THE ROMANTIC BALLAD
'O they rade on, and farther on,
By the lee licht o' the moon,
Until they cam' to a wan water,
And there they lichted them doon.'
_The Douglas Tragedy._
It may look like taking a liberty with the chart of ballad poetry to
label as 'romantic' a single province of this kingdom of Old Romance. It
is probably not even the most ancient of the provinces of balladry, but
it has some claim to be regarded as the central one in fame and in
wealth--the one that yields the purest and richest ore of poetry. It is
that wherein the passion and frenzy of love is not merely an element or
a prominent motive, but is the controlling spirit and the absorbing
interest.
As has been acknowledged, it is not possible to make any hard and fast
division of the Scottish ballads by applying to them this or any other
test; and mention has already been made, on account of the mythological
or superstitious features they possess, of a number of the choicest of
these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness,
the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly
love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious,
exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and not life and
happiness. But as it spurns all obstacles, it meets its fate
unflinchingly. No sacrifices are too great, no penance too dire, no
shame or sin too black to turn aside for an instant the rush of this
impetuous passion, which runs bare-breasted on the drawn sword.
It is not to the ballads we must go for example--precept of this or of
any kind there is none--in the _bourgeois_ and respectable virtues; of
the sober and chastened behaviour that comes of a prudent fear of
consequences, of a cold temperament and a calculating spirit. The good
or the ill done by the heroes and heroines of the Romantic Ballad is
done on the spur of the moment, on the impulse of hot blood. Whether it
be sin or sacrifice, the prompting is not that of convention, but of
Nature herself. Love and hate, though they may burn and glow like a
volcano, are not prodigal of words. It is one of the marks by which we
may distinguish the characters in the ballads from those in later and
more cultivated fields of literature that, as a rule, they say less
rather than more than they mean. They speak daggers; but they are far
more apt in using them. At a word or look the lovers are ready to die
for each other; but of the language of endearment they are not prodigal;
and a phrase of tenderness is sweet in proportion that it is rare.
With the tamer affections it fares no better than with the moral law
when it comes in the path of the master passion. Mother and sisters are
defied and forsaken; father and brethren are resisted at the sword's
point when they cross, as is their wont, the course of true love. It is
curious to note how little, except as a foil, the ballad makes of
brotherly or sisterly love. It finds exquisite expression in the tale of
_Chil Ether_ and his twin sister,
'Who loved each other tenderly
'Boon everything on earth.
"The ley likesna the simmer shower
Nor girse the morning dew,
Better, dear Lady Maisrie,
Than Chil Ether loves you."'
But for this, among other reasons, the genuine antiquity of the ballad
is under some suspicion.
In modern fiction or drama the lady hesitates between the opposing
forces of love and of family pride and duty; the old influences in her
life do not yield to the new without a struggle. But of struggle or
indecision the ballad heroine knows, or at least says, nothing. A
glance, a whispered word, a note of harp or horn, and she flings down
her 'silken seam,' and whether she be king's daughter or beggar maid she
obeys the spell, and follows the enchanter to greenwood or to broomy
hill, to the ends of the earth, and to the gates of death.
For when the gallant knight and his 'fair may' ride away, prying eyes
are upon them; black care and red vengeance climb up behind them and
keep them company. _The Douglas Tragedy_ may be selected for its
terseness and dramatic strength, for the romance and pathos inwoven in
the very names and scenes with which it is associated, as the type of a
favourite story which under various titles--_Earl Brand_ and the _Child
of Elle_ among the rest--has, time beyond knowledge, captivated the
imagination and drawn the tears of ballad-lovers. In the best-known
Scots version--that which Sir Walter Scott has recovered for us, and
which bears some touches of his rescuing hand--it is the lady-mother who
gives the alarm that the maiden has fled under cloud of night with her
lover:
'Rise up, rise up, my seven bauld sons,
And put on your armour so bright,
And take better care of your youngest sister,
For your eldest 's awa' the last night.'
In English variants, it is the sour serving-man or false bower-woman who
gives the alarm and sets the chase in motion. But there are other
differences that enter into the very essence of the story, and express
the diverse feeling of the Scottish and the English ballad. In the
latter there is a pretty scene of entreaty and reconciliation; the
lady's tears soften the harsh will of the father, and stay the lifted
blade of the lover, and all ends merry as a marriage bell. But in the
Scottish ballads fathers and lovers are not given to the melting mood.
In sympathy with the scenery and atmosphere, the ballad spirit is with
us sterner and darker; and just as the materials of that tender little
idyll of faithful love, _The Three Ravens_, are in Scottish hands
transformed into the drear, wild dirge of _The Twa Corbies_, the gallant
adventure of the _Child of Elle_ turns inevitably to tragedy by Douglas
Water and Yarrow. But how much more true to this soul of romance is the
choice of the northern minstrel! Lady Margaret, as she holds Lord
William's bridle-rein while he deals those strokes so 'wondrous sair' at
her nearest kin, is a figure that will haunt the 'stream of sorrow' as
long as verse has power to move the hearts of men:
'"O choose, O choose, Lady Marg'ret," he cried,
"O whether will ye gang or bide?"
"I 'll gang, I 'll gang, Lord William," she said,
"For you 've left me no other guide."
He lifted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a buglet horn hung down by his side,
And slowly they both rade away.
O they rade on, and farther on,
By the lee licht o' the moon,
Until they cam' to a wan water,
And there they lichted them doon.
"Hold up, hold up, Lord William," she said,
"For I fear that ye are slain."
"'Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak
That shines in the water so plain."'
