wore the maud of a shepherd.” He had none of Burns’ education. In 1802
he was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of research
in the crabbed MSS. of the sixteenth century. Yet he gets at legendary
persons known to us only through these MSS. He makes a ballad named
_Auld Maitland_ about them. Through him a farm-lass at Blackhouse
acquires some stanzas which Laidlaw copies. In a fortnight Hogg sends
Laidlaw the whole ballad, with the pedigree—his uncle, his mother, their
father, and old Andrew Muir, servant to the famous Rev. Mr. Boston of
Ettrick. The copy takes in Scott and Leyden. Later, Ritson makes no
objection. Mrs. Hogg recites it to Scott, and, according to Hogg, gives
a casual “auld Babby Maitland” as the original source.
Is the whole fraud conceivable? Hogg, we must believe, puts in two
stanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or
“gangrel scrape-gut” style, and the same with intent to deceive. He
introduces “Billop-Grace” as a deceptive popular corruption of _Ville de
Grace_. This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most
artful modern “fakers.” One stanza (xlix.)—
But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear,
Had many battles seen—
seems to me very recent, whoever made it. Scott, in lxii., gives a
variant of “some reciters,” for “That Edward once lay under me,” they
read “That Englishman lay under me.” This, if a false story, was an
example of an art more delicate than Scott elsewhere exhibits.
One does not know what Professor Child would have said to my arguments.
He never gave a criticism in detail of the ballad and of the
circumstances in which Scott acquired it. A man most reasonable, most
open to conviction, he would, I think, have confessed his perplexity.
Scott did not interpolate a single stanza, even where, as Hogg wrote, he
suspected a lacuna in the text. He neither cut out nor improved the
cryingly modern stanzas. He kept them, as he kept several stanzas in
_Tamlane_, which, so he told Laidlaw, were obviously recent, but were in
a copy which he procured through Lady Dalkeith. {51a}
By neither adding to nor subtracting from his MS. copy of _Auld
Maitland_, Scott proved, I think, his respect for a poem which, in its
primal form, he believed to be very ancient. We know, at all events,
that ballads on the Maitland heroes were current about 1580. So, late in
the sixteenth century, were the ballads quoted by Hume of Godscroft, on
the murder of the Knight of Liddesdale (1354), the murder of the young
Earl of Douglas in Edinburgh Castle (1440), and the battle of Otterburn.
Of these three, only _Otterburne_ was recovered by Herd, published in
1776. The other two are lost; and there is no _prima facie_ reason why a
Maitland ballad, of the sort current in 1580, should not, in favourable
circumstances, have survived till 1802.
As regards the Shepherd’s ideas of honesty in ballad-collecting at this
early period, I have quoted his letter to Laidlaw of 20th July 1802.
Again, in the case of his text from recitation of the _Ballad of
Otterburne_ (published by Scott in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1806), he gave the
Sheriff a full account of his mode of handling his materials, and Scott
could get more minute details by questioning him.
To this text of _Otterburne_, freely attacked by Colonel Elliot, in
apparent ignorance, as before, of the published facts of the case, and of
the manuscript, we next turn our attention. In the meantime, Scott no
more conspired to forge _Auld Maitland_ than he conspired to forge the
Pentateuch. That Hogg did not forge _Auld Maitland_ I think I have made
as nearly certain as anything in this region can be. I think that the
results are a lesson to professors of the Higher Criticism of Homer.
THE BALLAD OF OTTERBURNE
SCOTT’S version of the _Ballad of Otterburne_, as given first in _The
Minstrelsy_ of 1806, comes under Colonel Elliot’s most severe censure.
He concludes in favour of “the view that it consists partly of stanzas
from Percy’s _Reliques_, which have undergone emendations calculated to
disguise the source from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern
fabrication, and partly of a very few stanzas and lines from Herd’s
version” (1776). {53a}
As a matter of fact we know, though Colonel Elliot does not, the whole
process of construction of the _Otterburne_ in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1806.
Professor Child published all the texts with a letter. {53b} It is a
pity that Colonel Elliot overlooks facts in favour of conjecture.
Concerning historical facts he is not more thorough in research. The
story, in Percy’s _Reliques_, of the slaying of Douglas by Percy, “is, so
far as I know, supported neither by history nor by tradition.” {53c} If
unfamiliar with the English chroniclers (in Latin) of the end of the
fourteenth century, Colonel Elliot could find them cited by Professor
Child. Knyghton, Walsingham, and the continuator of Higden (Malverne),
all assert that Percy killed Douglas with his own hand. {54a} The
English ballad of _Otterburne_ (in MS. of about 1550) gives this version
of Douglas’s death. It is erroneous. Froissart, a contemporary, had
accounts of the battle from combatants, both English and Scottish.
Douglas, fighting in the front of the van, on a moonlight night, was
slain by three lance-wounds received in the mellay. The English knew not
whom they had slain.
The interesting point is that, while the Scottish ballads give either the
English version of Percy’s death (in _Minstrelsy_, 1806) or another
account mentioned by Hume of Godscroft (_circ._ 1610), that he was slain
by one of his own men, the Scottish versions are _all_ deeply affected in
an important point by Froissart’s contemporary narrative, which has not
affected the English versions. {54b} The point is that the death of
Douglas was by his order concealed from both parties.
When both the English version in Percy’s _Reliques_ (from a MS. of about
1550), and Scott’s version of 1806, mention a “challenge to battle”
between Percy and Douglas, Colonel Elliot calls this incident “probably
purely fanciful and imaginary,” and suspects Scott’s version of being
made up and altered from the English text. But the challenge which
resulted in the battle of Otterburn is not fanciful and imaginary!
It is mentioned by Froissart. Douglas, he says, took Percy’s pennon in
an encounter under Newcastle. Percy vowed that Douglas would never carry
the pennon out of Northumberland; Douglas challenged him to come and take
it from his tent door that night; but Percy was constrained not to accept
the challenge. The Scots then marched homewards, but Douglas insisted on
besieging Otterburn Castle; here he passed some days on purpose to give
Percy a chance of a fight; Percy’s force surprised the Scots; they were
warned, as in the ballads, suddenly, by a man who galloped up; the fight
began; and so on.
Now Herd’s version says nothing of Douglas at Newcastle; the whole scene
is at Otterburn. On the other hand, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s MS.
text _did_ bring Douglas to Newcastle. Of this Colonel Elliot says
nothing. The English version says _nothing of Percy’s loss of his pennon
to Douglas_ (nor does Sharpe’s), and gives the challenge and tryst.
Scott’s version says nothing of Percy’s pennon, but Douglas takes Percy’s
_sword_ and vows to carry it home. Percy’s challenge, in the English
version, is accompanied by a gross absurdity. He bids Douglas wait at
Otterburn, where, _pour tout potage_ to an army absurdly stated at 40,000
men, Percy suggests venison and pheasants! In the Scottish version Percy
offers tryst at Otterburn. Douglas answers that, though Otterburn has no
supplies—nothing but deer and wild birds—he will there tarry for Percy.
This is chivalrous, and, in Scott’s version, Douglas understands war. In
the English version Percy does not. (To these facts I return, giving
more details.) Colonel Elliot supposes some one (Scott, I daresay) to
have taken Percy’s,—the English version,—altered it to taste, concealed
the alterations, as in this part of the challenge, by inverting the
speeches and writing new stanzas of the fight at Otterburn, used a very
little of Herd (which is true), and inserted modern stanzas.
Now, first, as regards pilfering from the English version, that version,
and Herd’s undisputed version, have undeniably a common source. Neither,
as it stands, is “original”; of an _original_ contemporary Otterburn
ballad we have no trace. By 1550, when such ballads were certainly
current both in England and Scotland, they were late, confused by
tradition, and, of what we possess, say Herd’s, and the English MS. of
1550, all were interblended.
The Scots ballad version, known to Hume of Godscroft (1610), may have
been taken from the English, and altered, as Child thought, or the
English, as Motherwell maintained, may have been borrowed from the Scots,
and altered. One or the other process undeniably occurred; the second
poet, who made the changes, introduced the events most favourable to his
country, and left out the less favourable. By Scott’s time, or Herd’s,
the versions were much degraded through decay of memory, bad penny
broadsides (lost), and uneducated reciters. Herd’s version has forgotten
the historic affair of the capture of Percy’s pennon (and of the whole
movement on Newcastle, preserved in Sharpe’s and Scott’s); Scott’s
remembers the encounter at Newcastle, forgets the pennon, and substitutes
the capture by Douglas of Percy’s sword. The Englishman deliberately
omits the capture of the pennon. The Scots version (here altered by Sir
Walter) makes Percy wound Douglas at Otterburn—
Till backward he did flee.
Now Colonel Elliot has no right, I conceive, to argue that this Scots
version, with the Newcastle incident, the captured sword, the challenge,
the “backward flight” of Douglas, were introduced by a modern (Scott?)
who was deliberately “faking” the English version. There is no reason
why tradition should _not_ have retained historical incidents in the
Scottish form; it is a mere assumption that a modern borrowed and
travestied these incidents from Percy’s _Reliques_. We possess Hogg’s
_unedited_ original of Scott’s version of 1806 (an original MS. never
hinted at by Colonel Elliot), and it retains clear traces of being
contaminated with a version of _The Huntiss of Chevet_, popular in 1459,
as we read in _The Complaynte of Scotland_ of that date. There is also
an old English version of _The Hunting of the Cheviot_ (1550 or later,
Bodleian Library). The _unedited_ text of Scott’s _Otterburne_ then
contained traces of _The Huntiss of Chevet_; the two were mixed in
popular memory. In short, Scott’s text, manipulated slightly by him in a
way which I shall describe, was _a thing surviving in popular memory_:
how confusedly will be explained.
The differences between the English version of 1550 and the Scots
(collected for Scott by Hogg), are of old standing. I am not sure that
there was not, before 1550, a Scottish ballad, which the English
ballad-monger of that date annexed and altered. The English version of
1550 is not “popular”; it is the work of a humble literary man.
The English is a very long ballad, in seventy quatrains; it greatly
exaggerates the number of the Scots engaged (40,000), and it is the work
of a professional author who uses the stereotyped prosaic stopgaps of the
cheap hack—
I tell you withouten dread,
is his favourite phrase, and he cites historical authority—
The cronykle wyll not layne (lie).
Scottish ballads do not appeal to chroniclers! A patriotic and imbecile
effort is made by the Englishman to represent Percy as captured, indeed,
but released without ransom—
There was then a Scottysh prisoner tayne,
Sir Hew Mongomery was his name;
For sooth as I yow saye,
He borrowed the Persey home agayne.
This is obscure, and in any case false. Percy _was_ taken, and towards
his ransom Richard II. paid £3000. {59a}
It may be well to quote the openings of each ballad, English and Scots.
ENGLISH (1550)
I.
It fell about the Lammas tyde,
When husbands win their hay,
The doughty Douglas bound him to ride,
In England to take a prey.
II.
The Earl of Fife, withouten strife,
He bound him over Solway;
The great would ever together ride
That race they may rue for aye.
III.
Over Hoppertop hill they came in,
And so down by Rodcliff crag,
Upon Green Linton they lighted down,
Stirring many a stag.
IV.
And boldly brent Northumberland,
And harried many a town,
They did our Englishmen great wrong,
To battle that were not boune.
V.
Then spake a berne upon the bent . . .
SCOTTISH, HERD (1776)
I.
It fell and about the Lammas time,
When hushandmen do win their hay;
Earl Douglas is to the English woods,
And a’ with him to fetch a prey.
II.
He has chosen the Lindsays light,
With them the gallant Gordons gay;
And the Earl of Fyfe, withouten strife,
And Hugh Montgomery upon a grey.
(_The last line is obviously a reciter’s stopgap_.)
III.
They have taken Northumberland,
And sae hae they _the north shire_,
And the Otterdale they hae burned hale,
And set it a’ into fire.
IV.
Out then spak a bonny boy;
Manifestly these copies, so far, are not independent. But now Herd’s
copy begins to vary much from the English.
In both ballads a boy or “berne” speaks up. In the English he recommends
to the Scots an attack on Newcastle; in the Scots he announces the
approach of an English host. Douglas promises to reward the boy if his
tale be true, to hang him if it be false. _The scene is Otterburn_. The
boy stabs Douglas, in a stanza which is a common ballad formula of
frequent occurrence—
The boy’s taen out his little pen knife,
That hanget low down by his gare,
And he gaed Earl Douglas a deadly wound,
Alack! a deep wound and a sare.
Douglas then says to Sir Hugh Montgomery—
Take _thou_ the vanguard of the three,
And bury me at yon bracken bush,
That stands upon yon lilly lea. (Herd, 4–8.)
Hume of Godscroft (about 1610), author of the _History of the Douglases_,
was fond of quoting ballads. He gives a form of the first verse in
_Otterburn_ which is common to Herd and the English copy. He says that,
according to some, Douglas was treacherously slain by one of his own men
whom he had offended. “But this narration is not so probable,” and the
fact is fairly meaningless in Herd’s fragment (the boy has no motive for
stabbing Douglas, for if his report is true, he will be rewarded). The
deed is probably based on the tradition which Godscroft thought “less
probable,”—the treacherous murder of the Earl.
In the English ballad, Douglas marches on Newcastle, where Percy, without
fighting, makes a tryst to meet and combat him at Otterburn, on his way
home from Newcastle to Scotland. Thither Douglas goes, and is warned by
a Scottish knight of Percy’s approach: as in Herd, he is sceptical, but
is convinced by facts. (This warning of Douglas by a scout who gallops
up is narrated by Froissart, from witnesses engaged in the battle.)
After various incidents, Percy and Douglas encounter each other, and
Douglas is slain. After a desperate fight, Sir Hugh Montgomery, a
prisoner of the English,
Borrowed the Percy home again.
This is absurd. The Scots fought on, took Percy, and won the day.
Walsingham, the contemporary English chronicler (in Latin), says that
Percy slew Douglas, so do Knyghton and the continuator of Higden.
Meanwhile we observe that the English ballad says nothing of Douglas’s
chivalrous fortitude, and soldier-like desire to have his death
concealed. Here every Scottish version follows Froissart. In Herd’s
fragment, Montgomery now attacks Percy, and bids him “yield thee to yon
bracken bush,” where the dead Douglas’s body lies concealed. Percy does
yield—to Sir Hugh Montgomery. The fragment has but fourteen stanzas.
In 1802, Scott, correcting by another MS., published Herd’s copy. In
1806 he gave another version, for “fortunately two copies have since been
obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of
Ettrick Forest.” {62a}
Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of
recitations, so styled, {62b} and gives his suggestions about the copy
being made up from the _Reliques_. When Scott’s copy of 1806 agrees with
the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person,
familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in _with
differences_. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each
saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the
actual words. When Scott’s version touches on an incident known in
history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between
Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot
suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish
and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or
_remaniements_ which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).
So Colonel Elliot says, “We are not told, either in _The Minstrelsy_ or
in any of Scott’s works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the
transcribers were.” {63a} We very seldom are told by Scott who the
reciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic’s information is
here mournfully limited—by his own lack of study. Colonel Elliot goes on
to criticise a very curious feature in Scott’s version of 1806, and finds
certain lines “beautiful” but “without a note of antiquity,” that he can
detect, while the sentiment “is hardly of the kind met with in old
ballads.”
To understand the position we must remember that, _in the English_, Percy
and Douglas fight each other thus (1.)—
The Percy and the Douglas met,
That either of other was fain,
They swapped together while that they sweat,
With swords of fine Collayne. (Cologne steel.)
Douglas bids Percy yield, but Percy slays Douglas (as in Walsingham’s and
other contemporary chronicles, stanzas li.–lvi.). The Scottish losses
are then enumerated (only eighteen Scots were left alive!), and stanza
lix. runs—
This fray began at Otterburn
Between the night and the day.
There the Douglas lost his life,
And the Percy was led away.
Herd ends—
This deed was done at Otterburn,
About the breaking of the day,
Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush,
And Percy led captive away.
Manifestly, either the maker of Herd’s version knew the English, and
altered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered
at pleasure. The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably. But
when Scott’s original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in
a part of the ballad missing in Herd’s brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes
that _now_ the exchanges are by a modern ballad-forger, shall we say Sir
Walter? By Sir Walter they certainly are _not_! One tiny hint of Scots
originality is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men
“win their hay” at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much
later. But if the English ballad be _Northumbrian_, little can be made
out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a
southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide
for hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.
The Scots version (Herd’s) insists on Douglas’s burial “by the bracken
bush,” to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender. This is obviously done
to hide his body and keep his death secret from both parties, _as in
Froissart he bids his friends do_. The verse of the English (l.) on the
fight between Douglas and Percy, is borrowed by, or is borrowed from, the
Scottish stanza (ix.) in Herd, where Sir Hugh Montgomery fights Percy.
Then Percy and Montgomery met,
And weel a wot they warna fain;
They swaped swords, and they twa swat,
And ay the blood ran down between.
The Persses and the Mongomry met,
as quoted, is already familiar in _The Complaynte of Scotland_ (about
1549), and this line is not in the English ballad. So far it seems as if
the English balladist borrowed the scene from a Scots version, and
perverted it into a description of a fight, between Percy, who wins, and
Douglas—in place of the Scots version, the victory over Percy of Sir Hugh
Montgomery.
This transference of incidents in the English and Scottish ballads is a
phenomenon which we are to meet again in the ballad of _Jamie Telfer of
the Fair Dodhead_. One “maker” or the other has, in old times, pirated
and perverted the ballad of another “maker.”
SCOTT’S TRADITIONAL COPY AND HOW HE EDITED IT
AS early as December 1802–January 1803, Scott was “so anxious to have a
complete Scottish _Otterburn_ that I will omit the ballad entirely in the
first volume (of 1803), hoping to recover it in time for insertion in the
third.” {67a}
The letter is undated, but is determined by Scott’s expressed interest
“about the Tushielaw lines, which, from what you mention, must be worth
recovering.” In a letter (Abbotsford MSS.) from Hogg to Scott (marked in
copy, “January 7, 1803”) Hogg encloses “the Tushielaw lines,” which were
popular in Ettrick, but were verses of the eighteenth century. They were
orally repeated, but literary in origin.
Scott, who wanted “a complete Scottish Otterburn” in winter 1802, did not
sit down and make one. He waited till he got a text from Hogg, in 1805,
and published an edited version in 1806.
_Scott’s published_ stanza i. is Herd’s stanza i., with slight verbal
changes taken from the Hogg MS. text of 1805. (?) Hogg’s MS. and Scott,
in stanza ii., give Herd’s lines on the Lindsays and Gordons, adding the
Grahams, and, in place of Herd’s
The Earl of Fife,
And Sir Hugh Montgomery upon a grey,
they end thus—
But the Jardines wald not wi’ him ride,
And they rue it to this day.
This is from Hogg’s copy; it is a natural Border variant. No Earl of
Fife is named, but a reproach to a Border clan is conveyed.
For Herd’s iii. (they take Northumberland, and burn “the North shire,”
and the Otter dale), Hogg’s reciters gave—
And he has burned the dales o’ Tyne,
And part o’ _Almonshire_,
And three good towers in Roxburgh fells,
He left them all on fire.
Hogg, in his letter accompanying his copy, says that “Almonshire” may
stand for the “Bamborowshire” of the English vi., but that he leaves in
“Almonshire,” as both reciters insist on it. Scott printed
“Bambroughshire,” as in the English version (vi.).
Now here is proof that Hogg had a copy, from reciters—a copy which he
could not understand. “Almonshire” is “Alneshire,” or “Alnwickshire,”
where is the Percy’s Alnwick Castle. In Froissart the Scots burn and
waste the region of Alneshire, all round Alnwick, but the Earl of
Northumberland holds out in the castle, unattacked, and sends his sons,
Henry and Ralph Percy, to Newcastle to gather forces, and take the
retreating Scots between two fires, Newcastle and Alnwick. But the Scots
were not such poor strategists as to return by the way they had come. In
a skirmish or joust at Newcastle, says Froissart, Douglas captured
Percy’s lance and pennon, with his blazon of arms, and vowed that he
would set it up over his castle of Dalkeith. Percy replied that he would
never carry it out of England. To give Percy a chivalrous chance of
recovering his pennon and making good his word, Douglas insists on
waiting at Otterburn to besiege the castle there; and he is taken by
surprise (as in the ballads) when a mounted man brings news of Percy’s
approach. No tryst is made by Percy and Douglas _at Otterburn_ in
Froissart; Douglas merely tarried there by the courtesy of Scotland.
In Hogg’s version we have a reason why Douglas should tarry at Otterburn;
in the English ballad we have none very definite. No captured pennon of
Percy’s is mentioned, no encounter of the heroes “at the barriers” of
Newcastle. Percy, from the castle wall, merely threatens Douglas
vaguely; Douglas says, “Where will you meet me?” and Percy appoints
Otterburn as we said. He makes the absurd remark that, by way of
supplies (for 40,000 men), Douglas will find abundance of pheasants and
red deer. {69a}
We see that the English balladist is an unwarlike literary hack. The
author of the Ettrick version knew better the nature of war, as we shall
see, and his Douglas objects to Otterburn as a place destitute of
supplies; nothing is there but wild beasts and birds. If the original
poem is the sensible poem, the Scott version is the original which the
English hath perverted.
In Hogg, Douglas jousts with Percy at Newcastle, and gives him a fall.
Then come two verses (viii.–ix.). The second is especially modern and
mawkish—