The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship

Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, And why sae sad gang ye,? This, however, is not all. It was a song to the tune of Cf-ilderoy which was attributed to Sir Alexander Halket Johnson's Scots Musical Museum] namely, tlio well-known Ah, Chloris, which turns out to be a composition of Sir Charles Sedley, inserted by him in a play entitled the Mulberry Garden, which was acted in And whaten penance will ye drie for that, My dear son, now tell me,?

And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife, When ye gang over the sea,? There is certainly none prior to which exhibits this kind of diction. When we continue our search beyond the bounds of Percy's ReliqueSj we readily find ballads passing as old, which are not unlike the above, either in regard to their general beauty, or special strains of thought and expression.

The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship

In Johnie o' Bradislee, the hero is a young unlicensed hunts- man, who goes out to the deer-forest against his mother's advice, and has a fatal encounter with seven foresters. Observe the description of the youth: His cheeks were like the roses red, His neck was like the snaw ; He was the bonniest gentleman My eyes they ever saw. 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.

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This is mercery of the eighteenth, and no earlier century. 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. Johnie kills the seven foresters, but receives a deadly hurt. He then speaks in the following strain: It may be asked, is there anything in the older Scottish poets comparable to them?

Second, how like is the verse regarding the starling to one in Gil Morrice! My mother tarries lang. Mary Hamilton describes the tragic fate of an attendant on Queen Mary, brought to the gallows for destroying her own infant. The reflections of the heroine at the last sad moment are expressed in the same rich strain of sentiment as some of the passages of other ballads already quoted, and with remarkable parallelisms in terms: The first of the above verses is evidently a cast from the same mould of thought as Braclislee's mother's con- cluding lament, and Young Waters's last words just quoted.

The resemblance is not of that kind which arises from the use of literary commonplaces or stock phrases: In the Gay Gos-hawk, a gentleman commissions the bird to go on a mission to his mistress, who is secluded from him among her relations, and tell her how he dies by long waiting for her ; whereupon she returns an answer by the same messenger, to the effect that she -will presently meet him at Mary's Kirk for the effecting of their nuptials. The opening of the poem is just a variation of Bradislee's apostrophe to his bird-messenger: Or mourn ye for the southern lass, Whom ye may not win near?

Here is a fourth instance, very like one artist's work, truly. The lover describes his mistress in terms recalling Bradislce: And first he sang a low, low note, And syne he sang a clear ; And aye the owerword o' the sang Was, ' Your love can no win here. Aye the owerword o' his sang Was, ' My mother tarries Ling. Then up and rose her seven brethren, And hewed to her a bier ; They hewed it frae the solid aik, Laid it ower wi' silver clear.

Then up and gat her seven sisters, And sewed to her a kell ; And every steek that they put in Sewed to a silver bell. Here we have the same style of luxurious description of which we have already seen so many examples so different from the usually bald style of the real homely ballads of the people. It is, further, very remarkable that in Cleric Saundcrs it is seven brothers of the heroine who come in and detect her lover ; and in the Douglas Tragedy, when the pair are eloping, Lord William spies his mistress's. The ballad of Pause Foodrage, which Sir Walter Scott printed for the first time, describes a successful conspiracy by Foodrage and others against King Honour and his queen.

The king being murdered, the queen is told, that if she brings forth a son, it will be put to death likewise ; so she escapes, and, bringing a male child into the world, induces the lady of Wise William to take charge of it as her own, while she herself takes charge of the lady's daughter.

The unfortunate queen then arranges a future conduct for both parties, in language violently figurative: Madam, how does my dow? He has set his bent bow to his breast, And leapt the castle-wa', And soon he has seized on Fause Foodrp. The slaying of Foodrage and marriage of the turtle-clow wind up the ballad. Now, is not the adoption of the term, 'gay gos- hawk' in this ballad, calculated to excite a very strong suspicion as to a community of authorship with the other, in which a gay gos-hawk figures so prominently?

But this is not all. Norse e'en like gray gos-hawk stared wild. He felt compelled, he tells us, ' to believe that the author of Hardyknute copied from the old ballad, if the coincidence be not altogether accidental. And when he cam to Barnard's yctt, He would neither chap nor ca', But set his bent bow to his breast, And lightly lap the wa'. It may fairly be said that, in ordinary literature, coincidences like this are never ' accidental.

It was probably one of the earlier compositions of its author. The Lass o' Lochryan describes the hapless voyage of a maiden mother in search of her love Gregory. In the particulars of sea- faring and the description of the vessel, Sir Patrick Spence is strongly recalled. She has garred build a bonny ship; It 's a' covered o'er wi' pearl ; And at every needle-tack was in 't There hung a siller bell.

Let the reader revert to the description of the bier prepared for the seeming dead lady in the Gay Gos -hawk. She had na sailed a league but twa, Or scantly had she three, Till she met wi' a rude rover, Was sailing on the sea. The reader will remark in Sir Patrick: On arriving at love Gregory's castle, beside the sea, the lady calls: The wind blew loud, the sea grew rough, And dashed the boat on shore ; Fair Annie floated on the faem, But the babie raise no more.

And first he kissed her cherry check, And syne he kissed her chin ; And syne he kissed her rosy lips There was nae breath within. 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, There is a considerable number of other ballads which are scarcely less liable to suspicion as modern compositions, and which are all marked more or less by the peculiarities seen in the above group.

Several of them are based, like the one just noticed, on irregular love, which they commonly treat with little reproach, and usually with a romantic tenderness. In Young Huntin, otherwise called Earl Richard, the hero 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: There is a dead man in my bower, I wish he were away. O she has served the lang tables Wi' the white bread and the wine ; And aye she drank the wan water, To keep her colour fine.

The expression, the wan water, occurs in several of this group of ballads. Thus, in Johnie of Bradislec: Is there ever a bird in this hale forest Will do as mickle for me, As dip its wing in the wan water, And straik it o'er my ee-bree?

See further in Young Huntin: And they liae ridden along, along, All the long summer's tide, Until they came to the wan water, The deepest place in Clyde. The circumstance is very suspicious, for we find this phrase in no other ballads. In Clerk Sounders, the hero is slain in his mistress's bower, by the rage of one of her seven brothers, whose act is described in precisely the same terms as the slaughter of Gil Morricc by the bold baron: He 's ta'en out his trusty brand, And straikt it on the strae, And through and through Clerk Saimdei-j' side He 's gart it come and gae.

There came a ghost to Margaret's door, With many a grievous groan ; And aye he tirled at the pin, But answer made she none. I pray thee, speak to me ; Give me my faith and troth, Margaret, As I gave it to thee. Or any room at your side, Willie, Wherein that I may creep? To kiss check and chin in succession is very peculiar; and it is by such peculiar ideas that identity of authorship is indicated, f That is, so exactly measured. But next follow two stanzas, which manifestly have been patched on by some contemporary of Ramsay: No such conclusion, perhaps, was needed, for it may be sus- pected that the verse here printed sixth is the true finale of the story, accidentally transferred from its proper place.

There is a slight affinity between the above and a ballad entitled Tarn Lane, to which Scott drew special attention in his Border Minstrelsy, by making it a peg for eighty pages of prose disserta- tion On the Fairies of Popular Superstition. It describes a lover as lost to his mistress, by being reft away into fairy-land, and as recovered by an effort of courage and presence of mind on her part. It may be remarked how often before we have seen maidens described as wearing gold in their hair.

One maiden defies the prohibition: Janet has kilted her green kirtle A little aboon her knee, And she has braided her yellow hair A little aboon her bree. This, it will be observed, is all but the very same description applied to Margaret in the preceding ballad. The narrative goes on: She had na pu'd a red, red rose, A rose but barely three, Till up and starts a wee, wee man At Lady Janet's knee. Bemember Sir Patrick's voyage: They had na sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three. I bear "a tongue ne'er wi' her spoke, An eye that ne'er her saw.

For example, the progress of the seeming funeral of the lady in the Gay Gos-hawk: At the first kirk of fair Scotland, They gart the bells be rung; At the second kirk of fair Scotland, They gart the mass be sung. At the third kirk of fair Scotland, They dealt gold for her sake ; And the fourth kirk of fair Scotland, Her true love met them at. Or the following, in Sweet Willie and Fair Annie, which is almost the same incident and relation of circumstances as the said seeming funeral ; only the lady in this case is dead: The firsten bower that he cam till, There was right dowie wark ; Her mother and her sisters three Were making to Annie a sark.

The next bower that he cam till, There was right dowie cheer ; Her father and her seven brethren Were making to Annie a bier. The lasten bower that he cam till, heavy was his care ; The waxen lights were burning bright, And fair Annie streekit there. In Scott's version of Tarn Lane there are some stanzas of so modern a cast as to prove that this poem has been at least tampered with.

For example, the account o fairy life: Dixon, all of which, besides others which must rest unnamed, Lear traces of the same authorship with the ballads already brought under notice. It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the successors of Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a particle of positive evidence for their having existed before the eighteenth century.

Overlooking the one given by Kamsay 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 litera- ture. As little does old literature contain any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collection of Scottish poetry in , wholly overlooks them. Ramsay, as we see, caught up only one. Even Herd, in , only gathered a few fragments of some of these poems.

It was reserved for Sir Walter Scott and Robert 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 a certain 'Mrs Brown of Falkland,' who seems to have been the wife of the Rev. Andrew Brown, minister of that parish in Fife is known to have been the daughter of Professor Thomas Gordon, of King's College, Aberdeen and is stated to have derived her stores of legendary lore from the memory of her aunt, a Mrs Farquhar, the wife of a small proprietor in Braemar, who had spent the best part of her life among flocks and herds, but lived latterly in Aberdeen.

At the suggestion of Mr William Tytler, a son of Mrs Brown wrote down a parcel of the ballads which her aunt had heard in her youth from the recitation of nurses and old women. When we come to consider the internal evidence, what do we find? We find that these poems, in common with those published by Percy, are composed in a style of romantic beauty and eleva- tion 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 Eeidswire. They are unlike the Border ballads, such as Dick o the Coiv, and Jock o' the Syde, commemorating domestic events of the latter part of the sixteenth century. Not less different are they from a large mass of ballads, which have latterly been published by Mr Peter Buchan and others, involving romantic inci- dents, it is true, or eccentricities in private life, but in such rude and homely strains as speak strongly of a plebeian origin.

In the ballads here brought under question, the characters are usually persons of condition, generally richly dressed, often well mounted, and of a dignified bearing towards all inferior people.

The page, the nurse, the waiting-woman, the hound, the hawk, and other animals connected with the pageantry of high life, are prominently introduced. Yet the characters and incidents are alike relieved from all clear connection with any particular age: It may be allowably said, there is a tone of breeding throughout these ballads, such as is never found in the productions of rustic genius.

The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship by Robert Chambers

One marked feature the pathos of deep female affections the sacrifice and the suffering which these so often involve runs through nearly the whole. 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.

There is but one exception to what has been observed on the obscurity of the epoch pointed to for the incidents the dresses, properties, and decorations, are sometimes of a modern cast.

The writer if we may be allowed to speculate on a single writer seems to have been unable to resist an inclination to indulge in description of the external furnishings of the heroes and heroines, or rather, perhaps, has been desirous of making out effect from these particulars ; but the finery of the court of Charles II. Another point of great importance in the matter of internal evidence, is the isolatedness of these ballads in respect of English traditionary literature. The Scottish muse has not always gone hand in hand with the English in point of time, hut she has done so in all other respects.

Any literature we had from the beginning of the seventeenth century downwards, was always sensibly tinged by what had immediately before been in vogue in the south. Nor is it easy to see how a people occupying part of the same island, and speaking essentially the same language, should have avoided this communion of literary taste j but the ballads in question are wholly unlike any English ballads. Look over Percy, Evans, or Mr Collier's suite of Roxburghe Ballads, giving those which were popular in London during the seventeenth century, and you find not a trace of the style and manner of these Scottish romantic ballads.

Neither, it would appear, had one of them found its way into popularity in England before the time of Percy ; for, had it been otherwise, he would have found them either in print or in the mouths of the people. Whose was this mind, is a different question, on which no such confident decision may for the present be arrived at ; but I have no hesitation in saying that, from the internal resemblances traced on from HardyJcnute 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.

It may be demanded that something should be done to verify, or at least support, the allegation here made as to the peculiar literary character of the suspected ballads. This is, of course, a point to be best made out by a perusal of the entire body of this class of compositions, and scarcely by any other means. Mr Jamieson's belief seems remark- ably ill supported, and as it has never obtained any adherents among Scottish ballad editors, I feel entitled to pass it over with but this slight notice.

Be it observed, when an uneducated person speaks of knights, lords, and kings, or of dames and damosels, he reduces all to one homely level. He indulges in no diplomatic periphrases. It is simply, the king said this, and the lord said that this thing was done, and that thing was done the catastrophe or denouement comes by a single stroke.

This we find in the true stall-ballads. A vulgar, prosaic, and drawling character pervades the whole class, with few exceptions a fact which ought to give no surprise, for does not all experience shew, that literature of any kind, to have effect, requires for its production a mind of some cultivation, and really good verse flowing from an uninstructed source is what never was, is not now, and never will be? With these remarks, I usher in a typical ballad of the common class one taken down many years ago from the singing of an old man in the south of Scotland: It fell upon a certain day, When the king from home he chanced to be, The king's jewels they were stolen all, And they laid the blame on James Hatelie.

And lie is into prison cast, And I wat he is condemned to dee ; For there was not a man in all the court To speak a word for James Hatelie. But the king's eldest daughter she loved him well, But known her love it might not be ; And she has stolen the prison keys, And gane in and discoursed wi' James Hatelie. For I'll make a vow, and I'll keep it true, You's never be the worse of me. And be it observed, the theory as to our ballads is, that they have been transmitted from old time, undergoing modifications from the minds of nurses, and other humble reciters, as they came along.

If so, they ought to have presented the same plebeian strain of ideas and phraseology as James Hatelie ; but we see they do not: Here I may, once for all, in opposition to Professor Aytoun and others, express my belief that the ballads in question are for the most part printed nearly, and, in some instances, entirely, in the condition in which they were left by the author.

In Edward, I question if a line has been corrupted or a word altered. Sir Patrick Spence and Gilderoy are both so rounded and complete, so free, moreover, from all vulgar terms, that I feel nearly equally confident about them. All those which Percy obtained in manu- scripts from Scotland, are neat finished compositions, as much so as any ballad of Tickell or Shenstone. Those from Mrs Brown's manuscript have also an author's finish clearly impressed on them.

It is a mere assumption that they have been sent down, with large modifications, from old times. Had it been true, the ballads would have been full of vulgarisms, as we find to be the condition of certain of them which Peter Buchan picked up among the common people, after shall we say seventy or eighty years of traditionary handling. Now, no such depravation appears in the versions printed by Percy, Scott, and Jamieson.

It may be objected to the arguments founded on the great number of parallel passages, that these are but the stock phrase- ology of all ballad-mongers, and form no just proof of unity of authorship.

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If this were true, it might be an objection of some force ; but it is not true. The formulas in question are to be found hardly at all in any of the rustic or homely ballads. They are not to be found in any ballads which there is good reason to believe so old as the early part of the seventeenth century. They are to be found in no ballads which may even doubtfully be affiliated to England. All this, of course, can only be fully ascertained by a careful perusal of some large collection of ballads. Yet, even in such a case, a few examples may be viewed with interest, and not unprofitably.

Of the plebeian ballads, a speci- men has just been adduced. Let us proceed, then, to exemplify the ballads of the seventeenth century. First, take Fair Margaret and Sweet William, which Percy brought forward from a stall copy as, apparently, the ballad quoted in Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle; though subjected to some alteration during the intermediate century and a half. It is as follows: As it fell out on a long summer day, Two lovers they sat on a hill ; They sat together that long summer day, And could not take their fill. Then doun she layed her ivorie combe, And braided her hair in twain: She went alive out of her bouir, But never cam alive in 't again.

When day was gone, and niclit was coma. And all men fast asleip, Then came the spirit of fair Margaret, And stood at William's feet. God give you joy of your gay bride-bed, And me of my winding-sheet! I dreimt my bouir was full of red swina, And my bride-bed full of blood. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up. To ask other readers questions about The Romantic Scottish Ballads , please sign up.

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Robert Chambers was a Scottish publisher and scientific author of the Victorian period. He was noted for his early thoughts on evolution and for his work with his older brother, William, in publishing many influential texts on Victorian science and politics.