Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy

Imitations of Ballads

The three following ballads are exhibited in connection with Mr. Kittredge’s opinion that neither poet nor poetaster can imitate, to-day, the traditional ballad. Of course, not one of my three could now take in an expert, for he would ask for documentary evidence of their antiquity. But I doubt if Mr. Kittredge can find any points in my three imitations which infallibly betray their modernity.

The first, Simmy o’ Whythaugh, is based on facts in the Border despatches. Historically the attempt to escape from York Castle failed; after the prisoners had got out they were recaptured.

The second ballad, The Young Ruthven, gives the traditional view of the slaying of the Ruthvens in their own house in Perth, on 5th August 1600.

The third, The Dead Man’s Dance, combines the horror of the ballads of Lizzy Wan and The Bonny Hind, with that of the Romaic ballad, in English, The Suffolk Miracle (Child, No. 272).

I – SIMMY O’ WHYTHAUGHO, will ye hear o’ the Bishop o’ York,   O, will ye hear o’ the Armstrongs true,How they hae broken the Bishop’s castle,   And carried himsel’ to the bauld Buccleuch?They were but four o’ the Lariston kin,   They were but four o’ the Armstrong name,Wi’ stout Sim Armstrong to lead the band,   The Laird o’ Whythaugh, I mean the same.They had done nae man an injury,   They had na robbed, they had na slain,In pledge were they laid for the Border peace,   In the Bishop’s castle to dree their pain.The Bishop he was a crafty carle,   He has ta’en their red and their white monie,But the muddy water was a’ their drink,   And dry was the bread their meat maun be.“Wi’ a ged o’ airn,” did Simmy say,   “And ilka man wi’ a horse to ride,We aucht wad break the Bishop’s castle,   And carry himsel’ to the Liddel side.“The banks o’ Whythaugh I sall na see,   I never sall look upon wife and bairn;I wad pawn my saul for my gude mear, Jean,   I wad pawn my saul for a ged o’ airn.”There was ane that brocht them their water and bread;   His gude sire, he was a kindly Scot,Says “Your errand I’ll rin to the Laird o’ Cessford,   If ye’ll swear to pay me the rescue shot.”Then Simmy has gi’en him his seal and ring,   To the Laird o’ Cessford has ridden he —I trow when Sir Robert had heard his word   The tear it stood in Sir Robert’s e’e.“And sall they starve him, Simmy o’ Whythaugh,   And sall his bed be the rotten strae?I trow I’ll spare neither life nor gear,   Or ever I live to see that day!“Gar bring up my horses,” Sir Robert he said,   “I bid ye bring them by three and three,And ane by ane at St. George’s close,   At York gate gather your companie.”Oh, some rade like corn-cadger men,   And some like merchants o’ linen and hose;They slept by day and they rade by nicht,   Till they a’ convened at St. George’s close.Ilka mounted man led a bridded mear,   I trow they had won on the English way;Ilka belted man had a brace o’ swords,   To help their friends to fend the fray.Then Simmy he heard a hoolet cry   In the chamber strang wi’ never a licht;“That’s a hoolet, I ken,” did Simmy say,   “And I trow that Teviotdale’s here the nicht!”They hae grippit a bench was clamped wi’ steel,   Wi’ micht and main hae they wrought, they four,They hae burst it free, and rammed wi’ the bench,   Till they brake a hole in the chamber door.“Lift strae frae the beds,” did Simmy say;   To the gallery window Simmy sped,He has set his strength to a window bar,   And bursten it out o’ the binding lead.He has bursten the bolts o’ the Elliot men,   Out ower the window the strae cast he,For they bid to loup frae the window high,   And licht on the strae their fa’ would be.To the Bishop’s chamber Simmy ran;   “Oh, sleep ye saft, my Lord!” says he;“Fu’ weary am I o’ your bread and water,   Ye’se hae wine and meat when ye dine wi’ me.”He has lifted the loon across his shoulder;   “We maun leave the hoose by the readiest way!”He has cast him doon frae the window high,   And a’ to hansel the new fa’n strae!Then twa by twa the Elliots louped,   The Armstrongs louped by twa and twa.“I trow, if we licht on the auld fat Bishop,   That nane the harder will be the fa’!”They rade by nicht and they slept by day;   I wot they rade by an unkenned track;“The Bishop was licht as a flea,” said Sim,   “Or ever we cam’ to the Liddel rack.”Then “Welcome, my Lord,” did Simmy say,   “We’ll win to Whythaugh afore we dine,We hae drunk o’ your cauld and ate o’ your dry,   But ye’ll taste o’ our Liddesdale beef and wine.”II – THE YOUNG RUTHVENThe King has gi’en the Queen a gift,   For her May-day’s propine,He’s gi’en her a band o’ the diamond-stane,   Set in the siller fine.The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird,   Beside the hollans green,And there she saw the bonniest man   That ever her eyes had seen.His coat was the Ruthven white and red,   Sae sound asleep was heThe Queen she cried on May Beatrix,   That bonny lad to see.“Oh! wha sleeps here, May Beatnix,   Without the leave o’ me?”“Oh! wha suld it be but my young brother   Frae Padua ower the sea!“My father was the Earl Gowrie,   An Earl o’ high degree,But they hae slain him by fause treason,   And gar’d my brothers flee.“At Padua hae they learned their leir   In the fields o’ Italie;And they hae crossed the saut sea-faem.   And a’ for love o’ me!”* * * *The Queen has cuist her siller band   About his craig o’ snaw;But still he slept and naething kenned,   Aneth the hollans shaw.The King was walking thro’ the yaird,   He saw the siller shine;“And wha,” quo’ he, “is this galliard   That wears yon gift o’ mine?”The King has gane till the Queen’s ain bower,   An angry man that day;But bye there cam’ May Beatrix   And stole the band away.And she’s run in by the little black yett,   Straight till the Queen ran she:“Oh! tak ye back your siller band,   On it gar my brother dee!”The Queen has linked her siller band   About her middle sma’;And then she heard her ain gudeman   Come sounding through the ha’.“Oh! whare,” he cried, “is the siller band   I gied ye late yestreen?The knops was a’ o’ the diamond-stane,   Set in the siller sheen.”“Ye hae camped birling at the wine,   A’ nicht till the day did daw;Or ye wad ken your siller band   About my middle sma’!”The King he stude, the King he glowered,   Sae hard as a man micht stare:“Deil hae me!  Like is a richt ill mark, —   Or I saw it itherwhere!“I saw it round young Ruthven’s neck   As he lay sleeping still;And, faith, but the wine was wondrous guid,   Or my wife is wondrous ill!”There was na gane a week, a week,   A week but barely three;The King has hounded John Ramsay out,   To gar young Ruthven dee!They took him in his brother’s house,   Nae sword was in his hand,And they hae slain him, young Ruthven,   The bonniest in the land!And they hae slain his fair brother,   And laid him on the green,And a’ for a band o’ the siller fine   And a blink o’ the eye o’ the Queen!Oh! had they set him man to man,   Or even ae man to three,There was na a knight o’ the Ramsay bluid   Had gar’d Earl Gowrie dee!III – THE DEAD MAN’S DANCE“The dance is in the castle ha’,   And wha will dance wi’ me?”“There’s never a man o’ living men,   Will dance the nicht wi’ thee!”Then Margaret’s gane within her bower,   Put ashes on her hair,And ashes on her bonny breast   And on hen shoulders bare.There cam’ a knock to her bower-door,   And blythe she let him in;It was her brother frae the wars,   She lo’ed abune her kin.“Oh, Willie, is the battle won?   Or are you fled?” said she,“This nicht the field was won and lost,   A’ in a far countrie.“This nicht the field was lost and won,   A’ in a far countrie,And here am I within your bower,   For nane will dance with thee.”“Put gold upon your head, Margaret,   Put gold upon your hair,And gold upon your girdle-band,   And on your breast so fair!”“Nay, nae gold for my breast, Willie,   Nay, nae gold for my hair,It’s ashes o’ oak and dust o’ earth,   That you and I maun wear!“I canna dance, I mauna dance,   I daurna dance with thee.To dance atween the quick and the deid,   Is nae good companie.”* * *The fire it took upon her cheek,   It took upon her chin,Nae Mass was sung, nor bells was rung,   For they twa died in deidly sin.

