Part 56

THE WIFE OF USHER’S WELL.—p. 24

Here

“The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,”

having a middle rhyme, can scarcely be of extreme antiquity. Probably, in the original poem, the dead return to rebuke the extreme grief of the Mother, but the poem is perhaps really more affecting in the absence of a didactic motive. Scott obtained it from an old woman in West Lothian. Probably the reading “fashes,” (troubles), “in the flood” is correct, not “fishes,” or “freshes.” The mother desires that the sea may never cease to be troubled till her sons return (verse 4, line 2). The peculiar doom of women dead in child-bearing occurs even in Aztec mythology.

THE TWA CORBIES.—p. 26

From the third volume of Border Minstrelsy, derived by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe from a traditional version. The English version, “Three Ravens,” was published in Melismata, by T. Ravensworth (1611). In Scots, the lady “has ta’en another mate” his hawk and hound have deserted the dead knight. In the English song, the hounds watch by him, the hawks keep off carrion birds, as for the lady—

“She buried him before the prime, She was dead herselfe ere evensong time.”

Probably the English is the earlier version.

THE BONNIE EARL OF MURRAY.—p. 27

Huntly had a commission to apprehend the Earl, who was in the disgrace of James VI. Huntly, as an ally of Bothwell, asked him to surrender at Donibristle, in Fife; he would not yield to his private enemy, the house was burned, and Murray was slain, Huntly gashing his face. “You have spoiled a better face than your own,” said the dying Earl (1592). James Melville mentions contemporary ballads on the murder. Ramsay published the ballad in his Tea Table Miscellany, and it is often sung to this day.

CLERK SAUNDERS.—p. 30

First known as published in Border Minstrelsy (1802). The apparition of the lover is borrowed from “Sweet Willie’s Ghost.” The evasions practised by the lady, and the austerities vowed by her have many Norse, French, and Spanish parallels in folk-poetry. Scott’s version is “made up” from several sources, but is, in any case, verse most satisfactory as poetry.

WALY, WALY.—p. 35

From Ramsay’s Tea Table Miscellany, a curiously composite gathering of verses. There is a verse, obviously a variant, in a sixteenth century song, cited by Leyden. St. Anthon’s Well is on a hill slope of Arthur’s Seat, near Holyrood. Here Jeanie Deans trysted with her sister’s seducer, in The Heart of Midlothian. The Cairn of Nichol Mushat, the wife-murderer, is not far off. The ruins of Anthony’s Chapel are still extant.

LOVE GREGOR.—p. 37

There are French and Romaic variants of this ballad. “Lochroyal,” where the ballad is localized, is in Wigtownshire, but the localization varies. The “tokens” are as old as the Return of Odysseus, in the Odyssey: his token is the singular construction of his bridal bed, attached by him to a living tree-trunk. A similar legend occurs in Chinese. See Gerland’s Alt-Giechische Märchen.

THE QUEEN’S MARIE—MARY HAMILTON.—p. 41

A made-up copy from Scott’s edition of 1833. This ballad has caused a great deal of controversy. Queen Mary had no Mary Hamilton among her Four Maries. No Marie was executed for child-murder. But we know, from Knox, that ballads were recited against the Maries, and that one of the Mary’s chamberwomen was hanged, with her lover, a pottinger, or apothecary, for getting rid of her infant. These last facts were certainly quite basis enough for a ballad, the ballad echoing, not history, but rumour, and rumour adapted to the popular taste. Thus the ballad might have passed unchallenged, as a survival, more or less modified in time, of Queen Mary’s period. But in 1719 a Mary Hamilton, a Maid of Honour, of Scottish descent, was executed in Russia, for infanticide. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe conceived that this affair was the origin of the ballad, and is followed by Mr. Child.

We reply (1) The ballad has almost the largest number of variants on record. This is a proof of antiquity. Variants so many, differing in all sorts of points, could not have arisen between 1719, and the age of Burns, who quotes the poem.

(2) This is especially improbable, because, in 1719, the old vein of ballad poetry had run dry, popular song had chosen other forms, and no literary imitator could have written Mary Hamilton in 1719.

(3) There is no example of a popular ballad in which a contemporary event, interesting just because it is contemporary, is thrown back into a remote age.

(4) The name, Mary Hamilton, is often not given to the heroine in variants of the ballad. She is of several names and ranks in the variants.

(5) As Mr. Child himself remarked, the “pottinger” of the real story of Queen Mary’s time occurs in one variant. There was no “pottinger” in the Russian affair.

All these arguments, to which others might be added, seem fatal to the late date and modern origin of the ballad, and Mr. Child’s own faith in the hypothesis was shaken, if not overthrown.

KINMONT WILLIE.—p. 45

From The Border Minstrelsy. The account in Satchells has either been based on the ballad, or the ballad is based on Satchells. After a meeting, on the Border of Salkeld of Corby, and Scott of Haining, Kinmont Willie was seized by the English as he rode home from the tryst. Being “wanted,” he was lodged in Carlisle Castle, and this was a breach of the day’s truce. Buccleugh, as warder, tried to obtain Willie’s release by peaceful means. These failing, Buccleugh did what the ballad reports, April 13, 1596. Harden and Goudilands were with Buccleugh, being his neighbours near Branxholme. Dicky of Dryhope, with others, Armstrongs, was also true to the call of duty. A few verses in the ballad are clearly by aut Gualterus aut diabolus, and none the worse for that. Salkeld, of course, was not really slain; and, if the men were “left for dead,” probably they were not long in that debatable condition. In the rising of 1745 Prince Charlie’s men forded Eden as boldly as Buccleuch, the Prince saving a drowning Highlander with his own hand.

JAMIE TELFER.—p. 52

Scott, for once, was wrong in his localities. The Dodhead of the poem is not that near Singlee, in Ettrick, but a place of the same name, near Skelfhill, on the southern side of Teviot, within three miles of Stobs, where Telfer vainly seeks help from Elliot. The other Dodhead is at a great distance from Stobs, up Borthwick Water, over the tableland, past Clearburn Loch and Buccleugh, and so down Ettrick, past Tushielaw. The Catslockhill is not that on Yarrow, near Ladhope, but another near Branxholme, whence it is no far cry to Branxholme Hall. Borthwick Water, Goudilands (below Branxholme), Commonside (a little farther up Teviot), Allanhaugh, and the other places of the Scotts, were all easily “warned.” There are traces of a modern hand in this excellent ballad. The topography is here corrected from MS. notes in a first edition of the Minstrelsy, in the library of Mr. Charles Grieve at Branxholme’ Park, a scion of “auld Jock Grieve” of the Coultart Cleugh. Names linger long in pleasant Teviotdale.