The Balladists Part 6

"Hold up, hold up, Lord William," she said, "For I fear that ye are slain."

"'Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak That shines in the water so plain."'

The man who can listen to these lines without a thrill is proof against the Ithuriel spear of Romance. He is not made of penetrable stuff, and need waste no thought on the Scottish ballads.

To close the tale comes that colophon that as naturally ends the typical ballad as 'Once upon a time' begins the typical nursery tale:

'Lord William was buried in St. Mary's Kirk, Lady Margaret in St. Mary's Quire; And out of her grave there grew a birk, And out of the knight's a brier.

And they twa met and they twa plait, As fain they wad be near; And a' the world might ken right well They were twa lovers dear.'

Birk and brier; vine and rose; cypress and orange; thorn and olive--the plants in which the buried lovers of ballad romance live again and intertwine their limbs, vary with the clime and race; and just as the 'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad--'Wow but he was rough!'--plucks up the brier, and 'flings it in St. Mary's Loch,' the King, in the Portuguese folk-song, cuts down the cypress and orange that perpetuate the loves of Count Nello and the Infanta, and then grinds his teeth to see the double stream of blood flow from them and unite, proving that 'in death they are not divided.'

The scene of the Scottish story is supposed to be Blackhouse, on the Douglas Burn, a feeder of the Yarrow, the farm on which Scott's friend, William Laidlaw, the author of _Lucy's Flittin'_, was born. Seven stones on the heights above, where the 'Ettrick Shepherd,' with his dog Hector, herded sheep and watched for the rising of the Queen of Faery through the mist, mark the spot where the seven bauld brethren fell.

But Yarrow Vale is strewn with the sites of those tragedies of the far-off years, forgotten by history but remembered in song and tradition. Its green hills enclose the very sanctuary of romantic ballad-lore. Its clear current sings a mournful song of the 'good heart's bluid' that once stained its wave; of the drowned youth caught in the 'cleaving o' the craig.' The winds that sweep the hillsides and bend 'the birks a' bowing' seem to whisper still of the wail of the 'winsome marrow,' and to have an undernote of sadness on the brightest day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very spirit of 'pastoral melancholy' broods and sleeps in this enchanted valley. St. Mary's Kirk and Loch; Henderland Tower and the Dow Linn; Blackhouse and Douglas Craig; Yarrow Kirk and Deucharswire; Hangingshaw and Tinnis; Broadmeadows and Newark; Bowhill and Philiphaugh--what memories of love and death, of faith and wrong, of blood and of tears they carry! Always by Yarrow the comely youth goes forth, only to fall by the sword, fighting against odds in the 'Dowie Dens,' or to be caught and drowned in the treacherous pools of this fateful river; always the woman is left to weep over her lost and 'lealfu' lord.' In the Dow Glen it is the 'Border Widow,' upon whose bower the 'Red Tod of Falkland' has broken and slain her knight, whose grave she must dig with her own hands:

'I took his body on my back, And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat; I digged a grave and laid him in, And happed him wi' the sod sae green.

But think nae ye my heart was sair When I laid the moul's on his yellow hair; O think nae ye my heart was wae When I turned about awa' to gae.

Nae living man I 'll love again, Since that my lovely knight is slain; Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair I 'll chain my heart for evermair.'

An echo of this, but blending with poignant grief a masculine note of rage and vengeance, is the lament of Adam Fleming for Burd Helen, who dropped dead in his arms at their trysting-place in 'fair Kirkconnell Lea,' from the shot fired across the Kirtle by the hand of his jealous rival:

'O thinkna ye my heart was sair, When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair!

There did she swoon wi' meikle care On fair Kirkconnell Lea.

O Helen fair, beyond compare!

I 'll make a garland o' thy hair Shall bind my heart for evermair Until the day I dee.'

Still older, and not less sad and sweet, is the lilt of _Willie Drowned in Yarrow_, the theme amplified, but not improved, in Logan's lyric:

'O Willie 's fair and Willie 's rare, And Willie wondrous bonnie; And Willie hecht to marry me If e'er he married ony.'

Gamrie, in Buchan, contends with the 'Dowie Howms' as the scene of this fragment; but surely its sentiment is pure Yarrow:

'She sought him east, she sought him west, She sought him braid and narrow; Syne in the cleaving o' a craig She found him drowned in Yarrow.'

But best-remembered of the Yarrow Cycle is _The Dowie Dens_. One cannot a.n.a.lyse the subtle aroma of this flower of Yarrow ballads. In it the song of the river has been wedded to its story 'like perfect music unto n.o.ble words.' It is indeed the voice of Yarrow, chiding, imploring, lamenting; a voice 'most musical, most melancholy.' A ballad minstrel with a master-touch upon the chords of pa.s.sion and pathos, with a feeling for dramatic intensity of effect that Nature herself must have taught him, must have left us these wondrous pictures of the quarrel, hot and sudden; of the challenge, fiercely given and accepted; of the appeal, so charged with wild forebodings of evil:

'"O stay at hame, my n.o.ble lord, O stay at hame, my marrow!

My cruel kin will you betray On the dowie howms o' Yarrow"';

of the treacherous ambuscade under Tinnis bank; of the stubborn fight, in which a single 'n.o.ble brand' holds its own against nine, until the cruel brother comes behind that comeliest knight and 'runs his body thorough'; of the yearning and waiting of the 'winsome marrow,' while fear clutches at her heart:

'"Yestreen I dreamed a doleful dream, I fear there will be sorrow, I dreamed I pu'ed the birk sae green For my true love on Yarrow.

