Or some devil in hell been thy daddy.
I would not swam that wan water, double-horsed,
For a’ the gold in Christenty.
Manifestly here was a form of Lord Scrope’s reply to Buccleuch, in the
last stanza of _Kinmont Willie_—
He is either himself a devil frae hell,
Or else his mother a witch may be,
I wadna hae ridden that wan water
For a’ the gowd in Christentie.
Scott writes, in a preface to _Archie o’ Cafield_ and _Jock o’ the Side_,
that there are, with _Kinmont Willie_, three ballads of rescues, “the
incidents in which nearly resemble each other; though the poetical
description is so different, that the editor did not feel himself at
liberty to reject any one of them, as borrowed from the others. As,
however, there are several verses, which, in recitation, are common to
all these three songs, the editor, to prevent unnecessary and
disagreeable repetition, has used the freedom of appropriating them to
that in which they have the best poetical effect.” {129a}
Consequently the verse quoted from the Percy MS. of _Archie o’ Cafield_
may be improved and placed in the lips of Lord Scrope, in _Kinmont
Willie_. But there is no evidence that Scott ever saw or even heard of
this Percy MS., and probably he got the verse from recitation.
Now the affair of the rescue of Kinmont Willie was much more important
and resonant than the two other rescues, and was certain to give rise to
a ballad, which would contain much the same formulæ as the other two.
The ballad-maker, like Homer, always uses a formula if he can find one.
But _Kinmont Willie_ is so much superior to the two others, so epic in
its speed and concentration of incidents, that the question rises, had
Scott even fragments of an original ballad of the Kinmont, “much mangled
by reciters,” as he admits, or did he compose the whole? No MS. copies
exist at Abbotsford. There is only one hint. In a list of twenty-two
ballads, pasted into a commonplace book, eleven are marked X (as if he
had obtained them), and eleven others are unmarked, as if they were still
to seek. Unmarked is _Kinmount Willie_.
Did he find it, or did he make it all?
In 1888, in a note to _Kinmont Willie_, I wrote: “There is a prose
account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells’ _History of the Name
of Scott_” (1688). Satchells’ long-winded story is partly in unrhymed
and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born
in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not
write, possibly could not read.
Colonel Elliot “believes that Sir Walter wrote the whole from beginning
to end, and that it is, in fact, a clever and extremely beautiful
paraphrase of Satchells’ rhymes.” {130a}
This thorough scepticism is not a novelty, as Colonel Elliot quotes me I
had written years ago, “In _Kinmont Willie_, Scott has been suspected of
making the whole ballad.” I did not, as the Colonel says, “mention the
names of the sceptics or the grounds of their suspicions.” “The
sceptics,” or one of them, was myself: I had “suspected” on much the same
grounds as Colonel Elliot’s own, and I shall give my reasons for adopting
a more conservative opinion. One reason is merely subjective. As a man,
by long familiarity with ancient works of art, Greek gems, for example,
acquires a sense of their authenticity, or the reverse, so he does in the
case of ballads—or thinks he does—but of course this result of experience
is no ground of argument: experts are often gulled. The ballad varies in
many points from Satchells’, which Colonel Elliot explains thus: “I think
that the cause for the narrative at times diverging from that recorded by
the rhymes (of Satchells), is due, partly to artistic considerations,
partly to the author having wished to bring it more or less into
conformity with history.” {131a}
Colonel Elliot quotes Scott’s preface to the ballad: “In many things
Satchells agrees with the ballads current in his time” (1643–88), “from
which in all probability he derived most of his information as to past
events, and from which he occasionally pirates whole verses, as we
noticed in the annotations upon the _Raid of the Reidswire_. In the
present instance he mentions the prisoner’s large spurs (alluding to
fetters), and some other little incidents noticed in the ballad, which
therefore was probably well known in his day.”
As Satchells was born in 1613, while the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ by
Buccleuch, out of Carlisle Castle, was in 1596, and as Satchells’ father
was in that adventure (or so Satchells says) he probably knew much about
the affair from fresh tradition. Colonel Elliot notices this, and says:
“The probability of Satchells having obtained information from a
hypothetical ballad is really quite an inadmissible argument.”
This comes near to begging the question. As contemporary incidents much
less striking and famous than the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ were
certainly recorded in ballads, the opinion that there was a ballad of
_Kinmont Willie_ is a legitimate hypothesis, which must be tested on its
merits. For example, we shall ask, Does Satchells’ version yield any
traces of ballad sources?
My own opinion has been anticipated by Mr. Frank Miller in his _The Poets
of Dumfriesshire_ (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well
equipped. He says: “The balance of probability seems to be in favour of
the originality of _Kinmont Willie_,” rather than of Satchells (he means,
not of our _Kinmont Willie_ as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning
the Kinmont). “Captain Walter Scott’s” (of Satchells) “_True History_
was certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as
out of formal histories, and his account of the assault on the Castle
reads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay.”
Does Satchells’ version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay?
Undoubtedly it does.
Satchells’ prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad
lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie—
It fell about the Martinmas
When kine was in the prime
that Willie “brought a prey out of Northumberland.” The old ballad,
disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula. Lord
Scrope vowed vengence:—
Took Kinmont the self-same night.
If he had had but ten men more,
That had been as stout as he,
Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta’en
With all his company.
Scott’s ballad (stanza i.) says that “fause Sakelde” and Scrope took
Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby _did_), and
Had Willie had but twenty men,
But twenty men as stout as he,
Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta’en,
Wi’ eight score in his cumpanie.
Manifestly either Satchells is here “pirating” a verse of a ballad (as
Scott holds) or Scott, if he had _no_ ballad fragments before him, is
“pirating” a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.
In my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like
_Jamie Telfer_, “It fell about the Martinmas tyde,” or, like _Otterburn_,
“It fell about the Lammas tide,” and he opened with this formula, broke
away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, “If he had had
but ten men more,” which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott’s
ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satchells is again reminiscent
of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.
In the ballad (iii.–viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner
across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and
the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table.
Satchells also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises
to “take his leave” of Scrope before he quits the Castle.
In Scott’s ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).
Before ye cross my castle yate,
I trow ye shall take fareweel o’ me.
Willie replies—
I never yet lodged in a hostelrie,
But I paid my lawing before I gaed.
In Satchells, Lord Scrope says—
“Before thou goest away thou must
Even take thy leave of me?”
“By the cross of my sword,” says Willie then,
“I’ll take my leave of thee.”
Now, had Scott been pirating Satchells, I think he would have kept “By
the cross of my sword,” which is picturesque and probable, Willie being
no good Presbyterian. In _Otterburne_, Scott, _altering Hogg’s copy_,
makes Douglas swear “By the might of Our Ladye.”
It is a question of opinion; but I do think that if Scott were merely
paraphrasing and pirating Satchells, he could not have helped putting
into his version the Catholic, “‘By the cross of my sword,’ then Willy
said,” as given by Satchells. To do this was safe, as Scott had said
that Satchells does pirate ballads. On the other hand, Satchells,
composing in black 1688, when Catholicism had been stamped out on the
_Scottish Border_, was not apt to invent “By the cross of my sword.” It
_looks_ like Scott’s work, for he, of course, knew how Catholicism
lingered among the spears of Bothwell, himself a Catholic, in 1596. But
it is _not_ Scott’s work, it is in Satchells. In both Satchells and the
ballad, news comes to Buccleuch. Here Satchells again balladises—
“It is that way?” Buckcleugh did say;
“Lord Scrope must understand
That he has not only done me wrong
But my Sovereign, James of Scotland.
“My Sovereign Lord, King of Scotland,
Thinks not his cousin Queen,
Will offer to invade his land
Without leave asked and gi’en.”
I do not see how Satchells could either invent or glean from tradition
the gist of Buccleuch’s diplomatic remonstrances, first with Salkeld, for
Scrope was absent at the time of Willie’s capture, then with Scrope.
Buccleuch, in fact, wrote that the taking of Willie was “to the touch of
the King,” a stain on his honour, says a contemporary manuscript. {135a}
In a _contemporary_ ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would
be known and reported. But at this point (at Buccleuch’s reception of
the news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity,
and, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.
O is my basnet a widow’s curch?
Or my lance a wand o’ the willow tree?
and so on. Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is
only sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other
grounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza
xiii.
O were there war between the lands,
As well I wot that there is none,
I would slight Carlisle castle high,
Tho’ it were built o’ marble stone!
Thence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made “harmonious,” as
Hogg put it) ran into stanza xxxi., where Scott probably introduced the
Elliot tune (if it be ancient)—
O wha dare meddle wi’ me?
Satchells next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch’s
correspondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all
their names and estates, with remarks on their relationships. He thinks
himself a historian and a genealogist. The stuff is partly in prose
lines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths. There are two or
three more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too
bad for any author but Satchells.
Scott’s ballad “cuts” all that, omits even what Satchells gives—mentions
of Harden, and goes on (xv.)—
He has called him forty marchmen bauld,
I trow they were of his own name.
Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called
The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.
Now I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that
“stall-copy” stanza! Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the
ballad-faker should avoid being too poetical. The ballad-faker _should_
shun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott
did not know this, nor did Hogg. We can always track them by their too
decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.
The ballad next gives (xvi.–xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the
Border—
There were five and five before them a’,
Wi’ hunting horns and bugles bright;
And five and five came wi’ Buccleuch,
Like Warden’s men arrayed for fight.
And five and five like a mason gang,
That carried the ladders lang and hie;
And five and five like broken men,
And so they reached the Woodhouselee.
—a house in Scotland, within “a lang mile” of Netherby, in England, the
seat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the
Scottish cause. They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain
of Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.
Now in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to
Salkeld by each gang, till Dicky o’ Dryhope (a real person) replies with
a spear-thrust—
“For never a word o’ lear had he,”
are not an invention of Scott’s (who knew that Salkeld was not met and
slain), but a fantasy of the original ballad. Here I have only
familiarity with the romantic perversion of facts that marks all ballads
on historical themes to guide me.
Salkeld is met—
“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”
The ballad does not specify the crossing of Esk, nor say that Salkeld was
on the English side; nor is there any blunder in the reply of the “mason
gang”—
“We gang to harry a corbie’s nest,
That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.”
Whether on English or Scottish soil the masons say not, and their
pretence is derisive, bitterly ironical.
Colonel Elliot makes much of the absence of mention of the Esk, and says
“it is _after_ they are in England that the false reports are spread.”
{139a} But the ballad does not say so—read it! All passes with
judicious vagueness.
“As we crossed the Batable land,
When to the English side we held.”
Satchells knows that the ladders were made at Woodhouselee; it took till
nightfall to finish them. The ballad, swift and poetical, takes the
ladders for granted—as a matter of fact, chronicled in the dispatches,
the Grahams of Netherby harboured Buccleuch: Netherby was his base.
“I could nought have done that matter without great friendship of the
Grames of Eske,” wrote Buccleuch, in a letter which Scrope intercepted.
{139b}
In Satchells, Buccleuch leaves half his men at the “Stonish bank”
(Staneshaw bank) “_for fear they had made noise or din_.” An old soldier
should have known better, and the ballad (his probable half-remembered
source here) _does_ know better—
“And there the laird garr’d leave our _steeds_,
For fear that they should stamp and nie,”
and alarm the castle garrison. Each man of the post on the ford would
hold two horses, and also keep the ford open for the retreat of the
advanced party. The ballad gives the probable version; Satchells, when
offering as a reason for leaving half the force, lest they should make
“noise or din,” is maundering. Colonel Elliot does not seem to perceive
this obvious fact, though he does perceive Buccleuch’s motive for
dividing his force, “presumably with the object of protecting his line of
retreat,” and also to keep the horses out of earshot, as the ballad says.
{140a}
In Satchells the river is “in no great rage.” In the ballad it is “great
and meikle o’ spait.” And it really was so. The MS. already cited,
which Scott had not seen when he published the song, says that Buccleuch
arrived at the “Stoniebank beneath Carleile brig, the water being at the
tyme, through raines that had fallen, weill thick.”
In Scott’s _original_ this river, he says, was the Esk, in Satchells it
is the Eden, and Scott says he made this necessary correction in the
ballad. In Satchells the storming party
Broke a sheet of leid on the castle top.
In the ballad they
Cut a hole through a sheet o’ lead.
Both stories are erroneous; the ladders were too short; the rescuers
broke into a postern door. Scrope told this to his Government on the day
after the deed, 14th April. {140b}
In xxxi. the ballad makes Buccleuch sound trumpets when the castle-roof
was scaled; in fact it was not scaled. The ladders were too short, and
the Scots broke in a postern door. The Warden’s trumpet blew “O wha dare
meddle wi’ me,” and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author.
Here Colonel Elliot enters into learning about “Wha dare meddle wi’ me?”
a “Liddesdale tune,” and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of
Satchells’ “the trumpets sounded ‘Come if ye dare.’”
Satchells makes the trumpets sound when the rescuers bring Kinmont Willie
to the castle-top on the ladder (which they did not), and again when the
rescuers reach the ground by the ladder. They made no use at all of the
ladders, which were too short, and Willie, says the ballad, lay “in the
_lower_ prison.” They came in and went out by a door; but the trumpets
are not apocryphal. They, and the shortness of the ladders, are
mentioned in a MS. quoted by Scott, and in Birrell’s contemporary
_Diary_, i. p. 57. In the MS. Buccleuch causes the trumpets to be
sounded from below, by a detachment “in the plain field,” securing the
retreat. His motive is to encourage his party, “and to terrify both
castle and town by imagination of a greater force.” Buccleuch again
“sounds up his trumpet before taking the river,” in the MS. Colonel
Elliot may claim stanza xxxi. for Scott, and also the tune “Wha dare
meddle wi’ me?” he may even claim here a suggestion from Satchells’ “Come
if ye dare.” Colonel Elliot says that no tune of this title ever
existed, a thing not easy to prove. {142a}
In the conclusion, with differences, there are resemblances in the ballad
and Satchells. Colonel Elliot goes into them very minutely. For
example, he says that Kinmont is “made to ride off; not on horseback, but
on Red Rowan’s back!”
The ballad says not a word to that effect. Kinmont’s speech about Red
Rowan as “a rough beast” to ride, is made immediately after the stanza,
“Then shoulder high, with shout and cry,
We bore him down the ladder lang;
At every stride Red Rowan made,
I wot the Kinmont’s airns played clang.” {142b}
After this verse Kinmont makes his speech (xl.–xli.). But if he _did_
ride on Red Rowan’s back to Staneshaw bank, it was the best thing that a
heavily ironed man could do. In the ballad (xxvii.) no horses of the
party were waiting at the castle, _all_ horses were left behind at
Staneshaw bank (Satchells brings horses, or at least a horse for Willie,
to the castle). On what could Willie “ride off,” except on Red Rowan?
{142c}
Stanzas xxxv., xxxvi. and xliv. are related, we have seen, to passages in
_Jock o’ the Side_ and _Archie o’ Cafield_, but ballads, like Homer,
employ the same formulæ to describe the same circumstances: a note of
archaism, as in Gaelic poetic passages in _Märchen_.
I do not pretend always to know how far Scott kept and emended old
stanzas mangled by reciters: there are places in which I am quite at a
loss to tell whether he is “making” or copying.
I incline to hold that Satchells was occasionally reminiscent of a ballad
for the reasons and traces given, and I think that Scott when his and
Satchells’ versions coincide, did not borrow direct from Satchells, but
that both men had a ballad source.
That ballad was later than the popular belief, held by Satchells, that
Gilbert Elliot was at the time (1596) laird of Stobs, which he did not
acquire till after the Union (1603), and that he (the only man not a
Scot, says Satchells, wrongly) rode with Buccleuch. Elliot is not
accused of doing so in Scrope’s dispatches, but he may have come as far
as Staneshaw bank, where half the company were left behind, says
Satchells, with the horses, which were also left, says the ballad. In
that case Elliot would not be observed in or near the Castle. Yet it may
have been known in Scotland that he was of the party.
He was, as Satchells says, a cousin, he was also a friend of Buccleuch’s,
and he may conceivably have taken a part in this glorious adventure,
though he could not, _at the moment_, be called laird of Stobs. Were I
an Elliot, this opinion would be welcome to me! Really, Salkeld was in a
good position to know whether Elliot rode with Buccleuch or not.
The whole question is not one on which I can speak dogmatically. A
person who suspects Scott intensely may believe that there were no ballad
fragments of Kinmont in his possession. The person who, like myself,
thinks Satchells, with his “It fell about the Martinmas,” knew a ballad
vaguely, believes that Satchells _had_ some ballad sources bemuddled in
his old memory.
A person who cannot conceive that Scott wrote
Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, called
The laird of Stobs, I mean the same,
will hold that Scott knew some ballad fragments, _disjecta membra_. But
I quite agree with Colonel Elliot, that the ballad, _as it stands_ (with
the exception, to my mind, of some thirty stanzas, themselves emended),
“belongs to the early nineteenth century, not to the early seventeenth.”
The time for supposing the poem, _as it stands_, to be “saturated with
the folk-spirit” all through is past; the poem is far too much
contaminated by the genius of Scott itself; like Burns’ transfiguration
of “the folk-spirit” at its best.
Near the beginning of this paper I said, in answer to a question of
Colonel Elliot’s, that I myself was the person who had suspected Scott of
composing the whole of _Kinmont Willie_, and I have given my reasons for
not remaining constant to my suspicions. But in a work which Colonel
Elliot quotes, the abridged edition of Child’s great book by Mrs.
Child-Sargent and Professor Kittredge (1905), the learned professor
writes, “_Kinmont Willie_ is under vehement suspicion of being the work
of Sir Walter Scott.” Mr. Kittredge’s entire passage on the matter is
worth quoting. He first says—“The traditional ballad appears to be
inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,” “the efforts of poets
and poetasters” end in “invariable failure.”
I do not think that they need end in failure except for one reason. The
poet or poetaster cannot, now, except by flat lying and laborious forgery
of old papers, produce any documentary evidence to prove the
_authenticity_ of his attempt at imitation. Without documentary evidence
of antiquity, no critic can approach the imitation except in a spirit of
determined scepticism. He knows, certainly, that the ballad is modern,
and, knowing that, he easily finds proofs of modernism even where they do
not really exist. I am convinced that to imitate a ballad that would,
except for the lack of documentary evidence, beguile the expert, is
perfectly feasible. I even venture to offer examples of my own
manufacture at the close of this volume. I can find nothing suspicious
in them, except the deliberate insertion of formulæ which occur in
genuine ballads. Such _wiederholungen_ are not reasons for rejection, in
my opinion; but they are _suspect_ with people who do not understand that
they are a natural and necessary feature of archaic poetry, and this fact
Mr. Kittredge does understand.
Mr. Kittredge speaks of Sir Walter’s unique success with _Kinmont
Willie_; but is Sir Walter successful? Some of his stanzas I, for one,
can hardly accept, even as emended traditional verses.
Mr. Kittredge writes—“Sir Walter’s success, however, in a special kind of
balladry for which he was better adapted by nature and habit of mind than
for any other, would only emphasise the universal failure. And it must
not be forgotten that _Kinmont Willie_, if it be Scott’s work, is not
made out of whole cloth; it is a working over of one of the best
traditional ballads known (_Jock o’ the Side_), with the intention of
fitting it to an historical exploit of Buccleuch. Further, the subject
itself was of such a nature that it might well have been celebrated in a
ballad,—indeed, one is tempted to say, it must have been so celebrated.”
Not a doubt of _that_!
“And, finally, Sir Walter Scott felt towards ‘the Kinmont’ and ‘the bold
Buccleuch’ precisely as the moss-trooping author of such a ballad would
have felt. For once, then, the miraculous happened. . . . ” {146a} Or
did not happen, for the exception is “solitary though doubtful,” and
“under vehement suspicion.” But Mr. Kittredge must remember that no
known Scottish ballad “is made out of whole cloth.” All have, in various
degrees, the successive modifications wrought by centuries of oral
tradition, itself, in some cases, modifying a much modified printed
“stall-copy” or “broadside.”