ip^ ^^^J 
 
 9O5 UC-NRLF 
 
 C6H9 
 
 O 
 
3 1 H'l 
 
 THE 
 
 ROMANTIC SCOTTISH 
 BALLADS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LADY WARDLAW HERESY, 
 
 BY 
 
 NORVALCLYNE. 
 
 A. BROWN & CO., 77, UNION STREET. 
 
 JOHN MENZIES, EUINB.URGH. 
 
 LONGMAN & CO., LONDON. 
 
 MDCCCLIX. 
 

 THE 
 
 ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LADY WARDLAW HERESY, 
 
; 
 
THE 
 
 ROMANTIC SCOTTISH 
 BALLADS 
 
 THE LADY WARDLAW HERESY. 
 
 BY 
 NORVAL CLYNE. 
 
 A. BROWN & CO., 77, UNION STREET. 
 
 JOHN MENZIES, EDINBURGH. 
 
 LONGMAN & CO., LONDON. 
 
 M D C C C L I X. 
 
ABERDEEN: 
 
 PRINTED AT THE HERALD OFFICE, 
 BY JAMES BROWN. 
 
THE 
 
 ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS 
 
 AND 
 
 THE LADY WARDLAW HERESY. 
 
 IF Wolf's famous theory regarding the authorship of the Iliad 
 were the true one, that great classic Integer whom we call 
 Homer, and whose familiar bust in stucco has so long presided 
 over our bookshelves, would have to descend from his eminent 
 position, and be broken up into fragments, each of the * disjecta 
 membra poetctf representing an individual rhapsodist. If Mr. 
 Robert Chambers has, in his recent publication on the Romantic 
 Scottish Ballads,* propounded the correct doctrine as to the 
 authorship of the pieces he particularly refers to, an effect of 
 an opposite kind will follow. A number of Scottish Ballads, 
 hitherto supposed to be the production of various unknown 
 rhymers living at different periods and in different parts of the 
 country, will have to be assigned to one Scottish lady who 
 amused herself with verse-making, * and cutting paper with her 
 scissors,' in the early part of last century. Let such a claim be 
 established, and she deserves a bust in marble. 
 
 In Chambers' s Edinburgh Journal for 1843, I recollect 
 seeing a brief notice of the ballad of Sir Patrick Spence, and an 
 attempt made to prove it to be the composition of the authoress 
 of Hardyknute, one of the minor literary impositions of last 
 century. What was only in the bud in 1843 has, in the course 
 of sixteen years, become full-blown, and now Mr. Chambers 
 states 'I -have arrived at the conclusion that the high-class 
 romantic ballads of Scotland are not ancient compositions are 
 not older than the early part of the eighteenth century and are 
 mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind. Whose was 
 
 * The Romantic Scottish Ballads : their Epoch and Authorship ; being the 
 First of a Series of Edinburgh Papers, by Eobert Chambers, F.R.S.E., 
 F.S.A.Sc., F.G-.S., F.L.S., &c. author of ' Traditions of Edinburgh.' Williaan 
 and Robert Chambeis, London and Edinburgh. 1859. 
 
 197978 
 
6 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 this mind is a different question, on which no such confident 
 decision may for the present be arrived at ; but I have no hesi- 
 tation in saying that, from the internal resemblances traced on 
 from Hardyknute through Sir Patrick Spence and Gil Morrice 
 to the others, there seems to me a great likelihood that the whole 
 were the composition of the authoress of that poem namely, 
 Elizabeth Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie' (p. 36). What, then, are 
 the pieces he claims to have been composed or re-written by 
 this lady 1 No fewer than the following twenty-five ballads : 
 Sir Patrick, Spence, Gil Morrice, Edward Edward, The Jew's 
 Daughter, Gilderoy, Young Waters, Edom o* Gordon, The 
 Bonny Earl of Murray, Johnie of Bradislee, Mary Hamilton, 
 The Gay Gos-hawk, Pause Foodrage, The Lass o' Lochryan, 
 Clerk Saunders, The Douglas Tragedy, Willie and May Mar- 
 garet (otherwise The Mother's Malison or The Drowned Lovers), 
 Young Huntin (or Earl Richard), Fair Annie (otherwise Lady 
 Jane), Burd Ellen, Sweet William's Ghost, Tamlane, Sweet 
 Willie and Fair Annie, Lady Maisry, The Clerk's Twa Sons 
 0' Owsenford, and The Heir of Linne ; ' besides others which/ 
 says Mr. Chambers, ' must rest unnamed !' This is a goodly 
 bunch of flowers to lay on the grave of Lady Wardlaw wild 
 flowers no longer, if the new theory be correct, but hot-house 
 plants of little or no fragrance. Mr. Chambers, however, may 
 rest assured that, so far from his readers being convinced of her 
 right, or that of any one individual of the same century, to such 
 a tribute, the general feeling is one of astonishment that a writer 
 formerly so enthusiastic in maintaining these poems as genuine 
 relics of the old minstrelsy of Scotland, should now deliberately 
 impugn their character on grounds so palpably weak and falla- 
 cious. Although by no means holding that, in their present 
 shape, the ballads particularly in question belong to a very re- 
 mote antiquity, I have yet seen no reason for assigning them an 
 origin within the limits of the eighteenth century, but several 
 for placing them much farther back. I therefore deny that the 
 * epoch' now proposed for them is the right one, and, of course, 
 that the assumption as to the 'authorship' is well founded or 
 even feasible. Avoiding speculation, I will endeavour to test 
 Mr. Chambers' s hypothesis on his own principles. I have been 
 told that the inquiry is not worth the trouble, but when an 
 author of experience and literary eminence like Mr. Chambers is 
 at the pains to write and publish an 'Edinburgh Paper' of forty- 
 six serious pages in support of any hypothesis whatever, a serious 
 answer cannot well be thought wholly unnecessary. I should 
 have been loath, however, to make it in this case if the reasons 
 which exclude the idea of Lady Wardlaw being the author of the 
 Scottish Eomantic Ballads, did not tend more or less to show 
 that they are really old. 
 
 Elizabeth Halket, daughter of Sir Charles Halket of Pitfirran, 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 7 
 
 was born in 1677, married Sir Henry "VVardlaw of Pitreavie, and 
 died in 1727. Lady Wardlaw wrote the ballad of Hardyknute. 
 There is no doubt of that, for the fact was stated by members of 
 her family after her death, and, indeed, was more than half ac- 
 knowledged by herself. According to Pinkerton, it was first put 
 forth by her relative Sir John Hope Bruce, who said that he had 
 found the manuscript ' a few weeks ago in a vault at Dunferm- 
 line.' Bishop Percy's account is, that the lady herself 'pre- 
 tended she had found this poem written on shreds of paper em- 
 ployed for what is called the bottoms of clues.' There was, at 
 any rate, a great ado made about it. The authoress was de- 
 scribed by her relations as * a woman of elegant accomplishments, 
 who wrote other poems, and practised drawing, and cutting paper 
 with her scissors, and who had much wit and humour, with great 
 sweetness $f temper.' Hardyknute was first printed in a folio 
 sheet, at Edinburgh, in 1719, as an ancient historical poem, 
 referring to the invasion of Scotland by Haco, King of Norway, 
 in the reign of Alexander III. It next appeared in Allan 
 Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany and in his Evergreen, both pub- 
 lished in 1724, and it was not until the publication of the second 
 edition of Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, in 1767, 
 that the world was informed who the author was. There are 
 some good stanzas in the ballad, but, on the whole, it is an 
 indifferent composition, although Sir Walter Scott said it was 
 the first poem he ever learned by heart, and he believed it would 
 be the last he should forget. The opening lines readily cling to 
 the memory 
 
 Stately stept he east the wa', 
 
 And stately stept he west ; 
 Full seventy years he now had seen, 
 
 Wi' scarce seven years of rest. 
 He lived when Britons' breach of faith 
 
 Wrocht Scotland niickle wae ; 
 And ay his sword tauld, to their cost, 
 
 He was their deadly fae. 
 
 After three more stanzas the ballad proceeds 
 
 The King of Norse, in summer tide, 
 
 Puffed up with power and micht, 
 Landed in fair Scotland the isle 
 
 With mony a hardy knicht. 
 The tidings to our gude Scots king 
 
 Came as he sat at dine, 
 With noble chiefs in brave array, 
 
 Drinking the blude-red wine. 
 
 * To horse, to horse, my royal liege ; 
 
 Your f aes stand on the strand ; 
 Full twenty thousand glittering spears 
 The king of Norse commands.' 
 
 * Bring me my steed, Mage, dapple-gray,' 
 
 Our good king rose and cried ; 
 ' A trustier beast in a' the land 
 A Scots king never tried. 
 A 2 
 
8 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 Go, little page, tell Hardyknute, 
 
 That lives on hill sae hie, 
 To draw his sword, the dread of faes, 
 
 And haste and follow me.' 
 
 On receiving the message, the old knight summons his sons, and 
 thus speaks 
 
 Late, late the yestreen, I weened in peace 
 
 To end my lengthened life ; 
 My age might well excuse my arm 
 
 Frae manly feats of strife. 
 But now that Norse does proudly boast 
 
 Fair Scotland to enthrall, 
 It's ne'er be said of Hardyknute 
 He feared to fight or fall. 
 
 Portions of the concluding stanzas may be quoted 
 
 Syne with the first stroke e'er he strake 
 He garred his body bleed. 
 
 Norse e'en like grey gos-hawk stared wild, 
 He sighed wi' shame and spite. 
 
 On Norway's coast the widowed dame 
 
 May wash the rocks with tears, 
 May lang look ow'r the shipless seas, 
 
 Before her mate appears. 
 
 These quotations are sufficient for comparison with the dis- 
 puted poems to which our attention is called. 
 
 The one to be noticed in the first place, and with most detail, 
 is Sir Patrick Spence. Mr. Chambers treats it as a i romantic' 
 ballad. I think its proper place is among the historical series, 
 as referring to an important event in our national history; but 
 of this afterwards. It was printed by Percy in 1765, 'from 
 two MS. copies transmitted from Scotland,' but he was able to 
 furnish only eleven stanzas. As many more were supplied by 
 Sir Walter Scott in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 
 (1802), and Mr. Chambers has now reprinted 'the whole ballad 
 as given originally by Percy, introducing, however, within 
 brackets, the additional details of Scott's copy, (only omitting the 
 five verses supplied by Mr. Hamilton, as they appear redun- 
 dant).' To make the discussion intelligible, it is necessary for 
 me to adopt precisely the same course ; but, in order to show the 
 whole case, I place alongside the version selected by Mr. Cham- 
 bers two other versions, one published by Robert Jamieson in 
 his Popular Ballads and Songs, from Tradition, Manuscript, 
 $c. (1806), and the other from Peter Buchan's Ancient Ballads 
 and Songs o/ the North of Scotland (1828). Sir Walter Scott 
 took his version 'from two MS. copies,' and he says 'That the 
 public might possess this curious fragment as entire as possible, 
 the Editor gave one of these copies, which seems the most perfect, 
 to Mr. Eobert Jamieson, to be inserted in his collection.' With- 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 9 
 
 out any disparagement to Jamieson's work, the great value of 
 Buchan's Collection is, that the numerous pieces contained in it 
 are given exactly as communicated to the Editor, who had not 
 much poetical skill of his own, no literary polish, to tempt him to 
 'improve' them.* Mr. Chambers, knowing the unsophisticated 
 character of Buchan's volumes, has made special reference to 
 them for examples of the ballads originating with, and current 
 among, the country people. In regard to his version of Sir Patrick 
 Spence, Buchan takes care to tell us l It was taken down from 
 the recitation of "a wight of Homer's craft," who, as a wander- 
 ing minstrel, blind from his infancy, has been travelling in the 
 north as a mendicant for these last fifty years. He learned it in 
 his youth from a very old person, and the words are exactly as 
 recited, free from those emendations which have ruined so many 
 of our best Scottish ballads.' I think that a comparison of the 
 three (or rather four) versions together, so numerous are the 
 variations in the language and construction, not one stanza being 
 exactly the same as another, should suffice to prove that the bal- 
 lad had a popular origin, and had been handed down by tradi- 
 tion through more generations than are comprized within the 
 period since Lady Wardlaw was born. 
 
 - PERCY AND SCOTT. 
 
 The king sits in Dunfermline 
 town, 
 
 Drinking the blude-red wine; 
 'O whar will I get a gude sailor, 
 
 To sail this ship o' mine ?' 
 
 Up and spak an eldern knight, 
 Sat at the king's rigbt kute; 
 
 'Sir Patrick Spence is the beet 
 
 pallor 
 That sails upon the sea.' 
 
 The king has written a braid 
 
 letter, 
 
 And signed it with his bard, 
 And sent it to Sir Patrick 
 
 Spence, 
 Was walking on the sand. 
 
 [_' To Noroway, to Norowny, 
 
 To Noroway o'er the faem ; 
 The king's daughter of Noro- 
 way, 
 
 'Tis thou maun bring her 
 name.] 
 
 The first line that Sir Patrick 
 
 read, 
 
 A loud lauch lauched he; 
 The next line that Sir Patrick 
 
 read, 
 The tear blinded his e'e. 
 
 JAMIESON. 
 
 The king sits in Dunfermlin 
 
 town, 
 Sae merrily drinkin' the 
 
 wiue; 
 
 ' Whare will I get a mariner. 
 Will sail this ship o' mint ?' 
 
 Then, up bespak a bonny boy, 
 Sat just at the king's knee, 
 
 ' Sir Patrick Spence is the best; 
 
 sea-man, 
 That e'er set foot on sea.' 
 
 The king has written a braid 
 letter, 
 
 Seal'd it wi' his ain band ; 
 He has sent word to sir Patrick, 
 
 To come at his command. 
 
 ' wha is this, or wha i.= that, 
 H* tald the king o' me ? 
 
 For I was never a good seaman, 
 Nor ever intend to be. 
 
 BUCHAN. 
 
 The King sits in Dunfermline 
 
 town, 
 
 A' d> inking at the wine ; 
 Sajs, Where will I get a good 
 
 skipper 
 Will sail the saut seas fine. 
 
 Out it speaks an eldren knight 
 Amang the companie 
 
 Young Patrick Spens is the 
 
 best skipper 
 That ever suii'd the sea. 
 
 The king he wrote a braid 
 
 letter, 
 
 And seal'd it wi' his ring : 
 Says, Ye'll gi'e that to Patrick 
 
 Spens, 
 See if ye can him find. 
 
