The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship Part 2

Lord Barnard pours out his contrition to his wife:

'With waefu' wae I hear your plaint, Sair, sair I rue the deed, That e'er this cursed hand of mine Had garred his body bleed.'

'Garred his body bleed' is a quaint and singular expression: it occurs in _Hardyknute_, and nowhere else:

'To lay thee low as horse's hoof, My word I mean to keep:'

Syne with the first stroke e'er he strake, He garred his body bleed.

Pa.s.sages and phrases of one poem appear in another from various causes--plagiarism and imitation; and in traditionary lore, it is easy to understand how a number of phrases might be in general use, as part of a common stock. But the parallel pa.s.sages above noted are confined to a particular group of ballads--they are not to such an extent _beauties_ as to have been produced by either plagiarism or imitation; it is submitted that they thus appear by an overwhelmingly superior likelihood as the result of a common authorship in the various pieces.

Having so traced a probable common authorship, and that modern, from _Hardyknute_ to _Sir Patrick Spence_, and from these two to the revised and improved edition of _Gil Morrice_, I was tempted to inquire if there be not others of the Scottish ballads liable to similar suspicion as to the antiquity of their origin? May not the conjectured author of these three have written several of the remainder of that group of compositions, so remarkable as they likewise are for their high literary qualities? Now, there is in Percy a number of Scottish ballads equally noteworthy for their beauty, and for the way in which they came to the hands of the editor. There is _Edward, Edward_, 'from a ma.n.u.script copy transmitted from Scotland;' the _Jew's Daughter_, 'from a ma.n.u.script copy sent from Scotland;' _Gilderoy_, 'from a written copy that appears to have received some modern corrections;' likewise, _Young Waters_, 'from a copy printed not long since at Glasgow, in one sheet octavo,' for the publication of which the world was 'indebted to Lady Jean Home, sister to the Earl of Home;' and _Edom o' Gordon_, which had been put by Sir David Dalrymple to Foulis's press in 1755, 'as it was preserved in the memory of a lady that is now dead'--Percy, however, having in this case improved the ballad by the addition of a few stanzas from a fragment in his folio ma.n.u.script. Regarding the _Bonny Earl of Murray_, the editor tells us nothing beyond calling it 'a Scottish song.' Of not one of these seven ballads, as published by Percy, has it ever been pretended that any ancient ma.n.u.script exists, or that there is any proof of their having had a being before the eighteenth century, beyond the rude and dissimilar prototypes (shall we call them?) which, _in two instances_, are found in the folio ma.n.u.script of Percy. No person was cited at first as having been accustomed to recite or sing them; and they have not been found familiar to the common people since. Their style is elegant, and free from coa.r.s.enesses, while yet exhibiting a large measure of the ballad simplicity. In all literary grace, they are as superior to the generality of the homely traditionary ballads of the rustic population, as the romances of Scott are superior to a set of chap-books. Indeed, it might not be very unreasonable to say that these ballads have done more to create a popularity for Percy's _Reliques_ than all the other contents of the book. There is a community of character throughout all these poems, both as to forms of expression and style of thought and feeling--jealousy in husbands of high rank, maternal tenderness, tragic despair, are prominent in them, though not in them all. In several, there is the same kind of obscure and confused reference to known events in Scottish history, which editors have thought they saw in _Sir Patrick Spence_.

Let us take a cursory glance at these poems.

_Young Waters_ is a tale of royal jealousy. It is here given entire.

About Yule, when the wind blew cool, And the round tables began, A! there is come to our king's court Mony a well-favoured man.

The queen looked ower the castle-wa', Beheld baith dale and down, And then she saw Young Waters Come riding to the town.

His footmen they did rin before, His hors.e.m.e.n rade behind, Ane mantel o' the burning gowd Did keep him frae the wind.

Gowden graithed his horse before, And siller shod behind; The horse Young Waters rade upon Was fleeter than the wind.

But then spak a wily lord, Unto the queen said he: 'O tell me wha's the fairest face Rides in the company?'

'I've seen lord, and I've seen laird, And knights of high degree; But a fairer face than Young Waters Mine een did never see.'

Out then spak the jealous king, And an angry man was he: 'O if he had been twice as fair, You might have excepted me.'

'You're neither lord nor laird,' she says, 'But the king that wears the crown; There's not a knight in fair Scotland, But to thee maun bow down.'

For a' that she could do or say, Appeased he wadna be, But for the words which she had said, Young Waters he maun dee.

They hae tane Young Waters, and Put fetters to his feet; They hae tane Young Waters, and Thrown him in dungeon deep.

Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, In the wind but and the weet, But I ne'er rade through Stirling town Wi' fetters at my feet.

Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, In the wind both and the rain, But I ne'er rade through Stirling town Ne'er to return again.

They hae tane to the heading-hill His young son in his cradle; They hae tane to the heading-hill His horse both and his saddle.

They hae tane to the heading-hill His lady fair to see; And for the words the queen had spoke, Young Waters he did dee.

Now, let the parallel pa.s.sages be here observed. In verse second, the lady does exactly like the mother of Gil Morrice, of whom it is said:

The lady sat on the castle-wa', Beheld baith dale and down, And there she saw Gil Morrice' head Come trailing to the town.

Dale and down, let it be observed in pa.s.sing, are words never used in Scotland; they are exotic English terms. The mantle of the hero in verse third recalls that of Gil Morrice, which was 'a' gowd but the hem'--a specialty, we may say, not likely to have occurred to a male mind. What the wily lord does in verse fifth is the exact counterpart of the account of the eldern knight in _Sir Patrick Spence_:

Up and spak an eldern knight, Sat at the king's right knee.

Observe the description of the king's jealous rage in _Young Waters_; how perfectly the same is that of the baron in _Gil Morrice_:

Then up and spak the bauld baron, An angry man was he * *

'Nae wonder, nae wonder, Gil Morrice, My lady lo'es thee weel, The fairest part of my bodie Is blacker than thy heel.'

Even in so small a matter as the choice of rhymes, especially where there is any irregularity, it may be allowable to point out a parallelism. Is there not such between those in the verse descriptive of Young Waters's fettering, and those in the closing stanza of _Sir Patrick Spence_? It belongs to the idiosyncrasy of an author to make _feet_ rhyme twice over to _deep_. Finally, let us observe how like the tone as well as words of the last lines of _Young Waters_ to a certain verse in _Hardyknute_:

The fainting corps of warriors lay, Ne'er to rise again.

Percy surmised that _Young Waters_ related to the fate of the Earl of Moray, slain by the Earl of Huntly in 1592, not without the concurrence, as was suspected, of the king, whose jealousy, it has been surmised, was excited against the young n.o.ble by indiscreet expressions of the queen. To the same subject obviously referred the ballad of the _Bonny Earl of Murray_, which consists, however, of but six stanzas, the last of which is very like the second of _Young Waters_:

O lang will his lady Look ower the Castle Downe, Ere she see the Earl of Murray Come sounding through the town.

_Edom o' Gordon_ is only a modern and improved version of an old ballad which Percy found in his folio ma.n.u.script under the name of _Captain Adam Carre_. It clearly relates to a frightful act of Adam Gordon of Auchindown, when he maintained Queen Mary's interest in the north in 1571--the burning of the house of Towie, with the lady and her family within it. All that can be surmised here is that the revision was the work of the same pen with the pieces here cited--as witness, for example, the opening stanzas:

It fell about the Martinmas, When the wind blew shrill and cauld,[14]

Said Edom o' Gordon to his men: 'We maun draw till a hauld.

'And what a hauld shall we draw till, My merry men and me?

We will gae to the house o' Rodes, To see that fair ladye.'

The lady stood on her castle-wa', Beheld baith dale and down; There she was 'ware of a host of men Come riding towards the town.[15]

'O see ye not, my merry men a',[16]

O see ye not what I see?' &c.

In the _Jew's Daughter_ there is much in the general style to remind us of others of this group of ballads; but there are scarcely any parallel expressions. One may be cited:

She rowed him in a cake of lead, Bade him lie still and sleep, She cast him in a deep draw-well, Was fifty fadom deep.

[14] _Young Waters_ opens in the same manner:

About Yule, when the wind blew cool.

[15] We have seen the same description in both _Young Waters_ and the _Bonny Earl of Murray_.

[16] Compare this with _Sir Patrick Spence_:

'Mak haste, mak haste, my merry men a'.'

This must remind the reader of _Sir Patrick Spence_:

Half ower, half ower to Aberdour, It's fifty fathom deep.

_Gilderoy_, in the version printed by Percy, is a ballad somewhat peculiar, in a rich dulcet style, and of very smooth versification, but is only an improved version of a rude popular ballad in the same measure, which was printed in several collections long before,[17] and was probably a street-ditty called forth by the hanging of the real robber, Patrick Macgregor, commonly called Gilderoy,[18] in 1636. The concluding verses of the refined version recall the peculiar manner of the rest of these poems: