The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship Part 1

The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authors.h.i.+p.

by Robert Chambers.

Percy's _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry_, 1765; David Herd's _Scottish Songs_, 1769; Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, 1802; and Jamieson's _Popular Ballads and Songs_, 1806, have been chiefly the means of making us acquainted with what is believed to be the ancient traditionary ballad literature of Scotland; and this literature, from its intrinsic merits, has attained a very great fame.

I advert particularly to what are usually called the Romantic Ballads, a cla.s.s of compositions felt to contain striking beauties, almost peculiar to themselves, and consequently held as implying extraordinary poetical attributes in former generations of the people of this country. There have been many speculations about the history of these poems, all a.s.signing them a considerable antiquity, and generally a.s.suming that their recital was once the special business of a set of wandering _conteurs_ or minstrels. So lately as 1858, my admired friend, Professor Aytoun, in introducing a collection of them, at once ample and elegant, to the world, expressed his belief that they date at least from before the Reformation, having only been modified by successive reciters, so as to modernise the language, and, in some instances, bring in the ideas of later ages.

There is, however, a sad want of clear evidence regarding the history of our romantic ballads. We have absolutely no certain knowledge of them before 1724, when Allan Ramsay printed one called _Sweet William's Ghost_, in his _Tea-table Miscellany_. There is also this fact staring us in the face, that, while these poems refer to an ancient state of society, they bear not the slightest resemblance either to the minstrel poems of the middle ages, or to the well-known productions of the Henrysons, the Dunbars, the Douglases, the Montgomeries, who flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Neither in the poems of Drummond, and such other specimens of verse--generally wretched--as existed in the seventeenth century, can we trace any feature of the composition of these ballads. Can it be that all editors. .h.i.therto have been too facile in accepting them as ancient, though modified compositions? that they are to a much greater extent modern than has. .h.i.therto been supposed? or wholly so? Though in early life an editor of them, not less trusting than any of my predecessors, I must own that a suspicion regarding their age and authors.h.i.+p has at length entered my mind. In stating it--which I do in a spirit of great deference to Professor Aytoun and others--I shall lead the reader through the steps by which I arrived at my present views upon the subject.

In 1719, there appeared, in a folio sheet, at Edinburgh, a heroic poem styled _Hardyknute_, written in affectedly old spelling, as if it had been a contemporary description of events connected with the invasion of Scotland by Haco, king of Norway, in 1263. A corrected copy was soon after presented in the _Evergreen_ of Allan Ramsay, a collection professedly of poems written before 1600, but into which we know the editor admitted a piece written by himself. _Hardyknute_ was afterwards reprinted in Percy's _Reliques_, still as an ancient composition; yet it was soon after declared to be the production of a Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie, who died so lately as 1727. Although, to modern taste, a stiff and poor composition, there is a nationality of feeling about it, and a touch of chivalric spirit, that has maintained for it a certain degree of popularity. Sir Walter Scott tells us it was the first poem he ever learned by heart, and he believed it would be the last he should forget.

It is necessary to present a few brief extracts from this poem. In the opening, the Scottish king, Alexander III., is represented as receiving notice of the Norwegian invasion:

The king of Norse, in summer pride, 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 n.o.ble chiefs in brave array, Drinking the blude-red wine.

'To horse, to horse, my royal liege; Your faes stand on the strand; Full twenty thousand glittering spears The king of Norse commands.'

'Bring me my steed, page, dapple-gray,'

Our good king rose and cried; 'A trustier beast in a' the land A Scots king never tried.'

Hardyknute, summoned to the king's a.s.sistance, leaves his wife and daughter, 'Fairly fair,' under the care of his youngest son. As to the former lady--

... first she wet her comely cheeks, And then her bodice green, Her silken cords of twirtle twist, Well plet with silver sheen; And ap.r.o.n, set with mony a dice Of needle-wark sae rare, Wove by nae hand, as ye may guess, But that of Fairly fair.

In his journey, Hardyknute falls in with a wounded and deserted knight, to whom he makes an offer of a.s.sistance:

With smileless look and visage wan, The wounded knight replied: 'Kind chieftain, your intent pursue, For here I maun abide.

'To me nae after day nor nicht Can e'er be sweet or fair; But soon beneath some dropping tree, Cauld death shall end my care.'

A field of battle is thus described:

In thraws of death, with wallowit cheek, All panting on the plain, The fainting corps[1] of warriors lay, Ne'er to arise again; Ne'er to return to native land, Nae mair, with blithesome sounds, To boast the glories of the day, And shaw their s.h.i.+ning wounds.

On Norway's coast, the widowed dame May wash the rock with tears, May lang look o'er the s.h.i.+pless seas, Before her mate appears.

'Cease, Emma, cease to hope in vain; Thy lord lies in the clay; The valiant Scots nae rievers thole[2]

To carry life away.'

[1] A Scotticism, plural of corp, a body.

[2] Permit no robbers, &c.

I must now summon up, for a comparison with these specimens of the modern antique in ballad lore, the famous and admired poem of _Sir Patrick Spence_. It has come to us mainly through two copies--one comparatively short, published in Percy's _Reliques_, as 'from two ma.n.u.script copies transmitted from Scotland;' the other, containing more details, in Scott's _Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border_, also 'from two ma.n.u.script copies,' but 'collated with several verses recited by the editor's friend, Robert Hamilton, Esq., advocate.' It is nowhere pretended that any _ancient_ ma.n.u.script of this poem has ever been seen or heard of. It acknowledgedly has come to us from modern ma.n.u.scripts, as it might be taken down from modern reciters; although Percy prints it in the same quasi antique spelling as that in which _Hardyknute_ had appeared, where being _quhar_; sea, _se_; come, _c.u.m_; year, _zeir_; &c. It will be necessary here to reprint the whole ballad, as given originally by Percy, introducing, however, within brackets the additional details of Scott's copy:[3]

The king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine: 'O whar will I get a gude sailr, To sail this s.h.i.+p of mine?'

Up and spak an eldern knight, Sat at the king's right knee: 'Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailr That sails upon the sea.'

The king has written a braid letter, And signed it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spence, Was walking on the sand.

['To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The king's daughter of Noroway, 'Tis thou maun bring her hame.']

The first line that Sir Patrick read, A loud lauch lauched he: The next line that Sir Patrick read, The tear blinded his ee.

'O wha is this hae done this deed, This ill deed done to me; To send me out this time o' the year, To sail upon the sea?

['Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet, Our s.h.i.+p must sail the faem; The king's daughter of Noroway, 'Tis we must fetch her hame.'

They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, Wi' a' the speed they may; They hae landed in Noroway, Upon a Wodensday.

They had na been a week, a week, In Noroway, but twae, When that the lords of Noroway 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.

'For I hae broucht as much white monie As gane[4] my men and me, And I broucht a half-fou o' gude red gowd, Out ower the sea wi' me.']

'Mak haste, mak haste, my merry men a', Our gude s.h.i.+p sails the morn.'

'O say na sae, my master dear,[5]

For I fear a deadly storm.

'Late, late yestreen, I saw the new moon Wi' the auld moon in her arm; And I fear, I fear, my master dear, That we will come to harm.'

[They had na sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, And gurly grew the sea.

The ankers brak, and the topmasts lap, It was sic a deadly storm, And the waves cam o'er the broken s.h.i.+p, Till a' her sides were torn.]

O our Scots n.o.bles were richt laith To weet their cork-heeled shoon; But lang ere a' the play was played, Their hats they swam aboon.[6]

[And mony was the feather-bed That flattered on the faem; And mony was the gude lord's son That never mair cam hame.

The ladies wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair, A' for the sake of their true loves, For them they'll see nae mair.]

O lang, lang may the ladies sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, Or ere they see Sir Patrick Spence Come sailing to the land.

O lang, lang may the ladies stand, Wi' their gold kames in their hair, Waiting for their ain dear lords, For they'll see them nae mair.

Half ower, half ower to Aberdour,[7]

It's fifty fathom deep; And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spence Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.

[3] Only omitting the five verses supplied by Mr Hamilton, as they appear redundant.

[4] Serve.

[5] Variation in Scott:

Now ever alak_e_, my master dear.

[6] Variation in Scott: