=all' ê toi prôtista leôn genet' êugeneios,
autar epeita drakôn kai pardalis êde megas sus;
gigneto d' hugron hudôr kai dendreon hupsipetêlon.=
_Odyssey_, IV. 456-8.
+The Text+ here given is from Johnson's _Museum_, communicated by Burns.
Scott's version (1802), _The Young Tamlane_, contained certain verses,
'obtained from a gentleman residing near Langholm, which are said to be
very ancient, though the language is somewhat of a modern cast.' --'Of a
grossly modern invention,' says Child, 'and as unlike popular verse as
anything can be.' Here is a specimen:--
'They sing, inspired with love and joy,
Like skylarks in the air;
Of solid sense, or thought that's grave,
You'll find no traces there.'
A copy in the Glenriddell MSS. corresponds very closely with the one
here printed, doubtless owing to Burns's friendship with Riddell. Both
probably were derived from one common source.
+The Story.+--Although the ballad as it stands is purely Scottish, its
main feature, the retransformation of Tam Lin, is found in popular
mythology even before Homer's time.
A Cretan ballad, taken down about 1820-30, relates that a young peasant,
falling in love with a nereid, was advised by an old woman to seize his
beloved by the hair just before cock-crow, and hold her fast, whatever
transformation she might undergo. He did so; the nymph became in turn a
dog, a snake, a camel, and fire. In spite of all, he retained his hold;
and at the next crowing of the cock she regained her beauty, and
accompanied him home. After a year, in which she spoke no word, she bore
a son. The peasant again applied to the old woman for a cure, and was
advised to tell his wife that if she would not speak, he would throw the
baby into the oven. On his carrying out the old woman's suggestion the
nereid cried out, 'Let go my child, dog!' tore her baby from him, and
vanished.
This tale was current among the Cretan peasantry in 1820. Two thousand
years before, Apollodorus had told much the same story of Peleus and
Thetis (_Bibliotheca_, iii. 13). The chief difference is that it was
Thetis who placed her son on the fire, to make him immortal, and Peleus
who cried out. _The Tayl of the yong Tamlene_ is mentioned in the
_Complaint of Scotland_ (1549).
Carterhaugh is about a mile from Selkirk, at the confluence of the
Ettrick and the Yarrow.
The significance of 34.3, 'Then throw me into well water,' is lost in
the present version, by the position of the line _after_ the 'burning
gleed,' as it seems the reciter regarded the well-water merely as a
means of extinguishing the gleed. But the immersion in water has a
meaning far deeper and more interesting than that. It is a widespread
and ancient belief in folklore that immersion in water (or sometimes
milk) is indispensable to the recovery of human shape, after existence
in a supernatural shape, or _vice versâ_. The version in the Glenriddell
MSS. rightly gives it as the _last_ direction to Janet, to be adopted
when the transformations are at an end:--
'First dip me in a stand o' milk,
And then a stand o' water.'
For the beginning of _Tam Lin_, compare the meeting of Akin and Lady
Margaret in Elmond-wood in _Young Akin_.