 He sent this, not wi' an auld 
 
 man, 
 
 Nor yet a simple boy, 
 But the best o' nobles in his 
 
 train 
 This letter did convoy. 
 
 When Patrick loek'd the letter 
 upon 
 
 A light laugh then ga'e be ; 
 But ere he read it till an end, 
 
 The tear blinded his e'e. 
 
 * I am aware that one or two literary scapegraces (who, I trust, have long 
 since repented of this practical joke of their hot youth) supplemented, to a 
 trifling extent, Peter Buchan's genuine recoveries, with some antiques of their 
 own manufacture ; but this does not affect the general character of his col- 
 lection. 
 
10 
 
 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 PERCY AND SCOTT. 
 
 wha is this has done this 
 
 deed, 
 
 This ill deed done to me ; 
 To send me out this time o* the 
 
 year, 
 To sail ugon the sea ? 
 
 [' Be it wind, be it weet, be it 
 
 hail, be it fleet. 
 Our ship must sail the faem ; 
 The king's daughter of Noro- 
 way, 
 Tis we must fetch her name.' 
 
 JAMIESON. 
 
 BUCHAN. 
 
 They hoysed their sails on 
 Monenday morn, 
 
 Wi' a' the speed they may ; 
 They hae landed in Noroway, 
 
 Upon a Wodensday. 
 
 'Be't wind, be't weet, be't Ye'll eat and drink, my merry 
 
 snaw, be't sleet, men a', 
 
 Our ships maun sail the An* see ye be weell thorn ; 
 
 morn.' For blaw it weet, or blaw it 
 
 ' Ever alack ! my master dear, wind, 
 
 For I fear a deadly storm. My good ship sails the morn. 
 
 Then out it speaks a guid auld 
 
 man, 
 
 A guid death mat he dee- 
 Whatever ye do, my good 
 
 master, 
 Tak' God your guide to bee. 
 
 For late yestreen I saw the 
 new moon, 
 
 The auld moon in her arm. 
 Ohon, alas ! says Patrick Spens, 
 
 That bodes a deadly storm. 
 
 But I maun sail the seas the 
 
 morn, 
 
 And likewise sae maun you ; 
 To Noroway, wi' our king's 
 
 daughter 
 A chosen queen she's now. 
 
 But I wonder who has been sae 
 
 base, 
 
 As tauld the king o' mee ; 
 Even tho' hee ware my ae 
 
 brither, 
 An ill death mat he dee. 
 
 They mounted eail on Munen- Now Patrick he rigg'd out his 
 
 day morn, ship, 
 
 Wi' a' the haste they may ; And sailed ower the faem ; 
 
 And they bae landed in Nor- But mony a dieary thought 
 
 raway, 
 Upon the Wednesday. 
 
 had hee, 
 While hee was on the main. 
 
 They hadna sailed upon the 
 
 sea 
 
 A day but barely three ; 
 Till they came in sight o' Noro- 
 
 . way, 
 It's there where they must 
 
 They had na been a week, a They hadna been a month, a They hadna stayed into that 
 
 week, month place 
 
 In Noroway, but twae, In Norraway but three, A month but and a day, 
 
 When that the lords of Noro- Till lads o' Norraway began to Till he caused the flip in mugs 
 
 way 
 Began aloud to say : 
 
 ' Ye Scottish men spend a' our 
 king's gowd, 
 
 And a' our queenis fee.' 
 Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, 
 
 Fu' loud I hear ye lie. 
 
 say, 
 
 ' Ye spend a' our white 
 monie.' 
 
 gae roun . 
 And wine in cans sae gay ; 
 
 The pipe and harp sae sweetly 
 
 pl&y'd. 
 
 The trumpets loudly soun'; 
 In every hall where in they 
 
 stay'd, 
 \Vi' their mirth did reboun.' 
 
 Ye spend a' our good kingis Then out it speaks an auld 
 
 goud, . skipper, 
 
 But and our queenis fee.' An inbearing dog was hee 
 
 1 Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, Ye've stay'd ower lang in Noro. 
 Sae weel's I hear you lie ; way, 
 
 Spending your king's monie. 
 
 ' For I brought as much white 
 
 'For I broucht as much white money 
 
 monie As will gane* my men and Then out it speaks Sir Patrick 
 
 As gane* my men and me, me ; Spens, 
 
 And I broucht a half-fou o' I brought half a fou o' good how can a' this bee ? 
 
 gude red gowd, red goud I ha'e a bow o' guid red gowd 
 
 Out ower the sea wi' me '] Out o'er the sea with me.' Into my ship wi' me. 
 
 * Serve. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 11 
 
 PERCY AND SCOTT. JAMIESON. BUCHAN. 
 
 "Mak haste, mak haste, my 'Be'twiml or weet, be't snaw But betide me well, betide 
 
 merry men a', or sleet, me wae, 
 
 Our gude ship sails the morn.' Our rhips maun sail the This day 1'se leave the shore ; 
 
 ' say na sae, my master aear, morn.' And never spend my king's 
 
 For I fear a deadly storm. ' ever alack ! my master monie 
 
 dear, 'Mong Noroway dogs no 
 
 ' Late, late yestreen, I saw the * fear a deadly 6torm ' more> 
 
 Wf "laid 1 moon la her < i saw the new moon late , es- YouD ^ atrick hee < 8 * th 
 And iS; I fear, my master w Jf^ moon in her 
 
 That we will come to harm.' And if & gang to sea> m& ^ T> Tbat 8 ^' g . d to be at name . 
 
 I fear we'll suffer harm.' 
 
 [They had na sailed a league, They hadna sailed upon the 
 
 A leagued barely three, The y * 8ailed a lea S ue on A day but barely three ; 
 
 When the lift grew dark, and . ,,' hnf i... rp1v Bnfl Till loud and boistrous grew 
 
 e !ea . 
 
 The anker, brak, and the top- Tbere c * me " deadl) ' " m - .here will I gel a little wee 
 
 masts lap, boy 
 
 It was sic a deadly storm, ' Whare will I get a bonny boy Will tak' my helm in hand, 
 
 And the waves cam o'er the Will tak thir sails in hand; Till I gae up to my tapmast, 
 
 broken ship, That will gang up to the tap- And see for some dry land? 
 Till a' her sides were torn.] mast, 
 
 See an he ken dry land ?' He hadna gane to his tapmast 
 
 our Scots nobles were right A step but barely three ; 
 
 laith Tiith iflith wo our (rnnft Ere thro' aud tbro' the bonny 
 
 To weet their cork-heeled % C o t8 loTdf ship's side, 
 
 shon ; To Weet their leather ghoon He saw the green haw-sea. 
 Butla^erea the p,a y wa s But ^ , ., ^ daj . 
 
 Their hat. th.j.w.m ahoon. Thelr hst ' s were wat aboM1 . 
 
 [And mony was the feather- And ye'll get as mucixle guid 
 
 bed Mony was the feather bed, canvas 
 
 That nattered on the faem ; That flotter'd on the Jaem ; As wrap the ship a' roun' ; 
 
 And mony was the gude lord's And mouy was the good Scots 
 
 son lord Ye'll pict her well, and spare 
 
 That never mair cam hame. Qaed awa that ne'er cam her not, 
 
 hame ; And mak her hale and FOUU'. 
 
 The ladies wrang their fingera And mon was the fatherless But ere he had the word well 
 
 white bairn, spoke 
 
 The maidens tore their hair, Tha & ^y at bame greetin'. The bonny ship was down. 
 A' for the sake o' their true 
 
 loves, laith laith were our 8 uid 
 
 For them they '11 see naa , Iord8> 80ns 
 
 niairl To weet their milk-white 
 
 bands; 
 
 lang.lang may the ladies sit, But laD 8 er ' t fa e play was 
 
 Wi' their fans into their _ ower t 
 
 hand. They wat their go wden bands. 
 Or ere they see Sir Patrick 
 
 gpence laith lai , tn were ou r Scots 
 
 Come sailing to the land. m Iord8> sons . 
 
 To weet their coal-black 
 
 lang. lang may the ladies _ f , Bhoon > , 
 
 stand But Iar 8 ere *' ne play was 
 
 Wi' their gold kames in their _ ower . , 
 
 h a j r> They wat their hats aboon. 
 
 Waiting for their ain dear T , 
 
 lorfa It s forty miles to Aberdeen, Its even ower by Aberdour 
 
 For they '11 see them nae And fifty fathoms deep ; Its fifty fathoms deep, 
 
 ma i r And there lyes a' our good And yonder lies Sir Patrick 
 
 Scots lords, Spens, 
 
 Half ower, half ower to Aber- Wi> Bir Pa t"ck at theii feet. And a'b men at his feet. 
 
 It's flfty'fathom deep The ladies wran S their hands Its even ower by Aberdour, 
 
 And there lies gude Sir Patrick Btte white There's mony a ciaig and fin, 
 
 gpence The maidens tore their hair, And yonder lies Sir Patrick 
 
 Wi 1 the Scots lords at his s P ens . 
 
 feet. Wi' B^ay a guid lord a son 
 
12 THE KOMANT1C SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 JAMIESON. BUCHAN. 
 
 A' for the sake o' their true Lang, lang will the ladyes look 
 
 love?, Into their morning weed. 
 
 For them they ne'er saw Before they see young Patricb 
 
 mair. Spens 
 
 Come sailing ower the fleed. 
 
 Lang lang may our ladies stand Lang, lang will the ladyep look 
 
 Wi' their fans in their hand, Wi' their fans in their hand, 
 
 Ere they see sir Patrick and his Before they see him, Patrick 
 
 Come sailing to the land. Come sailing to dry land. 
 
 I will now bring together the arguments stated by Mr. 
 Chambers in support of his opinion of the authorship of Sir 
 Patrick Spence. ' The want of any ancient manuscript, the 
 absence of the least trait of an ancient style of composition, the 
 palpable modernness of the diction for example, "Our ship 
 must sail the faem," a glaring specimen of the poetical language 
 of the reign of Queen Anne and, still more palpably, of several 
 of the things alluded to, as cork-heeled shoon, hats, fans, and 
 feather-beds, together with the inapplicableriess of the story to 
 any known event of actual history, never struck any editor of 
 Scottish poetry, till, at a recent date, Mr. David Laing intimated 
 his suspicions that Sir Patrick Spence and Hardyknute were the 
 production of the same author (Notes to Johnson's Scots Musical 
 Museum, 1839). To me it appears that there could not well be 
 more remarkable traits of an identity of authorship than what 
 are presented in the extracts given from Hardyknute and the 
 entire poem of Sir Patrick granting only that the one poem is 
 a considerable improvement upon the other. Each poem opens 
 with absolutely the same set of particulars a Scottish king sit- 
 ting drinking the blude-red wine and sending off a message 
 to a subject on a business of importance. Norway* is brought 
 into connection with Scotland in both cases. Sir Patrick's 
 exclamation, "To Noroway, to Noroway," meets with an exact 
 counterpart in the "To horse, to horse," of the courtier in 
 Hardyknute. The words of the ill-boding sailor in Sir Patrick, 
 "Late, late yestreen, I saw the new moon' a very peculiar 
 expression, be it remarked are repeated in Hardyknute, 
 
 Late, late the yestreen I weened in peace, 
 To end my lengthened life. 
 
 The grief of the ladies at the catastrophe in Sir Patrick Spence, 
 is equally the counterpart of that of the typical Norse lady with 
 regard to the fate of her male friend at Largs. I am inclined, 
 likewise, to lay some stress on the localities mentioned in Sir 
 Patrick Spence namely, Dunfermline and Aberdour these 
 being places in the immediate neighbourhood of the mansions 
 where Lady "Wardlaw spent her maiden and her matron days. 
 A poet, indeed, often writes about, places which he never saw ; 
 but it is natural for him to be most disposed to write about those 
 
F THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 13 
 
 with which he is familiar; and some are first inspired by the his- 
 torical associations connected with their native scenes. True, as 
 lias been remarked, there is a great improvement upon Hardy- 
 Jamie in the "grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence" as Cole- 
 ridge calls it, yet not more than what is often seen in compositions 
 of a particular author at different periods of life. It seems as if 
 the hand which was stiff and somewhat puerile in Hardyknute, 
 had acquired freedom and breadth of style in Sir Patrick Spence. 
 For all of these reasons, I feel assured that Sir Patrick is a mo- 
 dern ballad, and suspect, or more than suspect, that the author 
 is Lady Wardlaw' (p. 7-8). Further on, Mr. Chambers says 
 ' Having so traced a probable common authorship, and that mo- 
 dern, from Hardyknute to Sir Patrick Spence, and from these 
 two to the revised and improved edition of Gil Morrice, I waa 
 tempted to inquire if there be not others of the Scottish ballads 
 liable to similar suspicion as to the antiquity of their origin V (p. 
 13.) Again, in quoting some stanzas of the Lass o' Lochryan 
 (which suggested to Burns his song of Lord Gregory, and some 
 verses of Dr. Wolcot's), it is remarked 'The resemblance of these 
 verses to several of the preceding ballads, and particularly to Sir 
 Patrick Spence, and their superiority in delicacy of feeling and 
 in diction to all ordinary ballad poetry, is very striking' (p. 27). 
 It is plain from these passages, and from the whole scope of the 
 Paper under notice, that Sir Patrick Spence is made the corner 
 stone of the structure raised by Mr. Chambers. If he has failed 
 to prove, or show reasonable grounds for believing, that the 
 author of Hardyknute and Sir Patrick Spence was one and the 
 same person, or that the latter poem is a production of the 
 eighteenth century, the whole of his precarious edifice comes to 
 the ground a baseless fabric. He dwells strongly on points of 
 resemblance between the several ballads in dispute, and argues 
 somewhat in this fashion. ^Number one has expressions similar 
 to those in Hardyknute} number two contains lines or words 
 wonderfully like some in number one; number three has, in a 
 similar way, a resemblance to numbers one and two; and so forth 
 through the whole twenty-five pieces. Take away number one, 
 therefore, to wit, Sir Patrick Spence, and Mr. Charnbers's logic, 
 unsound enough before, becomes too defective to be maintained 
 with gravity. I am thus warranted in devoting especial attention 
 to the ballad just named, to the exclusion, it may be, of some 
 interesting topics of discussion in connection with other pieces. 
 
 'The want of any ancient manuscript' of Sir Patrick Spence 
 is no argument against the antiquity of the original composition, 
 much less for its being a production of the last century, other- 
 wise the great mass of ballads of all kinds collected by Scott, and 
 by others since his time, must lie under equal suspicion. Ban- 
 natyne, in the sixteenth century, and Eamsay, in the early part 
 of the eighteenth, were not collectors of popular poetry in the 
 
14 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 same sense as Percy and his successors in the same field. The 
 former contented himself for the most part with transcribing the 
 compositions of Dunbar, Henrysone, and other 'makers' well 
 ' known by name ; and Eamsay took the bulk of his Evergreen 
 from Bannatyne's MS. That a great many poems of the ballad 
 class were current among the people when the Evergreen was 
 published, no one who knows anything of the subject will deny. 
 The knowledge that Percy was engaged with his work led to his 
 obtaining copies of several Scottish pieces, and, amongst them, 
 Sir Patrick Spence. The reputation which the Reliques obtained 
 was the means of leading to the search for other remains of the 
 unwritten or unedited poetry of Scotland. ' The absence of the 
 least trait of an ancient style of composition' is merely an 
 assumption in accordance with Mr. Chambers's estimate of the 
 whole group of poems whose genuineness he attacks, and, were 
 it anything more than an assumption, would damage the cha- 
 racter of a greater number of historical and romantic ballads 
 than even he would care to impugn. The changes they have 
 naturally suffered in their traditionary progress have obscured 
 their original features. Believing this to be the truth, I am the 
 less concerned about answering objections founded on particular 
 words and expressions occurring here and there in such poems ; 
 but it is necessary to notice them somewhat in detail, as they 
 form a main feature in the case urged by Mr. Chambers. 
 
 The use of the word 'faem' as an equivalent for the sea is 
 taken exception to as suspicious. Eepeated examples of the 
 same use are found in other ballads referred to by Mr. Chambers 
 besides Sir Patrick Spence; but he would, of course, complain 
 if I quoted any of his 'group' of twenty-five. This is a little 
 hard, but I am content to confine my references to the authority 
 of pieces not forming part of that suspected number. 
 
 Sweet "Willie's ta'en him o'er the faem 
 
 is the commencement of the original version of a ballad given by 
 Jamieson as the basis of a composition of his own called Sweet 
 Willie of Liddesdale. The lines 
 
 Lord Wearie got a bonny ship 
 To sail the saut sea faem, 
 
 occur in Lamkin in the same collection. The Tica Knights, 
 printed by Buchan, and which, I trust, for the sake of Lady 
 Wardlaw's character for delicacy of language, was not composed 
 by her, has the disputed expression in several places, as for 
 instance 
 
 If ye will gang six months away, 
 
 And sail upon the faem, 
 Then I will gain your lady's love 
 
 Before that ye come hame. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 15 
 
 I may add from Cospatrick, in Scott's Minstrelsy (a piece by 
 no means likely to have been composed by a woman, though 
 recited by two old ladies), the opening lines 
 
 Cospatrick has sent o'er the faem ; 
 Cospatrick brought his lady hame. 
 
 This use of the word is no doubt a poetical one, and in romantic 
 poetry its occurrence is most natural. If it be confined to Scot- 
 tish ballads, we are not on that account called upon to surrender 
 their claim to be treated as purely national productions. The 
 word occurs frequently enough to entitle us to consider this as a 
 distinctive mark of genuineness. We are, however, not left to 
 discuss the point on this basis. Very ill-advised was Mr. 
 Chambers when he wrote the following sentence : * ISTo old poet 
 would use foam as an equivalent for the sea ; but it was just 
 such a phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would love to use in 
 that sense' (p. 23). There were poets before Pope; there was 
 Scottish popular poetry before the invention of printing. Bishop 
 Gavin Douglas completed his translation of Virgil's ^Eneid on 
 2M July, 1513, and in his Prologue to the Twelfth Book are 
 these lines 
 
 Some sang ring-sangs, dancis, ledis, and roundis, 
 With vocis schil, quhill all the dale resounds, 
 Quhareto they walk into their karoling, 
 For amourous layis dois all the rochis ring ; 
 Ane sang, ' The schip salis over the salt fame, 
 "Will bring thir merchandis and my lemane hame.'* 
 
 Here we have the very phrase to which Mr. Chambers repeatedly 
 calls our attention as decisive of the modern origin of Sir Patrick 
 Spence, occurring in a popular song in common use (along with 
 others mentioned in the same Prologue) before the Battle of 
 Elodden, and at that time in all likelihood an old song. 
 
 For the claim of 'cork-heeled shoes,' 'hats,' and 'fans,' to 
 an antiquity far beyond the commencement of last century, it is 
 enough to refer to such a book as Planche's History of British 
 Costume. Even among the ancient Eomans cork was put into 
 shoes, in order to protect the feet from water, or to give an ap- 
 pearance of greater tallness to the wearer. The truth is, that 
 much more is known about the domestic manners of the old 
 Egyptians than about those of our forefathers in the centuries 
 preceding the fifteenth. As to 'feather-beds,' Sir Patrick Spence 
 is not the only ballad which mentions such an article. In Auld 
 Maitland, first printed by Scott, these lines are put into the 
 
 * .Virgil's JEneis, translated into Scottish verse ; Ed. 1710 (first printed in 
 1553). The translator in his preface tells us that he has endeavoured to make 
 his meaning plain 
 
 Kepand no sudroun bot cure awin Ian gage, 
 And speke as I learned quhen 1 was ane pago. 
 
16 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 mouth of King Edward I., on witnessing the death of his 
 nephew 
 
 Now take frae me that feather-bed, 
 Make rne a bed o' strae. 
 
 I am constrained to confess my inability to say in what king's 
 reign feather-beds were introduced into Scotland. To the dis- 
 grace of an ungrateful posterity the name of the very inventor 
 is unknown. Next to ' the man who first invented sleep,' and 
 whom Don Quixote's squire blessed so fervently, the discoverer 
 of means so well adapted for its enjoyment is deserving of our 
 gratitude. A feather-bed may be a very vulgar thing, and it 
 must be admitted that there is more of the comfortable than the 
 'romantic' associated with it, but so much the less will the sup- 
 position that Lady Wardlaw composed a ballad where such an 
 allusion occurs agree with what is said of the elegant simplicity of 
 her taste, supposing her to have written the various other pieces 
 assigned to her for the very reason that ' their style is elegant 
 and free from coarseness, while yet exhibiting a large measure 
 of the ballad simplicity.' 'Each poem,' says Mr. Chambers, 
 * opens with absolutely the same set of particulars.' I cannot 
 discover such a close resemblance, but the reader may satisfy 
 himself by comparing Hardyknute with the several versions of 
 Sir Patrick Spence. Where several exist, no single version can 
 fairly be made the basis of such verbal criticism as Mr. Chambers 
 has recourse to. In a note appended to the last-mentioned bal- 
 lad, in Percy's Reliques, it had been said 'An ingenious friend 
 thinks the author of Hardyknute has borrowed several expres- 
 sions and sentiments from the foregoing and other old Scottish 
 songs in this collection.' Is there anything at all unlikely in 
 such a conjecture 1 The authorship of Hardyknute being certain, 
 while that of Sir Patrick Spence and other pieces is, to say the 
 least, unsettled, it seems a most reasonable way of explaining 
 any similarity of the kind mentioned. As Mr. Chambers ap- 
 pears to rest his case in regard to nearly all the twenty-five 
 ballads mainly on this feature, which he is at considerable pains 
 to illustrate .by examples, I would here urge on his serious 
 consideration whether the more successful he is in establishing 
 frequent and exact coincidences of the sort referred to, he does 
 not, to a proportionate extent, damage the position he has taken 
 up. The tendency of a verse-maker is, with more or less con- 
 sciousness of the obligation, to borrow from other writers, not to 
 imitate or repeat himself. The natural inference, therefore, to 
 be drawn from the very coincidences in question is, that the 
 poems containing them are the work, not of one but of several 
 hands, each catching occasionally an expression or sentiment 
 from his predecessors in the same field, or making use of formulae 
 common to the particular class of productions (in the present 
 instance, Romantic Ballads) that is, which had become common 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 17 
 
 from the continuance and extension of the borrowing system 
 during the course of years. 
 
 The argument from the localities mentioned in Sir Patrick 
 Spence is easily disposed of. Had Dunfermline and Aberdour 
 been insignificant spots, not discoverable in a gazetteer, there 
 might have been room for the presumption argued for. The one 
 place, however, was a principal residence of the Kings of Scot- 
 land, and the other a sea-port a few miles distant assuming that 
 Aberdour in Fife is referred to, and not the place of the same 
 name on the Aberdeenshire coast. It may be noticed, besides, 
 that the version in the Border Minstrelsy has this variation 
 
 O forty miles off Aberdeen. 
 
 Alluding to the Lass tf Lochryan, Mr. Chambers remarks 
 with much impressiveness ' It chances that there is here, as in 
 Sir Patrick, one word peculiarly detective namely, strand, as 
 meaning the shore. In the Scottish language, strand means a 
 rivulet, or a street-gutter never the margin of the sea' (p. 28). 
 Instead of entering upon a defence of the latter use, I will give 
 another and a very brief answer to the objection. It is, that 
 neither in the version of Sir Patrick Spence printed and founded 
 on in the Paper under notice, nor in Jamieson's version, nor in 
 Buchan's, does the word 'strand' once occur! Turning to the 
 copy in the Border Minstrelsy, we find it there, but let this 
 admission be coupled with the observation made in the Scottish 
 Ballads, collected and illustrated by Robert Chambers (1829),* 
 that, 'in some modern copies of the ballad the word strand 
 has been injudiciously substituted for sand.'' The remark just 
 quoted is capable of a wider application than to the single poem 
 of Sir Patrick Spence. 
 
 A very interesting point for inquiry still remains. It has 
 been seen that the assumed ' inapplicableness of the story to any 
 known event of actual history,' is made a ground of suspicion. 
 In a note to this passage, Mr. Chambers remarks 'Professor 
 Aytoun alters a verse of the ballad as follows : 
 
 ' To Nbroway, to Nbroway, 
 
 To Nbroway o'er the faem ; 
 The king's daughter to Noroway, 
 It's thou maun tak her hame. 
 
 'And he omits the verse in which Sir Patrick says 
 
 ' The king's daughter of Noroway, 
 'Tis we must fetch her hame. 
 
 < Thus making the ballad referrible to the expedition in 1281 
 
 * A delightful volume, and, until the publication of Professor Aytoun's 
 Ballads of Scotland, the best collated edition of Scottish ballad poetry. I have 
 long cherished it, and am at present indebted to it for several useful particulars. 
 
18 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 for taking Alexander's daughter to be married to the king of 
 Norway. But I apprehend such liberties with an old ballad are 
 wholly unwarrantable' (p. 7). It might be supposed from this 
 that Mr. Aytoun is the first Ballad Editor who has made the 
 1 unwarrantable' alteration complained of. There is at least one 
 person who did so before him namely, Mr. Chambers himself! 
 He is quite at liberty to forsake his old faith in the antiquity of 
 the Eomantic Scottish Ballads (would that any arguments of 
 mine would induce him to return to it !) ; but he must not be 
 allowed to forget entirely the very excellent work in which he 
 made profession, of that faith, and which has been already 
 quoted. 
 
 To Noroway, to "N"oroway, 
 
 To Noroway o'er the faem, 
 The king's dauchter to Noroway, 
 
 It's we maun tak her haine. 
 
 Thus it was that he read the ballad in 1829 ; and he added the 
 following instructive note : ' The copy here given of this 
 touching and beautiful ballad is chiefly taken from that which 
 was printed in Herd's Collection, with a few additional verses 
 from those found in the publications of Sir Walter Scott, and 
 Messrs. Jamieson, Motherwell, and Buchan. "We owe it to Mr. 
 Motherwell, who gives some various readings and additional 
 stanzas not here adopted, that the occasion of the ballad is now 
 known to have been the expedition which conveyed Margaret, 
 daughter of King Alexander III., to Norway, in 1281, when she 
 was espoused to Eric, king of that country. Fordoun, in his 
 History of Scotland, relates the incident, in a paragraph which 
 I translate for the convenience of the reader "A little before 
 this, namely, in the year 1281, Margaret, daughter of Alexander 
 III., was married to the King of Norway ; who, leaving Scotland 
 on the last day of July, was conveyed thither in noble style, in 
 company with many knights and nobles. In returning home, 
 after the celebration of her nuptials, the Abbot of Balmerinoch, 
 Bernard of Monte-alto, and many other persons, w^ere drowned."' 
 I am satisfied that Mr. Chambers was in the right thirty years 
 ago, and, of course, that Professor Aytoun did nothing unwar- 
 rantable in following his example nothing but what any Editor 
 must do who seeks to make a fair and proper use of the authentic 
 materials at hand for obtaining an intelligible and consistent 
 version of 'an old ballad.' When this could be accomplished 
 by simply reading to for o/, the change might have been accepted 
 as a welcome solution of a difficulty, even without reference to 
 the passage in Buchan's version which makes it the only proper 
 reading. In Mr. Chambers' s earlier work, Sir Patrick Spence 
 was included among the ' Historical Ballads.' Now he denies 
 its right to be there, and throws it among the 'Eomantic' series. 
 There is great reason for holding, however, that this poem, who- 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 19 
 
 ever composed it, refers to an event which really occurred. "What 
 of romance may be in it, is the romance of history. 
 
 Mr. Chambers declares (p. 39) that /Sir Patrick Spence, as 
 well as another ballad which he criticizes, is ' so rounded and 
 complete, so free, moreover, from all vulgar terms,' that he is 
 almost confident it is printed in the condition in which it was 
 left by the author. 'All those which Percy obtained in manu- 
 scripts from Scotland, are neat finished compositions, as much so 
 as any ballad of Tickell or Shenstone.' Such an opinion must 
 appear quite astounding to any one who compares together the 
 versions of Sir Patrick Spence printed by Percy, Scott, Jamieson, 
 and Buchan. Since Mr. Chambers thinks the eleven stanzas in 
 the Reliqv.es so 'rounded and complete,' he may be able to 
 explain the allusion they make to ' our Scots nobles' as sharers 
 of Sir Patrick's dismal fate. No occasion is spoken of, in 
 Percy's copy, as in any way accounting for their taking part 
 in such a hazardous expedition. The additional stanzas from 
 Scott's Minstrelsy throw some light on this, but not even with, 
 their help is the narrative intelligible or ' complete.' 
 
 The king's daughter of Noroway, 
 'Tis we must fetch her hame. 
 
 The companions of her voyage required to be of noble rank, and 
 the 'Scots lords' were thus in their right place. But where did 
 the Princess take ship? Was the king of Norway's daughter 
 returning to her native land after a visit to Scotland? (such 
 purposeless trips were not made by ladies in old times) or was 
 she, for some unexplained object, to be brought from Norway to 
 this country? In the latter case, the fair Princess must have 
 gone to her grave in the gurly sea with the Scots lords around 
 her. A circumstance heightening so greatly the tragic interest 
 of the story would certainly not have been overlooked by the 
 ballad-maker. Why, moreover, should the Norsemen be repre- 
 sented as making this loud reproach 1 
 
 Ye Scottish men spend a' our king's gowd, 
 And a' our queen's fee. 
 
 Jamieson' s version has a passage to the same effect, without 
 explaining the reason of the mission to Norway. In ordinary 
 circumstances, the expense of entertaining strangers at court, 
 however burdensome to the reigning king of the country, would 
 not be a drain on the purse of his royal spouse. Turn to Peter 
 Buchan' s edition of the ballad, and all is clear 
 
 But I maun sail the seas the morn, 
 
 And likewise sae maun you, 
 To Noroway wi' our king's daughter, 
 
 A chosen queen she's now. 
 
20 THE ROMAXTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 This stanza makes the ballad at length 'complete.' The meaning 
 of the obscure expressions in the other versions is now explained. 
 To 'fetch name' the 'king's daughter,' is to take her as a bride 
 to her husband, whose home is to be hers for the future, and 
 such is still the common expression. By spending ' our queen's 
 fee,' the Norwegian nobles meant to say to the Scots, ' The tocher 
 your king's daughter has brought to our king will do him little 
 good if you go on drinking and driving away at his expense.'* 
 Buchan quotes from Bellenden's Translation of Hector Boece's 
 History of Scotland a passage referring to the marriage of Alex- 
 ander the Third's daughter with the Prince of Norway ; but he 
 does not seem to have been acquainted with the Scotichronicon, 
 where the event is correctly recorded, with the additional circum- 
 stance of the disaster attending it, or even with the Scottish 
 Chronicle of Eaphael Hollinshed, which, being partly founded 
 on Fordun's work, likewise mentions that 'a number of the 
 Scottish nobilitie, which had attended the ladie Margaret into 
 Norway, were lost by shipwreck.' Sir Walter Scott also over- 
 looks this circumstance. The original chronicler's words are, 
 after stating that the Princess was attended on her way to Nor- 
 way by the Abbot of Balmerino and Bernard de Montalto (or 
 Mowat), with other Scottish nobles ' Post vero nuptias solen- 
 niter celebratas, dicti Abbas et Bernardus, et alii plures, in re- 
 deundo sunt submersi.' Sir Patrick Spence is not mentioned 
 by the historian as among those who sailed with the Princess, 
 but there is no necessity for supposing him to have been one 
 of the leaders of the noble company. The ballad represents 
 him as having been appointed, for his nautical skill, to take 
 charge of the ship, a highly responsible duty, especially in those 
 days, but quite distinct from the guardianship of the future 
 queen, devolving on parties of more eminent rank, but in whom 
 the ballad-maker may not have felt so much interest. It is 
 worth while to notice here Bishop Percy's statement that 'in 
 some modern copies, instead of Patrick Spence hath been substi- 
 tuted the name of Sir Andrew Wood.' So much for the ' com- 
 pleteness ' of the versions obtained by that Editor. 
 
 Oil Morrice, before it appeared in the Reliques, had, says 
 Percy, f run through two editions in Scotland; the second was 
 printed at Glasgow in 1755, 8vo. Prefixed to them both is an 
 advertisement, setting forth that the preservation of this poem 
 was owing "to a lady who favoured the printers with a copy, as 
 it was carefully collected from the mouths of old women and 
 nurses." ' This ballad was the groundwork of Home's Tragedy 
 
 * The contract for the marriage between the Princess Margaret and King 
 Eric, dated 25th July, 1281, will be found in Rymer's Foedera. Her dowry 
 was fourteen thousand merks, a fourth part of which was to be taken with her 
 to Nbiway, and it was stipulated that she should be crowned queen on her 
 wedding day. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 21 
 
 of Douglas, and had its own foundation in Child Maurice, 
 forming one of the pieces in the ancient Percy manuscript. 
 There is no question that the Scottish version has been consider- 
 ably * improved' by more than one reviser. Mr. Chambers will 
 have it that ' the reviser was Lady Wardlaw, and that the poem 
 was communicated to the printers either by her or by some of 
 her near relations' (p. 11). Not surely by herself, since she died 
 nearly thirty years before. It is needless to remark further on 
 what is merely an assumption by Mr. Chambers. The circum- 
 stance of Glasgow having been the place of publication is not in 
 favour of it. The occurrence of expressions similar to some in 
 Sir Patrick Spence can give it no legitimate support. Neither 
 can any resemblance between Hardyknute itself and Gil Morrice, 
 as we have it, argue that both are the composition of one person. 
 Such a canon of criticism would extend the same authorship 
 indefinitely over the ballad literature of Scotland. According 
 to the new doctrine, Gil Morrice and Johnie o' Bradislee* are 
 by the same author, because the following verse occurs in one 
 ballad : 
 
 Gil Morrice sat in gude green wood, 
 He whistled and he sang ; 
 
 O what means a' the folk coming ? 
 My mother tarries lang. 
 
 And in the other this stanza 
 
 The starling flew to his mother's bower stane, 
 
 It whistled and it sang ; 
 And aye the owerword o' its tune 
 
 "Was, Johnnie tarries lang. 
 
 I do not despair of finding other instances where some man or 
 bird 'whistled and sang;' but, meanwhile, take the following 
 from Brown Adam (in Scott's Minstrelsy), where the banished 
 man, who has 
 
 bigged a bower in good green wood, 
 Atween his lady and him, 
 
 returns from hunting in time to save her from a 'fause knight' 
 threatening her with his sword 
 
 ' Now grant me love for love, lady, 
 
 Or thro' thee this sail gang ;' 
 Then sighing says that lady fair, 
 ' Brown Adam tarries lang.' 
 
 The critic is scarcely to be listened to with confidence who could 
 write as follows: 'Let it also here be noted that the eldern 
 
 * This piece corresponds to Johnie o' CocMesmuir in the Scottish Traditional 
 Ancient Ballads, published by the Percy Society, under the editorship of Mr. 
 James Henry Dixon. This gentleman informs us that Lady Wardlaw ' is now 
 known to be the author of Sir Patrick Spence, in addition to Hardyknute.' 
 The theory of the further development of her creative power had not yet 
 reached him. 
 
 B 
 
THE ROiJANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 knight in that ballad [Sir Patrick Spence] sits "at the king's 
 knee," and the nurse in Gil Morrice is not very necessarily de- 
 scribed as having "the bairn upon her knee." Why the knee 
 on these occasions, if not a habitual idea of one poet 1 ?' (p. 32.) 
 Such inferences merely tend to make the new theory ridiculous. 
 The presence of the 'bairn,' one would think, most naturally 
 accounts for that of the nurse. ' The ballad of Hugliie the 
 Graeme, one of the heroes of the Debateable Land, ought to be 
 assigned to Lady Wardlaw, for it also introduces the ' knee'- 
 
 'Twas up and spake the gude Lady Hume, 
 
 As she sat by the judge's knee 
 ' A peck of white pennies, iny gude lord judge, 
 
 If you'll grant Hughie the Graeme to me.' 
 
 'Where shall I get a gude sailor?' cries the king. 'Where shall 
 I get a bonny boy?' exclaims Gil Morrice. Thus does Mr. 
 Chambers triumphantly compare Sir Patrick Spence with the 
 latter poem. There is a 'bonny boy' at his service in Jamie- 
 son's version of the former 
 
 Then, up bespak a bonny boy, 
 Sat just at the king's knee. 
 
 Another quotation will not serve his purpose so well, for it is 
 from a ballad not in the 'Wardlaw' series. Lord Wa'yates and 
 Auld Ingram, in Jamieson, has likewise the anxious exclamation : 
 
 "Whare will I get a bonny boy, 
 Wad fain win hose and shoou ? 
 
 And the next stanza gives the prompt and complacent answer 
 
 Here am I, a bonny boy. 
 Another of Mr. Chambers' s strong points is the likeness between 
 
 If ye refuse my heigh command, 
 I'll gar your body bleed, 
 
 in Gil Morrice, and 
 
 Syne with the first stroke e'er he strake 
 He garred his body bleed, 
 
 in HardyJcnute. 'Garred his body bleed,' it is asserted, occurs 
 'nowhere else.' Not so; in the Bent sae Brown, edited by 
 Buchan, is another, and not a 'modern instance' : 
 
 If ye our words do not obey, 
 1'se gar your body bleed. 
 
 And in Erlinton, supposed by Scott to be the rude original of 
 the Childe of Elle, we have the verse 
 
 He lighted aff his milk-white steed, 
 
 And gae his lady him by the head, 
 Say'n, ' See ye dinna change your cheer, 
 
 Until ye see my body bleed.' 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 23 
 
 The Bent sae Brown contains also this stanza 
 
 Then out it spake her daughter Ann, 
 
 She stood by the king's knee : 
 'Ye lie, ye lie, my mother dear, 
 
 Sae load's I hear you lie.' 
 
 With these examples before us, were the conclusion drawn 
 by Mr. Chambers otherwise sound, there is not the least force in 
 his comparison of the lines in Gil Morrice 
 
 Then up and spake the wily nurse, 
 
 The bairn upon her ki^ee 
 and also, 
 
 Ye lied, ye lied, ye filthy nurse, 
 Sae loud I heard you He 
 
 with these passages in one of the versions of Sir Patrick Spence 
 
 O, up and spak an eldren knight, 
 
 Sat at the king's right knee, 
 and 
 
 * Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud, 
 Fu loud T hear ye lie.' 
 
 If poems containing expressions like some of the above were 
 composed by Lady "Wardlaw, her notions of 'elegant simplicity' 
 must have been peculiar. A few verses from the Battle of Ot- 
 terbourne, the antiquity of which Mr. Chambers does not dispute 
 for he expressly ranks it among 'the palpably old historical 
 ballads' will serve still further to illustrate the fallaciousness 
 of his argument from resemblances such as have been mentioned. 
 
 They lighted high on Otterbourne, 
 
 Upon the bent sae brown ; 
 They lighted high on Otterbourne, 
 
 And threw their pallions down. 
 
 And he that had a bonny boy 
 
 Sent out his horse to grass ; 
 And he that had not a bonny boy, 
 
 His ain servant he was. 
 
 But up then spake a little page, 
 
 Before the peep of dawn 
 'O vaken ye, waken ye, my good lord, 
 For Percy's hard at hand.' 
 
 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye liar loud ! 
 
 Sae loud I hear ye lie : 
 For Percy had not men yestreen 
 To dight my men and me.' 
 
 Mr. Chambers says 'The parallel passages above noted are 
 confined to a particular group of ballads.' He must undoubtedly 
 make important additions to his 'group' of twenty-five pieces, 
 before such a statement can agree with the fact. To the same 
 group, it is averred, belong the expressions which mark the fol- 
 lowing verses : 
 
 B2 
 
24 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 The lady sat on the castle wa', 
 
 Beheld baith dale and down, 
 And there she saw Gil Morrice head 
 
 Come trailing to the town. 
 
 In the L&ss 0' Locjiryan 
 
 And first he kissed her cherry cheek, 
 And syne he kissed her chin; 
 
 And syne he kissed her rosy lips- 
 There was nae breath within. 
 
 .Also in Gil Morrice 
 
 And when he cam to Barnard's yett, 
 
 He would neither chap nor ca', 
 But set his bent bow to his breast, 
 
 And lightly lap the wa 1 . 
 
 And in the Douglas Tragedy 
 
 O they rade on, and on they rade, 
 
 And a' by the light o' the moon, 
 Until they cam to yon wan water, 
 
 And there they lighted down. 
 
 Referring to the first of these examples, Mr. Chambers ob- 
 serves 'Dale and down are words never used in Scotland; they 
 are exotic English terms.' So long as Eskdale, Teviotdale, and 
 several other 'dales' are on the Scottish side of the border, the 
 word can scarcely be called exotic; and 'down' is good old Scots 
 for any rising ground. The expression is found in a large num- 
 ber of ballads, as in one printed by Buchan 
 
 His mother lay ower her castle wa', 
 And she beheld baith dale and down 
 
 And she beheld young Leesome Brand, 
 As he came riding to the town. 
 
 And in another in the same collection 
 
 Her father lay ower castle wa' 
 
 Beholding dale and down, 
 And saw proud Maitland and his men 
 
 Come riding to the town. 
 
 More than'one of Mr. Chambers's remarkable coincidences are 
 disposed of by passages from Katharine Janfarie, the old border 
 ballad on which Scott founded his Young Lochinvar. 
 
 The bride looked out at a high window, 
 
 Beheld baith dale and down, 
 And she was aware of her first true love, 
 
 With riders many a one. 
 
 It is a glass of the blood-red wine 
 "Was filled up them between, 
 
 And aye she drank to Lauderdale, 
 Wha her true love had been. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS, 25 
 
 There were four-and-twenty bonnie boys, 
 
 A' clad in the Johnstone grey; 
 They said they would take the bride again, 
 
 By the strong hand, if they may. 
 
 *To kiss cheek and chin in succession is very peculiar; and it is 
 by such peculiar ideas that identity of authorship is indicated.' 
 So says Mr. Chambers ; but, in order to show that such kissing 
 is not peculiar to his ' group' of ballads, it is sufficient to refer to 
 The Bent sae Brmvn, Sweet Willie and Fair Maisry, James 
 Herries, and The Water o' Wearie's Well, all in Buchan's col- 
 lection. It is further said that the circumstance of the expres- 
 sion 'the wan water' occurring in Fair Annie, Johnie of Bradis- 
 lee, Douglas Tragedy, and Young Huntin, 'is very suspicious, 
 for we find the phrase in no other ballads.' Take, in contradic- 
 tion of this, the following passages from two rough Border ballads : 
 From Archie of Ca 'field 
 
 Now they did swim that wan water, 
 And wow but they swam bonnilie ! 
 
 And from Kinmont Willie 
 
 I wadna have ridden that wan water 
 For a' the gowd in Christentie. 
 
 We are reminded of a similar expression in the Morte a" 
 Arthur, where the wounded king, having charged Sir Bedivere 
 to throw the good sword Excalibur into the water, and come 
 again and tell him what he should see there, asks the knight on 
 his return what he had seen, and Sir Bedivere answers ' I saw 
 nothing but the water wap and the waves wan.' A quotation 
 from another Scottish ballad will supply an additional instance 
 of this ' very suspicious ' phrase, and also a companion verse to 
 one in Qil Morrice. In Lord Barnaby, printed by Jamieson 
 (in his Notes on Lord Randal), and which he had ' heard re- 
 peated, with very little variation, both in Morayshire and the 
 southern counties,' these verses occur- 
 When he came to the wan water, 
 He slacked his bow and swam ; 
 And when he came to growin' grass, 
 Set down his feet and ran. 
 
 And when he came to fair Dundee, 
 
 Wad neither chap nor ca'" ; 
 But set his brent* bow to his breast, 
 
 And merrily jumped the wa'. 
 
 The ballad of Pause Foodrage was first published by Scott, 
 who observes ' The expression 
 
 ' The boy stared wild like a gray gos-hawk, 
 * JSrcw^ straight or unbent. 
 
26 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 ' strongly resembles that in Hardylmute 
 
 ' Norse e'en like gray gos-hawk stared wild ; 
 
 ' a circumstance which, led the Editor to make the strictest 
 inquiry into the authenticity of the song. But every doubt was 
 removed by the evidence of a lady of high rank [Lady Douglas 
 of Douglas], who not only recollected the ballad as having 
 amused her infancy, but could repeat many of the verses. The 
 Editor is therefore compelled to believe that the author of 
 Hardylmuts copied the old ballad; if the coincidence be not 
 altogether accidental.' I agree with Mr. Chambers in thinking 
 it not accidental, but not in his inference that Lady Wardlaw 
 copied from herself; Scott's supposition appearing much more 
 reasonable. 
 
 It is, after all, a somewhat needless task thus to follow Mr. 
 Chambers through his series of comparisons, when it is kept in 
 view that his system is, first, to bring together two or three 
 ballads where similar phrases occur, and assign them to one 
 author on the strength of such coincidence; and then, upon a 
 fourth poem turning up with the like features, to add it also to 
 his 'group!' If his principle be a sound one, I have merely 
 been increasing Lady Wardlaw' s store. Occasionally the link of 
 connection is of that sort which might warrant the maintaining, 
 for instance, that the author of Christ's Kirk on the Green had 
 a hand in the composition of the Battle of Balrinnes. In the 
 former we have 
 
 The miller was of manly mak, 
 
 To meet him was na mowis ; 
 They durst not ten come him to tak, 
 
 Sae noitit he their powis. 
 
 And in the latter poem 
 
 Abyding them with speares and scheildis, 
 
 With bulletis, dartis, and bowes ; 
 The men could weild their wapones weill, 
 
 To meet them was no mowes. 
 
 Some of the coincidences, in truth, are suggestive of Macedon 
 and Monmouth. 
 
 The ballad of Young Waters, which Mr. Chambers reprints 
 in full, thus commences 
 
 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, 
 Andffchen she saw Young Water? 
 
 Come riding to the town. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 27 
 
 Let it be observed here that, while the version quoted consists 
 of only fourteen stanzas, another is to be found in Buchan's 
 Collection, containing no fewer than thirty-nine. Not only so, 
 but, as in the instance of Sir Patrick Spence, no single verse 
 in one copy has its exact counterpart in the other; a striking 
 variation which at once throws a difficulty in Mr. Chambers' s 
 way, requiring him to furnish much better evidence than he has 
 yet given, to establish the modern origin he contends for. Take, 
 in illustration, the beginning of Peter Buchan's version, with all 
 its ruggedness 
 
 It fell about the gude Yule time, 
 
 When caps and stoups gaed roun', 
 Down it cam him Young Waters, 
 
 To welcome James our king. 
 
 The great, the great rade a' together, 
 
 The sma' came a' behin' ; 
 Bat wi' Young Waters, that brave knight, 
 
 Then came a gay gatherin'. 
 
 The king he lay ower's castle wa* 
 
 Beheld baith dale and down ; 
 And he beheld him, Young Waters, 
 
 Come riding to the town. 
 
 Mr. Chambers remarks '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 noble 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' (p. 17). 
 Now, if there be any ballad which, from internal evidence, must 
 be referred to a date prior to the eighteenth century, it is the 
 Bonny Earl of Murray. It appeared in Ramsay's Tea-table 
 Miscellany, published in 1724, and may be given here 
 
 Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands, 
 
 O where have you been ? 
 They have slain the Earl of Murray, 
 
 And they have laid him on the green ! 
 
 Now wae be to thee, Huntly, 
 
 And wherefore did you sae ? 
 I bade him bring him wi' you, 
 
 But forbade you him to slay. 
 
 He was a braw gallant, 
 
 And he rid at the ring ; 
 And the bonny Earl of Murray, 
 
 O he might have been a king ! 
 
 He was a braw gallant, 
 
 And he played at the ba' ; 
 And the bonny Earl of Murray 
 
 Was the flower among them a'. 
 
28 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 He was a braw gallant 
 
 And he played at the glove ; 
 And the bonny Earl of Murray, 
 
 he was the Queen's love ! 
 
 O lang will his lady 
 
 Look o'er the Castle Downe, 
 Ere she see the Earl of Murray 
 
 Come sounding through the town. 
 
 This last stanza is one of the most picturesque in ballad litera- 
 ture. The castle of Doune, in Menteith, has been long the 
 property of the Earls of Moray, but is now only a massive ruin. 
 The stanza is said to be ' very like the second of Young Waters/ 
 and oil account of this alleged resemblance the Bonny Earl of 
 Murray is claimed, or suspected, to be the composition of the 
 same author, that author being, if I understand the theory 
 rightly, Lady Wardlaw. Let the impartial reader judge. 
 
 ' In Young Huntin, otherwise called Earl Richard, the hero,' 
 says Mr. Chambers, 'is killed in his mistress's bower through 
 jealousy, and we have then a verse of wonderful power, such as 
 no rustic and unlettered bard ever wrote, or ever will write 
 
 O slowly, slowly wanes the night, 
 
 And slowly daws the day ; 
 There is a dead man in my bower, 
 
 1 wish he were away.' 
 
 It may be remarked in passing that, assuming the poet to have 
 been neither 'rustic nor unlettered,' it would not necessarily 
 follow that he lived in the eighteenth century. In the fragment 
 given in David Herd's Collection of Scottish Songs (1769), the 
 verse stands thus 
 
 She has called to her her bower maidens, 
 She has called them one by one ; 
 
 * There is a dead man in my bower, 
 I wish that he was gone.' 
 
 The complete ballad published in the Border Minstrelsy has like 
 words; and in Lord William, a piece in the same collection, 
 bearing a resemblance to Earl Richard, the corresponding pas- 
 sage is 
 
 Then she cried to her waiting maid 
 
 Aye ready at her ca' ; 
 ' There is a knight into my bower, 
 J Tis time he were awaV 
 
 Of these variations Mr. Chambers has selected for remark the 
 one that comes nearest to his idea of a modern origin ; but they 
 must all be taken into account, to enable us to judge fairly of the 
 legend they belong to. Of Lord William, the Ettrick Shepherd 
 thus wrote to Sir Walter Scott : ' I am fully convinced of the 
 antiquity of this song ; for, although much of the language seems 
 somewhat modernized, this must be attributed to its currency, 
 being much liked, and very much sung in this neighbourhood. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 29 
 
 I can trace it back several generations, but cannot hear of its 
 ever having been in print.' 
 
 As an instance of an ancient ballad preserved by popular 
 tradition, and yet containing passages of true poetry, let me again 
 refer to the Scottish Battle of Otterbourne. Hume of Godscroft, 
 who, in the reign of James VI., wrote a History of the Houses 
 of Douglas and Angus,* says, in connection with his account of 
 the battle 'The Scots song made of Otterbourne telleth the 
 time about Lammas and also the occasion to take preys out 
 of England ; also, the dividing armies betwixt the Earls of Eife 
 and Douglas, and their several journeys, almost as in the authen- 
 tic history. It beginneth thus 
 
 It fell about the Lammas tide, 
 
 When yeomen win their hay, 
 The dochty Douglas 'gan to ride, 
 
 In England to take a prey.' 
 
 Scott obtained two copies of what has every appearance of being 
 the 'Scots Song' alluded to by Godscroft, 'from the recitation 
 of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Eorest.' After 
 stating that Douglas was struck down by Percy, the ballad pro- 
 ceeds 
 
 Then he called on his little foot page, 
 
 And said ' Kun speedilie, 
 And fetch my ain dear sister's son, 
 Sir Hugh Montgomerie.' 
 
 * My nephew good,' the Douglas said, 
 
 ' What recks the death o' ane ! 
 Last night I dreamed a dreary dream, 
 
 And I ken the day's thy ain. 
 
 My wound is deep ; I fain would sleep ; 
 
 Take thou the vanguard o' the three, 
 And hide me by the braken bush, 
 
 That grows on yonder lily lee. 
 
 O bury me by the braken bush, 
 
 Beneath the blooming brier ; 
 Let never living mortal ken 
 
 That e'er a kindly Scot lies here.' 
 
 He lifted up that noble lord, 
 
 Wi' the eaut tear in his e'e ; 
 He hid him in the braken bush, 
 
 That his merrie men might not see. 
 
 ' Now yield thee, yield thee, Percy,' he said, 
 
 ' Or else I vow I'll lay thee low 1' 
 ' To whom must I yield,' quoth Earl Percy, 
 
 ' Now that I see it must be so ?' 
 
 ' Thou shalt not yield to lord nor loun, 
 
 Nor yet shall thou yield to me ; 
 But yield thee to the braken bush, 
 
 That grows upon yon lily lee !' 
 
 * Not having this work beside me, I am obliged to borrow the references to 
 it from Scott's Minstrelsy and Mr. Chambers's Introduction to his Scottish 
 Ballads. 
 
30 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 One of the suspected pieces is the The Young Tamlane, by 
 way of introduction to which Sir Walter Scott has an Essay ' On 
 the Fairies of Popular Superstition.' He says 'The following 
 ballad, still popular (1802) in Ettrick Forest, where the scene is 
 laid, is certainly of much greater antiquity than its phraseology, 
 gradually modernized as transmitted by tradition, would seem to 
 denote. The Tale of the Young Tamlane is mentioned in the 
 Complaynt of Scotland* ' The present edition is the most 
 perfect which has yet appeared; being prepared from a col- 
 lation of the printed copies, with a very accurate one in Glen- 
 riddelFs MSS., and with several recitals from tradition;' the 
 MSS. alluded to by Scott being a collection of Border Songs, 
 'compiled from various sources, by the late Mr. Eiddell of 
 Glenriddell, a sedulous Border Antiquary.' With these quo- 
 tations I proceed to give as much of the ballad as will recall 
 the story to the memory of the reader, leaving him to compare 
 the verses, I do not say with HardyTcnute, but with any 
 production of the eighteenth century he pleases. Some stanzas 
 towards the commencement are omitted for a reason that will be 
 understood by those who are familiar with the ballad, and others 
 because, as Mr. Chambers remarks, they are ' of so modern a cast 
 as to prove that this poem has been, at least, tampered with.' 
 For 'at least' read 'at most.' 
 
 O I forbid ye, maidens a', 
 
 That wear gowd in your hair,* 
 To come or gae by Carterhaugh, 
 
 For young Tamlane is there. 
 
 But up then spake her, fair Janet, 
 
 The fairest o' a' her kin ; 
 ' I'll come and gang to Carterhaugh, 
 
 And ask nae leave o' him !' 
 
 Janet has kilted her green kirtle, 
 
 A little abune her knee ; 
 And she has braided her yellow hair, 
 
 A little abune her bree. 
 
 And when she came to Carterhaugh, 
 
 She gaed beside the well ; 
 And there she fand his steed standing, 
 
 But away was himsell. 
 
 She hadna pu'd a red, red rose, 
 
 A rose but barely three ;f 
 Till up and starts a wee, wee man 
 
 At lady Janet's knee. 
 
 * ' It may be remarked,' says Mr. Chambers, ' how often before we have 
 seen maidens described as wearing " gold in their hair." ' 
 
 j* We are here warned to ' remember Sir Patrick's voyage 
 
 They hadna' sailed a league, a league, 
 A league but barely three.' 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 31 
 
 Says ' Why pu' ye the rose, Janet ? 
 
 What gars ye break the tree ? 
 Or why come ye to Carterhaugh, 
 
 Withouten leave o' me ?' 
 
 Out and spak an auld grey-headed Knight, 
 
 Lay o'er the castle wa' 
 ' And ever, alas ! for thee, Janet, 
 
 But we'll be blamed a' !' 
 
 ' If my love were an earthly Knight, 
 
 As he's an elfin grey, 
 I wadna gie my ane true love 
 
 For nae lord that ye hae. ' 
 
 She prinked hersell, and prinned hersell, 
 
 By the ae light of the moon 
 And she's away to Carterhaugh, 
 
 To speak wi' young Tamlane. 
 
 ' The truth ye'U tell to me, Tamlane ; 
 
 A word ye mauna lie ; 
 Gin e'er ye was in haly chapel, 
 
 Or sained in Christentie ?' 
 
 'Randolph, Earl Murray, was my sire, 
 Dunbar, Earl March, is thine ; 
 
 We loved when we were children small, 
 Which yet you well may mind. 
 
 When I was a boy just turned of nine, 
 
 My uncle sent for me, 
 To hunt and hawk and ride with him, 
 
 And keep him companie. 
 
 There came a wind out of the north, 
 
 A sharp wind and a .snell ; 
 And a deep sleep came over me, 
 
 And frae my horse I fell. 
 
 The Queen of Fairies keppit me, 
 In yon green hill to dwell. 
 
 The night it is good Hallowe'en, 
 
 When fairy folk will ride ; 
 And they that wad their true love win, 
 
 At Miles Cross they maun bide.' 
 
 ' But how shall I thee ken, Tamlane, 
 
 Or how shall I thee knaw, 
 Amang so many unearthly knights, 
 
 The like I never saw?' 
 
 ' The first company that passes by, 
 
 Say na, and let them gae : 
 The next company that passes by, 
 
 Say na, and do right sae : 
 The third company that passes by, 
 
 Then I'll be ane o' thae. 
 
 First let pass the black, Janet, 
 And syne let pass the brown ; 
 
 But grip ye to the milk white steed, 
 And pu' the rider down. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS, 
 
 For I ride on the milk white steed, 
 
 And aye nearest the toun ; 
 Because I was a christened knight, 
 
 They gave me that renown. 
 
