Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 9

Now the death, at Otterburn, of Sir Hugh, is recorded in an English ballad styled The Hunting of the Cheviot. By 1540-50 it was among the popular songs north of Tweed. The Complaynte of Scotland (1549) mentions among "The Songis of Natural Music of the Antiquitie"

(volkslieder), The Hunttis of Chevet. Our copy of the English version is in the Bodleian (MS. Ashmole, 48). It ends: "Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale," a minstrel who recited ballads and tales at Tamworth (circ. 1559). The text was part of his stock-in-trade.

The Cheviot ballad, in a Scots form popular in 1549, is later in many ways than the English Battle of Otterburne. It begins with a brag of Percy, a vow that, despite Douglas, he will hunt in the Cheviot hills.

While Percy is hunting with a strong force, Douglas arrives with another. Douglas offers to decide the quarrel by single combat with Percy, who accepts. Richard Witherington refuses to look on quietly, and a general engagement ensues.

At last the Duglas and the Perse met, Lyk to Captayns of myght and of mayne, They swapte together tylle they both swat With swordes that wear of fyn myllan."

We are back in stanza I. of the English Otterburne, in stanza x.x.xv.

(subst.i.tuting Hugh Montgomery for Douglas) of the Hogg MS. In The Hunting, Douglas is slain by an English arrow (x.x.xvi.-x.x.xviii.).

Sir Hugh Montgomery now charges and slays Percy (who, of course, was merely taken prisoner). An archer of Northumberland sends an arrow through good Sir Hugh Montgomery (xliii.-xlvi.). Stanza lxvi. has

At Otterburn begane this spurne, Upon a Monnynday; There was the doughte Douglas slean, The Perse never went away.

This is a form of Herd's stanza xiv. of the English Otterburn (lxviii.), made soon after the battle. We see that the ORIGINAL ballad has protean variants; in time all is mixed in tradition.

Now the curious and interesting point is that Hogg, when he collected the ballad from two reciters, himself noticed that the Cheviot ballad had merged, in some way, into the Otterburn ballad, and pointed this out to Scott. I now publish Hogg's letter to Scott, in which, as usual, he does not give the year-date: I think it was 1805.

ETTRICK HOUSE, Sept. 10, [?1805].

Dear Sir,--Though I have used all diligence in my power to recover the old song about which you seemed anxious, I am afraid it will arrive too late to be of any use. I cannot at this time have Grame and Bewick; the only person who hath it being absent at a harvest; and as for the sc.r.a.ps of Otterburn which you have got, THEY SEEM TO HAVE BEEN SOME CONFUSED JUMBLE MADE BY SOME PERSON WHO HAD LEARNED BOTH THE SONGS YOU HAVE, {79a} AND IN TIME HAD BEEN STRAITENED TO MAKE ONE OUT OF THEM BOTH. But you shall have it as I had it, saving that, as usual, I have sometimes helped the metre without altering one original word.

Hogg here gives his version from recitation as far as stanza xxiv.

Here Hogg stops and writes:-

The ballad, which I have collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind, seems. .h.i.therto considerably entire; but now, when it becomes most interesting, they have both failed me, and I have been obliged to take much of it in plain prose.

However, as none of them seemed to know anything of the history save what they had learned from the song, I took it the more kindly. Any few verses which follow are to me unintelligible.

He told Sir Hugh that he was dying, and ordered him to conceal his body, and neither let his own men nor Piercy's know; which he did, and the battle went on headed by Sir Hugh Montgomery, and at length -

Here follow stanzas up to x.x.xviii.

Hogg then goes on thus:-

Piercy seems to have been fighting devilishly in the dark. Indeed my narrators added no more, but told me that Sir Hugh died on the field, but that

He left not an Englishman on the field, . . .

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

Almons.h.i.+re (Stanza iii.) may probably be a corruption of Bamburghs.h.i.+re, but as both my narrators called it so I thought proper to preserve it.

The towers in Roxburgh fells (Stanza iii.) may not be so improper as we were thinking, there may have been some [English] strength on the very borders.--I remain, Dear Sir, your most faithful and affectionate servant, JAMES HOGG.

Hogg adds a postscript:

Not being able to get the letter away to the post, I have taken the opportunity of again pumping my old friend's memory, and have recovered some more lines and half lines of Otterburn, of which I am becoming somewhat enamoured. These I have been obliged to arrange somewhat myself, as you will see below, but so mixed are they with original lines and sentences that I think, if you pleased, they might pa.s.s without any acknowledgment. Sure no man will like an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious. After stanza xxiv. you may read stanzas xxv. to x.x.xiv. Then after x.x.xviii. read x.x.xix.

Now we know all that can be known about the copy of the ballad which, in 1805, Scott received from Hogg. Up to stanza xxiv. it is as given by the two old reciters. The crazy man may be the daft man who recited to Hogg Burns's Tam o' Shanter, and inspired him with the ambition to be a poet. The deranged woman, like mad Madge Wildfire, was rich in ballad sc.r.a.ps. From stanza xxv. to x.x.xiv., Hogg confessedly "harmonises" what he got in plain prose intermixed with verse. Stanza x.x.xix. is apparently Hogg's. The last broken stanza, as Hogg said, is a reminiscence of the Hunting of the Cheviot, in a Scots form, long lost.

Hogg was not a scientific collector: had he been, he would have taken down "the plain prose" and the broken lines and stanzas verbally. But Hogg has done his best.

We have next to ask, How did Scott treat the material thus placed before him? He dropped five stanzas sent by Hogg, mainly from the part made up from "plain prose"; he placed in a stanza and a line or two from Herd's text; he remade a stanza and adopted a line from the English of 1550, and inserted an incident from Wyntoun's Cronykil (about 1430). He did these things in the effort to construct what Lockhart calls "a standard text."

1. In stanza i., for Hogg's "Douglas WENT," Scott put "bound him to ride."

2. (H) "With the Lindsays."

(S.) "With THEM the Lindesays."

3. (H) "Almons.h.i.+re."

(S.) "Bamboroughs.h.i.+re."

(H) "Roxburgh."

(S.) "Reidswire."

6. (H.) "The border again.

(S.) "The border fells."

7. (H) "MOST furiously."

(S.) "RIGHT furiouslie."

9. (H.) A modernised stanza.

(S.) Scott deletes it.

15. (H) Scott rewrites the stanza thus, (H.) But I will stay at Otterburn, Where you shall welcome be; And if ye come not at three days end, A coward I'll call thee.

(S.) "Thither will I come," proud Percy said, "By the might of Our Ladye."

"There will I bide thee," said the Douglas, "My troth I'll plight to thee."

19. (H.) "I have SEEN a dreary dream."

20. (S.) "I have DREAMED a dreary dream."

21. (H) Where he met with the stout Percy And a' his goodly train.

21. (S.) But he forgot the helmet good That should have kept his brain.

(From Wyntoun.) 22. (H.) Line 2. "Right keen."

(S.) Line 2. "Fu' fain."

Line 4.

The blood ran down like rain.

Line 4.

The blood ran them between.

23. (H.) But Piercy wi' his good broadsword Was made o' the metal free, Has wounded Douglas on the brow Till backward did he flee.

24. (S.) But Piercy wi' his broadsword good That could so sharply wound, Has wounded Douglas on the brow, Till he fell to the ground.

25. (H.) Here Hogg has mixed prose and verse, and does his best.

Scott deletes Hogg's 25.

27. (H.) Douglas repeats the story of his dream. Scott deletes the stanza.

28. In Hogg's second line, Nae mair I'll fighting see.

Scott gives, from Herd, Take thou the vanguard of the three.