1

Child, part vi. p. 513.

2

Child, part x. p. 294.

3

Hogg to Scott, 30th June 1802, given later in full.

4

See De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Scotorum, p. 60 (1578).

5

Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 60 (1839).

6

Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 130–135 (1839).

7

Minstrelsy, iii. 186–198.

8

Child, part ix., 187.

9

Further Essays, p. 184.

10

Child, vol. i. p. xxx.

11

Minstrelsy, 2nd edition, vol iii. (1803).

12

Further Essays, pp. 247, 248.

13

Carruthers, “Abbotsford Notanda,” in R. Chambers’s Life of Scott, pp. 115–117 (1891).

14

Ibid., p. 118.

15

Carruthers, “Abbotsford Notanda,” in R. Chambers’s Life of Scott, pp. 115–117 (1891).

16

Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 99.

17

Lockhart, Life of Sir Walter Scott, Bart., vol. ii. pp. 99, 100 (1829).

18

Ritson of 10th April 1802, in his Letters of Joseph Ritson, Esq., vol. ii. p. 218. Letter of 10th June 1802, Ibid., p. 207. Ritson returned the original manuscript of Auld Maitland on 28th February 1803, Ibid., p. 230.

19

Carruthers, pp. 128, 131.

20

Sweet William’s Ghost.

21

Further Essays, pp. 225, 226.

22

Further Essays, pp. 227–234.

23

Minstrelsy, vol. iii. pp. 307–310 (1833).

24

Ibid., vol. iii. p. 314.

25

Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxi. 4, pp. 804–806.

26

Further Essays, p. 237.

27

Carruthers, p. 128.

28

Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 67, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79.

29

Craig Brown, History of Selkirkshire.

30

Child, part ix. p. 185.

31

Scott to Laidlaw, 21st January 1803; Carruthers, pp. 121, 122.