 They'll turn me in your arms, Janet, 
 
 An adder and a snake ; 
 But had me fast, let me not pass, 
 
 Gin ye wad buy me maik.* 
 
 They'll turn me in your arms, Janet, 
 
 An adder and an ask ; 
 They'll turn me in your arms, Janet, 
 
 A balef that burns fast. 
 
 They'll turn me in your arms, Janet, 
 
 A red-hot gad o' airn ; 
 But haud me fast, let me not pass, 
 
 For I'll do you no harm !' 
 
 Gloomy, gloomy, was the night, 
 
 And eiry was the way, 
 As fair Janet in her green mantle, 
 
 To Miles Cross she did gae. 
 
 About the dead hour o' the night, 
 
 She heard the bridles ring ; 
 And Janet was as glad o' that 
 
 As any earthly thing. 
 
 And first gaed by the black, black steed, 
 
 And then gaed by the brown ; 
 But fast she gript the milk white steed, 
 
 And pu'd the rider down. 
 
 She pu'd him frae the milk white steed, 
 
 And loot the bridle fa' ; 
 And up there rose an erlish cry 
 
 ' He's won amang us a' !' 
 
 They shaped him in her arms at last 
 
 A mother-naked man ; 
 She wrapt him in her green mantle, 
 
 And sae her true love wan ! 
 
 Up then spake the Queen o' Fairies, 
 
 Out o' a bush o' broom 
 ' She that has borrowed young Tamlane, 
 
 Has gotten a stately groom.' 
 | 
 
 Up then spake the Queen o' Fairies, 
 
 Out o' a bush o' rye 
 ' She' taen awa' the bonniest knight 
 
 In a' my companie.' 
 
 As poems preserved by tradition alone, the disputed ballads, 
 looking upon them as a whole, are supported by external evidence 
 which cannot reasonably be excepted to. The Minstrelsy of the 
 
 * Maik a companion, f Bale a fagot. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 33 
 
 Scottish Border was published in 1802; and Scott, in his Intro- 
 duction, gives an explanation to the following effect regarding 
 two books of ballads in MS., which had been obtained by William 
 Tytler of Woodhouselee from an old friend, Mr. Thomas Gordon, 
 Professor of Philosophy in King's College, Aberdeen. A letter 
 from the Professor is quoted, in which he says 'An aunt of my 
 children, Mrs. Farquhar, now dead, who was married to the pro- 
 prietor of a small estate near the source of the Dee, in Braemar, 
 a good old woman who had spent the best part of her life among 
 flocks and herds, resided in her latter days in the town of Aber- 
 deen. She was possessed of a most tenacious memory, which 
 retained all the songs she had heard from nurses and country- 
 women in that sequestered part of the country. Being naturally 
 fond of my children, when young, she had them much about her, 
 and delighted them with her songs and tales of chivalry. My 
 youngest daughter, Mrs. Brown at Falkland, is blest with a 
 memory as good as her aunt's, and has almost the whole of her 
 songs by heart. My grandson, Mr. Scott, wrote down a parcel 
 of them as his aunt sung them.' It is important to keep in mind 
 that not only songs, in the ordinary sense of the term, but also 
 narrative ballads, were sung, some of them having their appro- 
 priate tunes, and all being capable, from their structure, of being 
 repeated with a musical cadence, adding greatly to their effect. 
 Thus,. Sir Walter Scott observes, 'The tune of Mr. Hamilton's 
 copy of Sir Patrick Spence is different from that to which the 
 words are commonly sung; being less plaintive, and having a 
 bold nautical 'turn in the close.' Eobert Jamieson likewise ex- 
 plains, in his Preface, that in 1799 Professor Scott of King's 
 College, Aberdeen, had furnished him with 'a transcript of a 
 large collection of upwards of twenty pieces, which that gentle- 
 man had written down a good many years ago, when he was very 
 young, from the recitation of his aunt, Mrs. Brown of Falkland.' 
 Mr. Jamieson states further, 'In 1800 I paid an unexpected visit 
 to Mrs. Brown at Dysart, and wrote down from her unpremedi- 
 tated repetition about a dozen pieces more. Several others which I 
 had not time to take down, were afterwards transmitted to me by 
 Mrs. Brown herself, and by her late highly-respected and worthy 
 husband, the Eev. Dr. Brown.' 'As to the authenticity of the 
 pieces themselves, they are as authentic as traditionary poetry 
 can be expected to be ; and their being more entire than most 
 other such productions are found to be, may be easily accounted 
 for, from the circumstance that there are very few persons of Mrs. 
 Brown's abilities and education that repeat popular ballads from 
 memory. She learned most of them before she was twelve years 
 old, from old women and maidservants ; what she once learned 
 she never forgot.' Among the pieces thus recovered by Scott or 
 Jamieson were The Gay Gos-hawJc, Pause Foodrage, Fair Annie 
 of Lochryan, Burd Ellen, Willie and May Margaret, Hugh of 
 
34 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 Lincoln or the Jew's Daughter, and Fair Annie or Lady Jane. 
 Mr. Jamieson wrote down Sweet Willie and Fair Annie 'from 
 the recitation of a lady in Aberbrothick (Mrs. W. Arrot),' who 
 had, 'when a child, learned the ballad from an elderly maidser- 
 vant.' Mrs. Arrot supplied also Clerk Saunders, besides others 
 identical with some got from Mrs. Brown. Sir Walter Scott's 
 version of Lord Thomas and Fair Annie, identical with one of 
 the pieces just mentioned, was 'chiefly taken from the recitation 
 of an old woman residing in Kirkhill, near West Lothian ; the 
 same from whom were obtained the variations in the tale of 
 Tamlane.' I have already quoted Peter Buchan's account of 
 the source from which he obtained his version of Sir Patrick 
 Spence. Enough has been said to show in what way our present 
 ample store of ballad poetry was preserved and collected. I can 
 make only a simple reference to the similar testimony which the 
 collections of Messrs. Finlay,* Motherwell,t and KinlochJ could 
 supply, but am unwilling to lose the benefit of Mr. Chambers's 
 own evidence. In his Scottish Ballads of 1829, he adds this 
 note to The Clerk's Twa Sons o* Oivsenford 'This singularly 
 wild and beautiful old ballad is chiefly taken from the recitation 
 of the Editor's grandmother, who learned it, when a girl, nearly 
 seventy years ago, from a Miss Anne Gray, resident at Neidpath 
 Castle, Peebles-shire.' 
 
 It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that Mr. 
 Chambers now attaches any value to the particulars thus given 
 by our principal ballad collectors, or by himself. His perception 
 in regard to everything connected with the epoch and authorship 
 of the Scottish Romantic Ballads is now clouded by suspicion. 
 He cannot look at any one of them without thinking of Hardy- 
 knute, or be told that certain pieces were obtained from the reci- 
 tation of this or that old woman, without suspecting her to be 
 Lady Wardlaw; or one of her friends, in disguise. This is no 
 exaggeration. Mr. Chambers thus writes 'It was reserved for 
 Sir Walter Scott and Eobert Jamieson, at the beginning of the 
 nineteenth century, to obtain copies of the great bulk of these 
 poems, that is, the ballads over and above the few published by 
 Percy, from A LADY [observe the small capitals], a certain "Mrs. 
 Brown of Falkland" ' (p. 34). And after repeating some of the 
 particulars stated regarding her, he adds 'Such were the ex- 
 ternal circumstances, none of them giving the least support to the 
 assumed antiquity of the pieces, but rather exciting some sus- 
 picion to the contrary effect.' Of Burd Ellen he says 'It pro- 
 bably came through the same mill as Gil Morrice, though with 
 less change a conjecture rendered the more probable from its 
 
 * Scottish Historical and Eomantic Ballads, 1808. 
 
 t Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, 1827. 
 
 J Ancient Scottish Ballads, recovered from Tradition, 1827. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 35 
 
 having been obtained by Mr. Jamieson from Mrs. Brown of Falk- 
 land' (p. 28). And Mr. Chambers concludes his paper by claim- 
 ing the ballads which Scott collected as * mainly the produce of an 
 individual precursor;' and with this deduction from his previous 
 assumptions 'Much significance there is, indeed, in his (Scott's) 
 own statement, that Hardyknute was the first poem he ever 
 learned, and the last he should forget. Its author, if my suspicion 
 be correct, was. his literary foster-mother, and we probably owe the 
 direction of his genius, and all its fascinating results, primarily to 
 her' (p. 46). After this, a marble bust to Lady Wardlaw were far 
 beneath her merits. She was worth double her weight in gold. 
 In all seriousness, what does Mr. Chambers mean 1 To give any 
 colour for his deductions or suspicions, he must establish some 
 specific connection between his gifted favourite and Mrs. Brown ; 
 and, before his case can be nearly complete, he must extend it 
 also to Lady Douglas of Douglas, Mrs. Arrot of Arbroath, 'the 
 old woman residing at Kirkhill near West Lothian,' and also 
 his own aged relative who recited to him The Clerk's Twa Sons 
 6* Owsenford. If he means to hint a conspiracy on the part of 
 Mrs. Brown and her friends, he must involve in the charge the 
 other ladies just mentioned, and join to the group of fair deceivers 
 Peter Buchan's north country Homer, with a beard of a week's 
 growth it may be, the Guy Fawkes of the plot. When he 
 speaks of the great bulk of the poems having been obtained 'at 
 the beginning of the nineteenth century,' he does not fairly re- 
 present the fact. Professor Scott had, 'a good many years' be- 
 fore, written a number of them from Mrs. Brown's recitation, 
 and she had learned them in early youth from her mother, Mrs. 
 Farquhar, and from old women and maidservants. Lady Douglas 
 had been familiar from her childhood with Fause Foodrage. 
 Mr. Chambers' s grandmother had, 'nearly seventy years' before 
 1829, learned one of the suspected ballads from a lady of Peebles- 
 shire. 
 
 Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, 
 Old ladies, who on earth have made ul heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight in simple lays ! 
 
 The blind beggar who rehearsed the version of Sir Patrick Spence 
 which Buchan printed in 1828, had been following his profession 
 for fifty years. To accumulate further examples from the different 
 collections would be easy. The new hypothesis must appear to 
 any unprejudiced reader of the ballads collected by Scott, Jamie- 
 son, and Buchan, not to speak of others, to be tenable only on 
 the supposition that the editors had been most egregiously duped 
 by their informants, or were themselves partakers in the fraud. 
 
 So secure, however, does Mr. Chambers think his position to 
 be, that he goes the length of telling us something of the order 
 in which Lady Wardlaw composed the ballads in question. In 
 regard to Fause Foodrage he observes, that much of the narra- 
 
36 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 tive 'is in a stiff and somewhat hard style, recalling Hardy - 
 knute. It was probably one of the earlier compositions of its 
 author' (p. 26). Hardy knute (the very name thus given to a 
 Scottish baron showing great ignorance of historical propriety), 
 was first printed in 1719, and may reasonably be supposed to 
 have been written shortly before. Lady Wardlaw died in 1727. 
 In the brief space of eight or nine years, therefore, we are asked 
 to believe that she produced more than twenty ballads, some of 
 them of great beauty, and nearly all, if not all, much superior to 
 Hardyknute, and certainly far excelling that poem in this im- 
 portant respect, that, while its spuriousness was soon discovered, 
 the other pieces have to this day been received by the most 
 experienced collectors, and the most accomplished critics, in the 
 department of ballad literature, as genuine productions of a 
 period antecedent to the age to which she belonged. Truly, 
 your literary sceptic, like the sceptic in religion, finds no diffi- 
 culty in believing much harder' things than what he refuses to 
 receive. The question occurs, how did she produce them ? We 
 have got the secret history of Hardyknute, the readiness with 
 which it found its way to the press, along with the painful 
 manoeuvring resorted to for the purpose of concealing the 
 authorship, and then, after the lapse of years, the testimony 
 most willingly borne by members of her family to the fact that 
 she was the author. Why this great ado about such an 'early' 
 production of hers, while no claim was made, not a word was 
 whispered, by her or her friends concerning any one of the 
 numerous other ballads, of such superior excellence, now said to 
 be also her composition ? The same witnesses, or their imme- 
 diate ^descendants, were alive when Sir Patrick Spence, Gil 
 Morrice, Young Waters, Edom tf Gordon, and other pieces 
 were first printed, but still they were silent. They claimed 
 nothing, they apparently knew of nothing, but Hardyknute. 
 Mr. Chambers adduces, as a parallel case, that of Baroness 
 I^airn, who composed several popular songs ( The Land of tlie 
 Leal, Caller Herring, The Laird d Cockpen, The Auld House, 
 and He's ower the Hills that I loe weel), during the first half of 
 the present century, but who remained unknown as an author, 
 except to one person, for many years. 'Had she lived,' he 
 says, ' a hundred years earlier, she might have died and left no 
 sign, as I conjecture to have been the case with the author of 
 this fine group of ballads' (p. 45). The two instances are not 
 parallel. The author of Hardyknute was known to be a writer 
 of verses, and if she left no sign as to other poems of her com- 
 position (whatever they were), she admitted the authorship of 
 the piece named, and, at any rate, managed to make it an easy 
 matter for her relations to prove the fact. The same persons 
 who gave this testimony must surely have had opportunities of 
 knowing and telling of more pieces. Once more, how did she 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 37 
 
 produce the ballads now claimed for her 1 Mr. Chambers asks 
 for a manuscript of any one of them older than the reign of 
 George III. He does not, of course, mean to deny that they 
 were all in manuscript much earlier, as early, at least, as 1727, 
 when his assumed author left this world. Either during her 
 life-time, or soon after her death, her manuscript copies, or 
 copies from them, must have been handed about, or in some 
 way or other distributed through the country, for otherwise it 
 is impossible to account for the fact of the popularity of the bal- 
 lads, or of the existence of various copies in different quarters, 
 during the latter part of last century. I do not insist on Mr. 
 Chambers exhibiting even one autograph poem of hers, but, 
 assuming that she left manuscripts, how does he explain the 
 circumstance of the great difference between versions of the same 
 ballad 1 Litera scripta manet. If, for instance, she actually 
 composed and wrote Sir Patrick Spence, how are we to account 
 for the dissimilar versions published by Percy, Scott, Jamieson, 
 and Buchan \ so dissimilar, that, as already remarked, not one 
 stanza is the same as another 1 The remark applies, to a greater 
 or less extent, to the other ballads in question. Hardyknute, 
 a confessedly modern poem, underwent no such change, a fact 
 for which its appearance in print so early as 1719 will not alto- 
 gether account. Fifty years after the publication of Sir Patrick 
 Spence and Young Waters, versions greatly different were found 
 current by Mr. Buchan. They came from a source independent 
 of either writing or printing. Again, if the ballads were not 
 written down by their assumed author, or not circulated in 
 manuscript, although the diversity alluded to would not be so 
 extraordinary, there has still to be discovered some feasible 
 explanation of their currency among the people. Had Lady 
 Wardlaw employed a numerous staff of ' bonny boys ' to travel 
 ' o'er dale and down,' and rehearse her compositions in the ears 
 of old women and nurses in cottage and hall, till they got them 
 by heart, under a solemn promise to say to inquiring collectors 
 that they had known the poems from childhood, the mystery 
 would be pretty well explained, but in no other way that I can 
 think of. It is unnecessary to point out that the same difficul- 
 ties beset any hypothesis which assigns to them an origin within 
 the last century. 
 
 A few more remarks, and we shall have done with this 
 dream of a female authorship for these Semantic Ballads. Mr. 
 Chambers quotes from Jolmie o' Bradislee some verses descrip- 
 tive of the hero's good looks and the richness of his dress : 
 
 His cheeks were like the roses red, 
 
 His neck was like the snaw ; 
 He was the bonniest gentleman 
 
 My eyes they ever saw. 
 C 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 His coat was o' the scarlet red, 
 
 His vest was o' the same ; 
 His stockings were o' the worset lace, 
 
 And buckles tied to the same. 
 
 The shirt that was upon his back 
 
 Was o' the Holland fine ; 
 The doublet that was over that 
 
 Was o' the Lincoln twine. 
 
 The buttons that were upon his sleeve 
 Were o' the gowd sae guid, &c. 
 
 ' This is mercery of the eighteenth and of no earlier century/ 
 says Mr. Chambers. He is thinking of the 'buckles' no doubt; 
 but it was to the stockings they were attached, and not to the 
 shoes. The verses are not so remarkable for poetic refinement 
 but that he might in charity have left the credit of them to a 
 humbler author than a Baronet's Lady ; yet he proceeds ' Both 
 Gilderoy and Gil Morrice are decked out in a similar fashion; 
 and we may fairly surmise that it was no man's mind which 
 revelled so luxuriously in the description of these three specimens 
 of masculine beauty, or which invested them in such elegant 
 attire.' - The mantle of the hero in Young Waters, he remarks, 
 * recalls that of Gil Morrice, which was " a' gowd but the hem," 
 a specialty not likely to have occurred to a male mind.' On 
 similar grounds we might be warranted in believing that a 
 certain > long series of Novels, noted for their minute descriptions 
 of the persons and dress of the heroes and heroines, are not the 
 composition of Mr. G. P. R. James, or that such descriptions 
 have been supplied to him by a female hand. But there is a 
 surer way of testing the fallacy here propounded. Take the 
 ballad of Childe Owlet, in Buchan's Collection, the nature of 
 which piece will be understood when I mention that the story 
 involves much greater criminality than that of Potiphar's wife, 
 Here are two stanzas 
 
 Lady Erskine sits in her chamber, 
 
 Sewing at her silken seam, 
 A chain of gold for Childe Owlet, 
 
 As he goes out and in. 
 
 Then she's ta'en out a little penknife 
 
 That lay before her bed, 
 Put it below her green stays' cord, 
 
 Which made her body bleed. 
 
 The 'silken seam' and 'green stays' cord' might in like fashion 
 have assigned these verses to some lady author, had it not been 
 certain that it was no female mind that conceived the story, and 
 no female hand that wrote the ballad. 
 
 Mr. Chambers observes in regard to 'the ballads published 
 by the successors of Percy, as those which he published, that 
 there is not a particle of positive evidence for their having 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 39 
 
 existed before the eighteenth century. Overlooking the one 
 given by Eamsay in his Tea-table Miscellany* we have neither 
 print nor manuscript of them before the reign of George III. 
 They are not in the style of old literature. They contain no 
 references to old literature. As little does old literature contain 
 any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting 
 diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collec- 
 tion of Scottish poetry in 1706-1711, wholly overlooks them. 
 Eamsay, as we see, caught up only one. Even Herd, in 1769, 
 only gathered a few fragments of some of these poems' (p. 34). 
 It is further argued that they ' are composed in a style of romantic 
 beauty and elevation distinguishing them from all other remains 
 of Scottish traditionary poetry. They are quite unlike the 
 palpably old historical ballads, such as the Battle of Otterbourne 
 and the Raid of the Reidswire. They are unlike the Border 
 ballads, such as Dick d* the Coib and Jock 0' the Syde, com- 
 memorating domestic events of the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century. They are strikingly unlike the Burning of Frendraught, 
 the Bonny House d* Airly , and the Battle of Bothwell Bridge, 
 contemporaneous metrical chronicles of events of the seventeenth 
 century. Not less different are they from a mass of ballads 
 which have latterly been published by Mr. Peter Buchan and 
 others, involving romantic incidents, it is true, or eccentricities 
 in private life, but in such rude and homely strains as speak 
 strongly of a plebeian origin' (p. 34-35). These quotations, 
 along with the others previously made, give, I think, a fair 
 representation of Mr. Chambers' s arguments. It remains to be 
 inquired what these arguments are worth, so far as they have 
 not already been disposed of. 
 
 How such poems as are under consideration could be ex- 
 pected to 'contain references to old literature,' I do not under- 
 stand. The answer to the other objections is easy. It is, in 
 the first place, undeniable that traditionary poetry has in all 
 ages existed in Scotland as in other countries. Scottish litera- 
 ture from a very ancient date makes repeated reference to it. 
 Besides what is found in the writings of Hume of Godscroft and 
 Gavin Douglas, already quoted, I need mention only the well- 
 known song of lament made by the people on the sudden death 
 of Alexander III. and preserved in Andrew Wynton's Chronicle, 
 and this passage in Barbour's Bruce relating to the victory 
 obtained by Sir John de Soulis over Sir Andrew Hardclay 
 
 I will nocht rehers the maner, 
 For, whasa likes, tha ma her 
 Yhoung wemen quhen they will play, 
 Sing it emang tham ilke day.f 
 
 * Sweet William's Ghost is alluded to, but the Bonny Earl of Murray is like- 
 wise to be found there. 
 
 f The Brm, p. 379, Spalding Club Ed. See Preface by Mr. Cosmo Innes. 
 
 C 2 
 
40 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 Every event in which the people took an interest appears to have 
 been readily made the subject of a ballad or song. There must 
 have existed for many generations after the introduction of 
 printing two kinds of such poetry, one purely traditionary and 
 the other passing through the press. Take for example the 
 black-letter poems transmitted to the English court from time to 
 time during the reign of. Queen Mary of Scotland by persons in 
 the interest of Elizabeth.* They were looked upon as represent- 
 ing the national feeling, but I doubt much if any of them had 
 their authorship among the humbler classes even in the capital, 
 and it is more doubtful still if they ever found their way into the 
 provinces. At that time it was comparatively a costly matter to 
 get a set of verses printed, and this would make it likely that 
 they were composed by persons of education, a supposition which 
 their pedantic style confirms. From such instances, therefore, 
 we cannot safely judge of the style and structure of the poems 
 which were not printed. A much surer estimate of them may 
 be arrived at with the aid of the scanty specimens fortunately 
 preserved in Godscroft's History. Eor example, in February, 
 1569-70, appeared several l ballads,' in black-letter, on the death 
 of the Regent Murray, assassinated by Bothwellhaugh in the 
 previous month. One of them thus commenced 
 
 Ze montaines murne, ze valayis wepe 
 
 Ze clouds and firmament, 
 Ze fluids dry up, ze sayis so depe, 
 
 Deploir our late Regent. 
 
 Compare this classic effusion with the lines quoted by Godscroft 
 (and which but for him might have never got into print) refer- 
 ring to the treacherous slaughter of the young Earl of Douglas 
 and his brother, in 1440, when they were dining with the Chan- 
 cellor Crichton. They are manifestly an outburst of righteous 
 indignation by some provincial ballad-maker 
 
 Edinburgh Castle, toune and toure, 
 
 God grant thou sink for sinne ! 
 And that even for the black dinoure, 
 
 Erl Douglas gat therein. 
 
 Mr. Chambers asserts that ' the ballads in question are wholly 
 unlike any English ballads' (p. 36). It is a trite remark, that 
 an assertion may be made in one line which it may require pages 
 to disprove. I must content myself with the single observation 
 that the popular ballads of both countries are exactly alike in 
 this particular at least, that they are 'not in the style of old 
 literature,' and with the following illustration. t In the History 
 
 * Calendar of State Papers, Scotland, 150&-1603. (Published 1858.) 
 f- My quotations are taken from Henry Weber's Appendix to his Edition of 
 The Battle of Flodden Field, a poem of the sixteenth century (1808). 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 41 
 
 of John Winchcomb, otherwise called Jack . of Newbery, by 
 Thomas Deloney, printed at London in 1596, is found a ballad 
 on the Battle of Flodden, introduced thus ' In disgrace of the 
 Scots, and in remembrance of the famous atchieved victory, the 
 commons of England made this song, which to this day is not 
 forgotten by many' (I quote the first six stanzas) 
 
 King Jamie hath made a vow, 
 
 Keep it weel if he may, 
 That he will be at lovely London 
 
 Upon Saint James his day. 
 
 Upon Saint James his day at noon 
 
 At fair London will I be ; 
 And all the lords in merry Scotland, 
 
 They shall dine there with me. 
 
 Then bespake good Queen Margaret, 
 
 The tears fell from her eye, 
 Leave off these wars, most noble king, 
 
 Keep your fidelity. 
 
 The water runs swift, and wonderous deep 
 
 From bottom to the brim ; 
 My brother Henry hath men good enough, 
 
 England is hard to win. 
 
 Away (quoth he) with this silly fool, 
 
 In prison fast let her lye ; 
 For she is come of the English blood, 
 
 And for these words she shall die. 
 
 That day made many a fatherless child, 
 
 And many a widow poor ; 
 And many a Scottish gay lady 
 
 Sate weeping in her bower. 
 
 Contrast this with the Lamentation of King James the Fourth, 
 King of Scots, from the Mirour for Magistrates, published at 
 London in 1587. The concluding stanza will suffice 
 
 Farewell, my queen, sweete lady Margaret. 
 Farewell my prince, with whom I vsde to play ; 
 I wot not where we shall together meete. 
 Farewell my lords, and commons eke, for aye. 
 Adieu, ye shall no ransom for mee pay ; 
 Yet I beseech you, of your charity, 
 To the high Lorde mercifull that yee pray : 
 Miserere mei Deus ct salua mee. 
 
 In the sixteenth century pedantry characterized nearly every 
 work of the pen, and where this feature was wanting, its place 
 was supplied by one much less tolerable. The age that could 
 relish the scurrilous 'fly tings' of Dunbar and Kennedy was not 
 likely to appreciate or take an interest in the purer and simpler 
 Ballads of the People, which, owing to the humble position of 
 their authors, were not put into the hands of the printer, and 
 
42 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 did not require that aid to preserve them from one generation to 
 another among thousands who had nothing else to engage their 
 minds in the intervals of their daily labour and their religious 
 duties. Such poems were undoubtedly known to exist. Hume 
 of Godscroft's History, to which I shall have again to refer, 
 makes this evident, and had other writers found them to lie as 
 much in their way as he did, they would have made similar 
 allusions to them. 
 
 Of the pieces regarding which a doubt has now been raised, 
 one at least, Young Tamlane, is believed to be referred to in 
 the Complaynt of Scotland, written in 1548 ; but assuming the 
 general statement to be correct, that no specific allusion to them 
 is found in our ancient literature, the argument sought to be 
 drawn from such a fact would deprive of their character for 
 antiquity not only all our Eomantic ballads, but, with one ex- 
 ception, all our Historical ballads likewise. The exception 
 applies to the Battle of Otterbourne. Even that ballad must go, 
 if the circumstance of a popular poem not being in the style of 
 'old literature' (meaning by this term, works written for the 
 press), be sufficient to prove it modern. That there was at least 
 one ancient ballad precisely in the style of those in dispute, and 
 the more like them as being a love tragedy, is established by the 
 appearance in Godscroft's History of another verse, belonging, as 
 he mentions, to an ' old song' narrating how Douglas of Liddes- 
 dale was, while hunting, slain by his kinsman the Earl of Douglas, 
 'upon a jealousy that the Earl had conceived of him with his 
 lady ;' and ' how she did write her love letter to Liddesdale, to 
 dissuade him from that hunting' 
 
 The Countess of Douglas out of her bower she came, 
 
 And loudly there that she did call, 
 It is for the Lord of Liddesdale, 
 
 That I let all these tears down fall. 
 
 I may be permitted to refer to a line in King Lear, thrown 
 among the snatches of verse repeated by Edgar, in his feigned 
 madness 
 
 Child Rowland to the dark tower came. 
 
 This fragment, so suggestive of Eomance, has all the appearance 
 of having belonged to a popular narrative ballad; and Mr. 
 Motherwell printed in his collection a highly poetical Scottish 
 piece, but still fragmentary, which he conjectured might represent 
 the one quoted by Shakspere. 
 
 It seems unfair criticism to set down more than twenty 
 Eomantic poems as spurious because they contain passages of 
 genuine poetry which are not matched by numerous ballads of a 
 more homely class. Who denies that one set is much superior 
 to another? Different authors, different degrees of merit. It is 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 43 
 
 equally unfair to propose a comparison of ballads purely Romantic 
 and treated as such, with 'palpably old historical ballads,' or 
 those commemorating the exploits of moss-trooping Borderers, 
 or with 'contemporaneous metrical chronicles of events of the 
 seventeenth century.' As well compare Coleridge's Ancient 
 Mariner with Campbell's Battle of Hohenlinden, as The Young 
 Tamlane with the Raid of the Reidswire. There is a Eomantic 
 ballad commencing 
 
 O listen, listen, ladies gay ! 
 
 No haughty feat of arms I tell : 
 Soft is the note and sad the lay 
 
 That mourns the lovely Rosabelle. 
 
 Who would think of comparing with this Mr. John Wilson 
 Croker's 'abstract and brief chronicle' of another and homelier 
 tragedy 1 
 
 They cut his throat from ear to ear, 
 
 His brains they battered in : 
 His name was Mr. William Wear, 
 
 He lived at Lyon's Inn. 
 
 Different subjects require different treatment. Mr. Chambers, 
 however, is unfortunate in his references. The quotations 
 already given from the Battle of Otterbourne contain a manifest 
 contradiction of the statement that its style is 'quite unlike' 
 that of the suspected pieces. As to Border Ballads, three of 
 them viz., Hugliie Graeme, Archie of Co? field, and Kinmont 
 Willie, have furnished expressions which are said to be peculiar 
 to the Eomantic 'group' in question. The Burning of Fi -en- 
 draught is also contrasted with them. Let us try a few stanzas 
 from the copy given by Mr. Chambers in his work of 1829 : 
 
 When mass was sung, and bells were rung, 
 
 And all men bound for bed, 
 The good Lord John and Rothiemay 
 
 In one chamber were laid. 
 
 The reek it rose, and the flame it flew, 
 
 The fire augmented high, 
 Until it came to Lord John's chamber window, 
 
 And the bed wherein 'he lay. 
 
 He lookit east, he lookit west, 
 
 To see if any help was nigh ; 
 At length his little page he saw, 
 
 Who to his lord did loudly cry. 
 
 ' Oh, loup ! Oh, loup ! my dear master, 
 Though the window's dreigh and high : 
 
 I'll catch you in my arms two ; 
 But Rothiemay may lie !' 
 
 ' The fish shall never swim the flood, 
 
 Nor corn grow through the clay, 
 Nor the fiercest fire that ever was kindled 
 
 Twin me and Rothiemay. 
 
44 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 But I cannot loup, I cannot come, 
 
 I cannot win to thee ; 
 My heid's fast in the wire-window, 
 
 And my feet's burning frae me. 
 
 Take here the rings frae my white fingers, 
 
 That are so long and small, 
 And give them to my lady fair, 
 
 Where she sits in her hall. 
 
 I cannot loup, I cannot come, 
 
 I cannot loup to thee ; 
 My earthly part is all consumed, 
 
 My spirit but speaks to thee !' 
 
 Compare two of the above verses with the following, taken 
 from Mr. Chambers' s own edition of Fair Annie, one of the 
 pieces questioned : 
 
 She lookit east, she lookit west, 
 
 And south below the sun, 
 And there she spied her gude lord's ship, 
 
 Come sailing to the Ian'. 
 
 When bells were rung, and mass was sung, 
 
 And a' men boune to bed, 
 The bride but and the bonny bridegroom 
 
 In ae chamber were laid. 
 
 To another stanza of the Burning of Frendmught we shall 
 find a parallel. Mr. Chambers says ' Sweet William's Ghost, 
 a fine superstitious ballad, first published in Eamsay's Tea-table 
 Miscellany, 1724, is important as the earliest printed of all the 
 Scottish ballads after the admittedly modern Hardyknute ;' and 
 he reprints ten stanzas of it, in one of which the Ghost thus 
 addresses the lady to whom he had, when in the body, plighted 
 his troth : 
 
 ' My bones are buried in yon kirkyard, 
 
 Afar ayont the sea, 
 And it is but my spirit, Margaret, 
 That's now speaking to thee. ' 
 
 The parallel passage in the Burning of Frendraught is the more 
 poetical of the two, for there is something awe-striking in the 
 idea of a person, who began his speech as a living man, passing 
 into spirit ere it was done, and uttering his last words after his 
 earthly tabernacle was dissolved. Even the Battle of Botlmell 
 Bridge is not without points of resemblance to the Eomantic 
 pieces in dispute. 
 
 ' O billie, billie, bonny billie, 
 
 Will ye gae to the wood wi' me ? 
 We'll ca' our horse hame masterless, 
 
 And gar them trow slain men are we. ' 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 45 
 
 ' O no ! O no !' says Earlstown, 
 
 ' For that's the thing that maunna be ; 
 For I am sworn to Bothwell Hill, 
 
 Where I maun either gae or die. ' 
 
 As e'er ye saw the rain down fa ', 
 
 Or yet the arrow frae the bow, 
 Sae our Scots lads fell even down, 
 
 And they lay slain on every knowe. 
 
 The phrase, in two of the ballads just referred to, 
 "When mass was sung, and bells were rung, 
 
 induces me to notice another objection stated to the Eomantic 
 poems in question. It is remarked that, ' references to religion 
 and religious ceremonies and fanes are of the slightest kind. 
 We hear of bells being rung and mass sung, but only to indicate 
 a time of day. Had they been old ballads continually changing 
 in diction and in thought,* as passed down from one reciter to 
 another, they could not have failed to involve some considerable 
 trace of the intensely earnest religious life of the seventeenth 
 century' (p. 35). Were I to say that this objection, if of any 
 force, would apply to the Burning of Frendraught, admitted to 
 be a composition of the seventeenth century, I should likely 
 be reminded that it is not a Eomantic but a Historical ballad. 
 Although Lady Frendraught was a Eoman Catholic, and under- 
 went some degree of persecution from the Presbytery of Strath- 
 bogie on that account, her husband was a Covenanting leader, 
 and the ' mass, ' I presume, was not established in his Castle so 
 as to give any particular meaning to the line last quoted. It 
 was probably intended merely ' to indicate a time of day, ' but, 
 if so, it may be considered as a stock phrase borrowed from older 
 ballads. * The intensely earnest' religion of the period was such 
 as would have allowed no compromise between purely Eomantic 
 ballads and Godly songs, and would have banished the former 
 as profane. The poems now in dispute mainly belong to an 
 ante -puritanic age. Besides, Mr. Chambers is far too exacting. 
 In ballads of the romantic class, many of them relating to the 
 passion of love (often of an unlawful kind), we cannot reasonably 
 look for many 'references to religion and religious ceremonies 
 and fanes;' yet such allusions are by no means wanting. In 
 the Gay Gos-hatoJc Lord William sends the bird with a message 
 to his lady in ' Southern land' : 
 
 ' And even at my love's bour-door 
 
 There grows a flowering birk ; 
 And ye maun sit and sing thereon 
 
 As she gangs to the kirk, 
 
 * This would be a change indeed, leaving nothing of the original ! Any 
 variation was in the diction only. 
 
46 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 And four and twenty fair ladyes 
 
 Will to the mass repair ; 
 But weel may ye my ladye ken, 
 
 The fairest ladye there.' 
 
 She feigns mortal sickness, and prepares a ' sleepy draught, ' but 
 before drinking it asks this boon of her father 
 
 ' gin I die in Southern land, 
 
 In Scotland gar bury me. 
 And the first kirk that ye come to, 
 
 "ic e's gar the mass be sung ; 
 And the neist kirk that ye come to 
 
 Ye's gar the bells be rung. 
 And when ye come to St. Mary's kirk 
 
 Ye's tarry there till night.' 
 
 Having taken the draught, she falls int9 a death-like sleep. 
 
 ' Alas ! Alas ! her father cried, 
 She's dead without the priest !' 
 
 Of course, at St. Mary's Kirk, on the Scottish Border, the lady 
 awakes ' as soon as Lord William touched her hand. ' 
 In Clerk Saunders 
 
 The clinking bell gaed through the town, 
 
 To carry the dead corse to the clay ; 
 And Clerk Saunders stood at May Margaret's window, 
 
 I wot, an hour before the day. 
 
 She refuses to give him back his ' faith and troth' until he tell 
 what becomes of women ' who die in strong traivelling. ' 
 
 * Their beds are made in the heavens high, 
 
 Down at the foot of our good Lord's knee, 
 Weel set about wi' gilly flowers : 
 I wot sweet company for to see. 
 
 O, cocks are crowin' a merry midnight, 
 
 I wot the wild-fowl are boding day ; 
 The psalms of heaven will soon be sung, 
 
 And I, ere now, will be missed away.' 
 
 On leaving her, the dead man says 
 
 ' But plait a wand o' bonny birk, 
 
 And lay it on my breast : 
 And shed a tear upon my grave, 
 
 And wish my saul gude rest. ' 
 
 The queen, in Fause Foodrage, makes her escape from her hus- 
 band's murderer 'through the might of Our Ladye.' We have 
 seen the fair Janet, in Young Tamlane, anxiously demanding 
 of her fairy lover 
 
 Gin e'er ye was in haly chapell, 
 Or sained in Christentie. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 47 
 
 Tlie ballads just quoted are among the disputed series, and are 
 found in Scott's Minstrelsy. Another may be cited for a similar 
 purpose, but Mr. Chambers's own version of 1829 shall supply 
 what is wanted. In The Clerk's Twa Sons o* Owsenford, when 
 the waefu' clerk' returns home after his sons had been put to 
 death by the Mayor of Paris, whither they had gone 'to learn 
 some unco lear,' his wife asks why they had not come back with 
 him. 
 
 ' O they are putten to a deeper lear, 
 And to a higher scule : 
 
 Your ain twa sons will no be hame 
 Till the hallow days o' Yule.' 
 
 The hallow days o' Yule were come, 
 
 And the nights were lang and mirk, 
 When in and cam her ain twa sons, 
 
 And their hats made o' the birk. 
 
 It neither grew in syke nor ditch, 
 
 Nor yet in ony sheuch ; 
 But at the gates o' Paradise 
 
 That birk grew fair eneuch. 
 
 If the character of that 'intensely- earnest religious life,' of which 
 we are reminded, can be inferred from the proceedings of the 
 successive General Assemblies of the Kirk for a hundred years 
 after the Eeformation, the observance of the 'hallow days o' 
 Yule,' with 'singing carols' and other 'corruptions,' would have 
 been severely punished. At the Assembly of 1590, 'King James 
 thanked God that our Church did exceed the Church of Geneva 
 for purity of reformation, as observing no day but the Lord's 
 day, whilst Geneva kept Yule and Pasche.'* 
 
 It does not appear that the antiquity of Hynde Etin, included 
 in Mr. Chambers's own collection, is now disputed; but perhaps 
 it is among the pieces 'which must rest unnamed.' That ballad, 
 and a number of others scattered through the various collections, 
 are as much open to challenge as the unfortunate 'group' of 
 twenty -five, and, like some of them, contain distinct references to 
 religion. The pieces called Young Hastings and Young Aiken, 
 recovered by Buchan, are similar to. Hynde Etin. They tell the 
 story of a king's daughter whom an outlawed forester compelled 
 to live with him 
 
 And seven bairns fair and fine, 
 
 There she has borne to him ; 
 And never was in gude church door, 
 
 Nor ever gat gude kirking. 
 
 One day the eldest son says to his mother 
 
 'As we came frae the hynd hunting, 
 
 We heard fine music ring.' 
 ' My blessings on you, my bonny boy, 
 
 I wish I'd been there my lane.' 
 
 * Gordon's Scots Affairs, Vol. II., pp. 129, 130. SptJding Club Ed. 
 
48 THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 
 
 He's taen his mifcher by the hand, 
 
 His six brithers also ; 
 And they are on through Elmond's wood, 
 
 As fast as they could go. 
 
 The king joyfully receives his lost daughter with her children, 
 and takes the wild forester into favour. 
 
 But as they were at dinner set, 
 
 The boy asked a boon : 
 ' I wish we were in the good church, 
 For to get Christendoun. 
 
 We hae lived in good greenwood 
 
 This seven years and ane ; 
 But a' this time, since e'er I mind, 
 
 Were never a church within.' 
 
 * Your asking's nae sae great, my boy, 
 
 But granted it shall be : 
 This day to gude church ye shall gang, 
 And your inither shall gang you wiV 
 
 When unto the gude church she came, 
 
 She at the door did stan' ; 
 She was sae sair sunk doun wi' shaine, 
 
 She coudna come far'er ben. 
 
 Then out it speaks the parish priest, 
 
 And a sweet smile gae he : 
 'Come ben, come ben, my lily flower, 
 Present your babes to me.' 
 
 I may end these quotations with one more stanza, taken from 
 The Courteous Knight, in Buchan's collection. The knight 
 returns from the grave to warn his sister to give over her pride 
 and vanity. 
 
 When ye are in the gude church set, 
 
 The gowd pins in your hair, 
 Ye take mair delight in your feckless dress, 
 
 Than ye do in your morning prayer. 
 
 As already mentioned, Bannatyne and the editors of Scottish 
 Songs between his time and Bishop Percy's, were not ballad col- 
 lectors. The Bannatyne MS. bears the title 'Ane most Godlie, 
 Mirrie, and Lustie Kapsodie, maide be sundrie Learned Scots 
 Poets, and written be George Bannatyne in the tyme of his 
 youth.' * Allan Eamsay printed Sweet William's Ghost and the 
 Bonny Earl of Murray, because, in all likelihood, they came to 
 his hand without his having to seek for them. His labours were 
 limited to Edinburgh and its neighbourhood. David Herd's pro- 
 fessional duties confined him also to the city, but Mr. Chambers 
 overlooks the fact that, besides the collection published in 1769, 
 Herd supplied Sir Walter Scott with MS. copies of additional 
 ballads. My belief is that, if any of the editors before Scott had 
 
 * Irvine's Lives of the Scottish Poets. II. 138. 
 
THE ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 49 
 
 done what he, Jamieson, Buchan, and others afterwards did, and 
 had sought through the country for specimens of traditionary 
 poetry, their success would have been the same or greater, and 
 the earlier the period of making the search the richer would have 
 been the treasure recovered. Let us be thankful that the work 
 of collecting was entered upon ere it was too late, that the store 
 of ballads gathered in is so plentiful, and that, amidst much that 
 is of little worth, so great a portion is really valuable. Twenty 
 years more, and the result would have been very different. A 
 new generation was gradually acquiring other means of mental 
 occupation than listening to the songs and metrical tales which 
 had descended from a ruder age. If they were still occasionally 
 called for around the cottage hearth, the listeners took no pains 
 to retain them in their memory. Their minds were turned aside 
 to the 'newer knowledge drawing nigh.' Old ballads had no 
 chance in competition with cheap books. In 1828 Buchan pub- 
 lished the ballads which he had collected, the last work of the 
 sort of any extent; in 1829 Eobert Chambers presented us with 
 his volume of selected and collated pieces, as if to crown the 
 labours of the collectors whose task was done; and in 1832 was 
 commenced the publication of William and Robert Chambers' s 
 Edinburgh Journal. One who had shown that he truly appre- 
 ciated, and heartily loved, the simple strains which the prouder 
 learning of previous centuries had despised, was well fitted to 
 be a principal promoter of that Cheap Literature which was to 
 succeed them in the affections of the Scottish people. 
 
 PRINTED XT THE ABERDEEN HERALD OFFICE, BT JAMES BROTTK. 
 

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 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
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 (119 S KM1 
 
 
 9t7c RPri 
 
 
 J ^ *? 1948 
 
 
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 DEC.CIR.NOV 25 
 
 LD 21-100m-7,'40(6936F" 
 
Many factored bit 
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