ettrick copy, Douglas, after telling his dream, rushes into battle, is wounded by Percy, and "backward flees." Scott (xx.), following a historical version (Wyntoun's Cronykil), makes

Douglas forget the helmit good That should have kept his brain.

Being wounded, in Hogg's version, and "backward fleeing," Douglas sends his page to bring Montgomery (Hogg), and from stanza xxiv. to x.x.xiv., in Hogg, all is made up by himself, he says,--from facts given "in plain prose" by his reciters, with here and there a line or two given in verse. Scott omitted some verses here, amended others slightly, by help of Herd's version, LEFT OUT A BROKEN LAST STANZA (xl.) and put in Herd's concluding lines (stanza lxviii. in the English text).

This deed was done at the Otterburn. (Herd.)

The fraye began at Otterburn. (English.)

Now what was the broken Ettrick stanza that Scott omitted in his published Otterburne (1806)? It referred to Sir Hugh Montgomery, who, in Herd, captured Percy after a fight; in the English version is a prisoner apparently exchanged for Percy. In the Ettrick MS. the omitted verse is

He left not an Englishman on the field . . .

That he hadna either killed or taen Ere his heart's blood was cauld.

Scott ended with Herd's last stanza; in the English version the last but two.