32

Further Essays, p. 45.

33

Child, part viii. pp. 499–502.

34

Further Essays, p. 10, where only two references to sources are given.

35

Child, part vi. p. 292.

36

Ibid., part ix. p. 243. Herd, 1776; also C. K. Sharpe’s MS.

37

Bain, Calendar, vol. iv. pp. 87–93.

38

This is scarcely accurate. Hogg, in fact, made up one copy, in two parts, from the recitation of two old persons, as we shall see.

39

Further Essays, pp. 12–27.

40

Further Essays, p. 37.

41

Scott to Laidlaw, Carruthers, p. 129.

42

English version, xi.–xv.

43

Further Essays, p. 58.

44

Further Essays, p. 31.

45

Godscroft, ed. 1644, p. 100; Child, part vi. p. 295.

46

The Hunting of the Cheviot, and Herd’s Otterburn.

47

Herd, and Complaynte of Scotland, 1549.

48

Child, part ix. p. 244, stanza xiii.

49

Further Essays, p. 27.

50

Further Essays on Border Ballads, p. 184. Andrew Elliot, 1910. To be quoted as F. E. B. B. The other work on the subject is Colonel Elliot’s The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads. Blackwoods, 1906.

51

F. E. B. B., p. 199.

52

F. E. B. B., p. 200.

53

Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads, p. vi.

54

Satchells, pp. 13, 14. Edition of 1892.

55

Ibid., p. 14.

56

Ibid., part ii. pp. 35, 36.

57

F. E. B. B., p. 200.

58

Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, part viii. p. 518. He refers to “Letters I. No. 44” in MS.

59

See Sargent and Kittredge’s reduced edition of Child, p. 467, 1905. They publish this Elliot version only. The version has modern spelling. On this version and its minor variations from Scott’s, I say more later; Colonel Elliot gives no critical examination of the variations which seem to me essential.

60

F. E. B. B., p. 184.

61

Robert Scott (the poet Satchells’s father) “had Southinrigg for his service” to Buccleuch, says Sir William Fraser, in his Memoirs of the House of Buccleuch. (See Satchells, 1892, pp. vii., viii.) But the “fathers” of Satchells “having dilapidate and engaged their Estate by Cautionary,” poor Satchells was brought up as a cowherd, till he went to the wars, and never learned to write, or even, it seems, to read; as he says in the Dedication of his book to Lord Yester.

62

The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads, opp. p. 36.

63

Border Papers, vol. i. pp. 120–127.

64

Border Papers, vol. i. p. 106.

65

Scrope, in Border Papers, vol. ii. pp. 148–152.

66

Border Papers, vol. ii. p. 307, No. 606.

67

Border Papers, vol. ii. pp. 299–303

68

Border Papers, vol. ii. p. 356.

69

F. E. B. B., p. 161.

70

See his Border Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 15.

71

F. E. B. B., p. 156.

72

T. B. B., p. 14.

73

T. B. B., p. 12.

74

T. B. B., p. 12.

75

Memoirs of Robert Carey, p. 98, 1808.

76

T. B. B., pp. 19, 20.

77

T. B. B., p. 20.

78

Child, part vii. p. 5.

79

Variant E is a patched-up thing from five or six MS. sources and a printed “stall copy.” Jamieson published it in 1817. Motherwell had heard a cantefable, or version in alternate prose and verse, which contained the stanza. It is not identical with stanza xxxii. in Scott’s Jamie Telfer, but runs thus —

My hounds they all go masterless,

My hawks they fly from tree to tree,

My younger brother will heir my lands,

Fair England again I’ll never see.

Child, part ii. p. 454 et seqq. The speaker is young Beichan, a prisoner in the dungeon of a professor of the Moslem faith.

80

F. E. B. B., pp. 179–185.

81

Child, part viii. p. 518.

82

Aytoun, in The Ballads of Scotland (vol. i. p. 211), says that his copy of Jamie Telfer “is almost verbatim the same as that given in the Border Minstrelsy.” He does not tell us where he got his copy; or why the Captain’s bride’s speech (Sharpe, stanza xxxvi.) differs from the version in Scott and Sharpe. He gives the stanza which comes last in Scott’s copy, and is too bad and enfeebling to be attributed to Scott’s pen. He omits the stanza which has strayed in from other ballads,

“My hounds may a’ rin masterless.”

But as Aytoun confessedly rejected such inappropriate stanzas, he may have found it in his copy and excised it.

83

Minstrelsy, vol. iii. p. 76, 1803.

84

Further Essays, p. 112.

85

Further Essays, p. 112.

86

In Minstrelsy, vol. ii. p. 35 (1833).

87

Further Essays, p. 124.

88

Border Papers, vol. ii. p. 367.

89

Further Essays, pp. 123, 124.

90

Border Papers, vol. ii. p. 121.

91

Further Essays, p. 125.

92

Birrell’s Diary vouches for the irons.

93

Further Essays, p. 128.

94

Sargent and Kittredge, pp. xxix., xxx.

95

Hales and Furnivall, ii. pp. 205–207.

96

Further Essays, p. 45.

97

Ballads, p. xxix.