O gentle wind that blaweth south Frae where my love repaireth, Blaw me a kiss frae his dear mouth And tell me how he fareth"';

lastly, of the quest 'the bonnie forest thorough,' until on the trampled den by Deucharswire, near Whitehope farmhouse, she finds the 'ten slain men,' and among them 'the fairest rose was ever cropped on Yarrow':

'She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair, She searched his wounds a' thorough, She kissed them till her lips grew red On the dowie howms o' Yarrow.'

The story is said to be founded on the slaughter of Walter Scott of Oakwood, of the house of Thirlstane, by John Scott of Tushielaw, with whose sister Grizel the murdered man had, in 1616, contracted an irregular marriage, to the offence of her kin. On this showing, it is of the later crop of the ballads. But it is well-nigh impossible to think of rueful Yarrow flowing through her dens to any other measure than that which keeps repeating

'By strength of sorrow The unconquerable strength of love.'

But, as Wordsworth reminds us, these ever-youthful waters have their gladsome notes. On the not unchallengeable ground that it makes mention, in one version, of 'St. Mary's' as the fourth Scots Kirk at which halt was made after leaving the English Border, _The Gay Goshawk_ has been set down among the Yarrow ballads; and Hogg has confirmed the claim by using the tale as the foundation of his _Flower of Yarrow_. Even here such happiness as the lovers find comes by a perilous way past the very gates of the grave. The feigning of death, as the one means of escape from kinsfolk's ban to the arms of love, was a device known to Juliet and to other heroines of old plays and romances. But few could have abode the test suggested by the 'witch woman' or cruel stepmother, whose experience had taught her that 'much a lady young will do, her ain true love to win':

'"Tak' ye the burning lead, And drap a drap on her white bosom To try if she be dead."'

And Lord William, at St. Mary's Kirk, was more fortunate than Romeo in the vault of the Capulets; for when he rent the shroud from the face the blood rushed back to the cheeks and lips, 'like blood-draps in the snaw,' and the 'leeming e'en' laughed back into his own:

'"Gie me a chive o' your bread, my love, And ae gla.s.s o' your wine, For I hae fasted for your love These weary lang days nine."'

_The Nut-brown Bride_ and _Fair Janet_ might also be identified as among the Yarrow lays, if only it were granted that there is but one 'St.

Mary's Kirk.' In the former, the balladist treats, with dramatic fire and fine insight into the springs of action, the theme that

'To be wroth with those we love Doth work like madness in the brain.'

As in Barbara Allan, a word spoken amiss sets division between two hearts that had beat as one:

'Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest, Fair Annet took it ill.'

In haste he consults mother and brother whether he should marry the 'Nut-brown Maid, and let Fair Annet be,' and so long as they praise the tochered la.s.s he scorns their counsel; he will not have 'a fat fadge by the fire.' But when his sister puts in a word for Annet his resentment blazes up anew; he will marry her dusky rival in despite. With a heart not less hot, we may be sure, his forsaken love dons her gayest robes, and at St. Mary's Kirk she casts the poor brown bride into the shade in dress as well as in looks. Small wonder if the bride speaks out with spite when her bridegroom reaches across her to lay a red rose on Annet's knee. The words between the two angry women are like rapier-thrusts, keen and aimed at the heart. 'Where did ye get the rose-water that maks your skin so white?' asks the bride; and when Annet's swift retort goes home, she can only respond with the long bodkin drawn from her hair. The word in jest costs the lives of three.

Fair Janet's is another tragic wedding; love, and jealousy, and guilt again hold tryst in the little kirk whose grey walls are scarce to be traced on the green platform above the loch. 'I 've seen other days,'

says the pale bride to her lost lover as he dances with her bridesmaiden:

'"I 've seen other days wi' you, Willie, And so hae mony mae; Ye would hae danced wi' me yoursel'

And let a' ithers gae"';

and, dancing, she drops dead.

Fasting, and fire, and sickness unto death were, however, tame ordeals compared with those which 'Burd Helen' came through, as they are described in the ballad Professor Child holds, not without reason, to have 'perhaps no superior' in our own or any other tongue. Patient Grizel, herself the incarnation in literary form of a type of woman's faithfulness and meek endurance of wrong that had floated long in mediaeval tradition, might have shrunk from some of the cruel tasks which Lord Thomas--the 'Child Waters' of the favourite English variant--lays upon the mother of his unborn child--the woman whose self-surrender had been so complete that she has not the blessing of Holy Church and the support of wifely vows to comfort her in her hour of trial. All the summer day she runs by his bridle-rein until they come to the Water of Clyde, which 'Sweet Willie and May Margaret' also sought to ford on a similar errand:

'And he was never so courteous a knight, As stand and bid her ride; And she was never so poor a may, As ask him for to bide.'

She stables his steed; she waits humbly at table as the little page-boy; she listens, her colour coming and going, to the mother's scorns and the young sister's nave questions. But never, until the supreme moment of her distress, does she draw one sign of pity or relenting from her harsh lord. Then, indeed, love and remorse, as if they had been dammed back, break forth like a flood, that bursts the very door, and makes it 'in flinders flee.' And because

'The marriage and the kirkin'

Were baith held on ae day,'

our simple balladist bids us believe that the twain lived happily ever after.

The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace them to the thirteenth century _Tale of the Ash_, by Marie of France.

The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Skiaen Annie' of Danish folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the bridal bed for her supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint.

The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart: