Once, near Norham, there did fight
A spectre fell, of fiendish might,
In likeness of a Scottish knight,
With Brian Bulmer bold,
And trained him nigh to disallow
The aid of his baptismal vow.
This legend is more of Surtees’ fun. “The most singular tale of this
kind,” says Sir Walter, “is contained in an extract communicated to me by
my friend Mr. Surtees, of Mainsforth, who copied it from a MS. note in a
copy of Burthogge “On the Nature of Spirits, 1694, 8vo,” which had been
the property of the late Mr. Gill. It was not in Mr. Gill’s own hand:
but probably an hundred years older, and was said to be “E libro Convent.
Dunelm. per T. C. extract.;” this T. C. being Thomas Cradocke, Esq.
Scott adds, that the passage, which he gives in the Latin, suggested the
introduction of the tourney with the Fairy Knight in “Marmion.” Well,
_where_ is Cradocke’s extract? The original was “lost” before Surtees
sent his “copy” to Sir Walter. “The notes had been carelessly or
injudiciously shaken out of the book.” Surtees adds, another editor
confirms it, that no such story exists in any MS. of the Dean and Chapter
of Durham. No doubt he invented the whole story, and wrote it himself in
mediæval Latin.
Not content with two “whoppers,” as Mr. Jo Gargery might call them,
Surtees goes on to invent a perfectly incredible heraldic bearing. He
found it in a MS. note in the “Gwillim’s Heraldry” of Mr. Gyll or
Gill—the name is written both ways. “He beareth per pale or and arg.,
over all a spectre passant, _shrouded sable_”—“he” being Newton, of
Beverley, in Yorkshire. Sir Walter actually swallowed this amazing fib,
and alludes to it in “Rob Roy” (1818). But Mr. Raine, the editor of
Surtees’ Life, inherited or bought his copy of Gwillim, that of Mr. Gill
or Gyll; “and I find in it no trace of such an entry.” “Lord
Derwentwater’s Good-Night” is probably entirely by Surtees. “A friend of
Mr. Taylor’s” gave him a Tynedale ballad, “Hey, Willy Ridley, winna you
stay?” which is also “aut Diabolus aut Robertus.” As to “Barthram’s
Dirge,” “from Ann Douglas, a withered crone who weeds my garden,” copies
with various tentative verses in Surtees’ hand have been found. Oddly
enough, Sir Walter had once discovered a small sepulchral cross, upset,
in Liddesdale, near the “Nine Stane Rig;” and this probably made him more
easily deceived. Surtees very cleverly put some lines, which _could_ not
have been original, in brackets, as his own attempt to fill up lacunæ.
Such are
[When the dew fell cold and still,
When the aspen grey forget to play,
And the mist clung to the hill.]
Any one reading the piece would say, “It must be genuine, for the
_confessed_ interpolations are not in the ballad style, which the
interpolator, therefore, could not write.” An attempt which Surtees made
when composing the song, and which he wisely rejected, could not have
failed to excite Scott’s suspicions. It ran—
They buried him when the bonny may
Was on the flow’ring thorn;
And she waked him till the forest grey
Of every leaf was lorn;
Till the rowan tree of gramarye
Its scarlet clusters shed,
And the hollin green alone was seen
With its berries glistening red.
Whether Surtees’ “Brown Man of the Muirs,” to which Scott also gave a
place in his own poetry, was a true legend or not, the reader may decide
for himself.
Concerning another ballad in the “Minstrelsy”—“Auld Maitland”—Professor
Child has expressed a suspicion which most readers feel. What Scott told
Ellis about it (Autumn, 1802) was, that he got it in the Forest, “copied
down from the recitation of an old shepherd by a country farmer.” Who
was the farmer? Will Laidlaw had employed James Hogg, as shepherd.
Hogg’s mother chanted “Auld Maitland.” Hogg first met Scott in the
summer of 1801. The shepherd had already seen the first volume of the
“Minstrelsy.” Did he, thereupon, write “Auld Maitland,” teach his mother
it, and induce Laidlaw to take it down from her recitation? The old lady
said she got it from Andrew Moir, who had it “frae auld Baby Mettlin, who
was said to have been another nor a gude ane.” But we have Hogg’s own
statement that “aiblins ma gran’-mither was an unco leear,” and this
quality may have been hereditary. On the other side, Hogg could hardly
have held his tongue about the forgery, if forgery it was, when he wrote
his “Domestic Manners and Private Life of Sir Walter Scott” (1834). The
whole investigation is a little depressing, and makes one very shy of
unauthenticated ballads.
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