The man who can listen to these lines without a thrill is proof against
the Ithuriel spear of Romance. He is not made of penetrable stuff, and
need waste no thought on the Scottish ballads.
To close the tale comes that colophon that as naturally ends the typical
ballad as 'Once upon a time' begins the typical nursery tale:
'Lord William was buried in St. Mary's Kirk,
Lady Margaret in St. Mary's Quire;
And out of her grave there grew a birk,
And out of the knight's a brier.
And they twa met and they twa plait,
As fain they wad be near;
And a' the world might ken right well
They were twa lovers dear.'
Birk and brier; vine and rose; cypress and orange; thorn and olive--the
plants in which the buried lovers of ballad romance live again and
intertwine their limbs, vary with the clime and race; and just as the
'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad--'Wow but he was rough!'--plucks up
the brier, and 'flings it in St. Mary's Loch,' the King, in the
Portuguese folk-song, cuts down the cypress and orange that perpetuate
the loves of Count Nello and the Infanta, and then grinds his teeth to
see the double stream of blood flow from them and unite, proving that
'in death they are not divided.'
The scene of the Scottish story is supposed to be Blackhouse, on the
Douglas Burn, a feeder of the Yarrow, the farm on which Scott's friend,
William Laidlaw, the author of _Lucy's Flittin'_, was born. Seven stones
on the heights above, where the 'Ettrick Shepherd,' with his dog Hector,
herded sheep and watched for the rising of the Queen of Faery through
the mist, mark the spot where the seven bauld brethren fell.
But Yarrow Vale is strewn with the sites of those tragedies of the
far-off years, forgotten by history but remembered in song and
tradition. Its green hills enclose the very sanctuary of romantic
ballad-lore. Its clear current sings a mournful song of the 'good
heart's bluid' that once stained its wave; of the drowned youth caught
in the 'cleaving o' the craig.' The winds that sweep the hillsides and
bend 'the birks a' bowing' seem to whisper still of the wail of the
'winsome marrow,' and to have an undernote of sadness on the brightest
day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very
spirit of 'pastoral melancholy' broods and sleeps in this enchanted
valley. St. Mary's Kirk and Loch; Henderland Tower and the Dow Linn;
Blackhouse and Douglas Craig; Yarrow Kirk and Deucharswire; Hangingshaw
and Tinnis; Broadmeadows and Newark; Bowhill and Philiphaugh--what
memories of love and death, of faith and wrong, of blood and of tears
they carry! Always by Yarrow the comely youth goes forth, only to fall
by the sword, fighting against odds in the 'Dowie Dens,' or to be caught
and drowned in the treacherous pools of this fateful river; always the
woman is left to weep over her lost and 'lealfu' lord.' In the Dow Glen
it is the 'Border Widow,' upon whose bower the 'Red Tod of Falkland' has
broken and slain her knight, whose grave she must dig with her own
hands:
'I took his body on my back,
And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat;
I digged a grave and laid him in,
And happed him wi' the sod sae green.
But think nae ye my heart was sair
When I laid the moul's on his yellow hair;
O think nae ye my heart was wae
When I turned about awa' to gae.
Nae living man I 'll love again,
Since that my lovely knight is slain;
Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair
I 'll chain my heart for evermair.'
An echo of this, but blending with poignant grief a masculine note of
rage and vengeance, is the lament of Adam Fleming for Burd Helen, who
dropped dead in his arms at their trysting-place in 'fair Kirkconnell
Lea,' from the shot fired across the Kirtle by the hand of his jealous
rival:
'O thinkna ye my heart was sair,
When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair!
There did she swoon wi' meikle care
On fair Kirkconnell Lea.
O Helen fair, beyond compare!
I 'll make a garland o' thy hair
Shall bind my heart for evermair
Until the day I dee.'
Still older, and not less sad and sweet, is the lilt of _Willie Drowned
in Yarrow_, the theme amplified, but not improved, in Logan's lyric:
'O Willie 's fair and Willie 's rare,
And Willie wondrous bonnie;
And Willie hecht to marry me
If e'er he married ony.'
Gamrie, in Buchan, contends with the 'Dowie Howms' as the scene of this
fragment; but surely its sentiment is pure Yarrow:
'She sought him east, she sought him west,
She sought him braid and narrow;
Syne in the cleaving o' a craig
She found him drowned in Yarrow.'
But best-remembered of the Yarrow Cycle is _The Dowie Dens_. One cannot
analyse the subtle aroma of this flower of Yarrow ballads. In it the
song of the river has been wedded to its story 'like perfect music unto
noble words.' It is indeed the voice of Yarrow, chiding, imploring,
lamenting; a voice 'most musical, most melancholy.' A ballad minstrel
with a master-touch upon the chords of passion and pathos, with a
feeling for dramatic intensity of effect that Nature herself must have
taught him, must have left us these wondrous pictures of the quarrel,
hot and sudden; of the challenge, fiercely given and accepted; of the
appeal, so charged with wild forebodings of evil:
'"O stay at hame, my noble lord,
O stay at hame, my marrow!
My cruel kin will you betray
On the dowie howms o' Yarrow"';
of the treacherous ambuscade under Tinnis bank; of the stubborn fight,
in which a single 'noble brand' holds its own against nine, until the
cruel brother comes behind that comeliest knight and 'runs his body
thorough'; of the yearning and waiting of the 'winsome marrow,' while
fear clutches at her heart:
'"Yestreen I dreamed a doleful dream,
I fear there will be sorrow,
I dreamed I pu'ed the birk sae green
For my true love on Yarrow.
O gentle wind that blaweth south
Frae where my love repaireth,
Blaw me a kiss frae his dear mouth
And tell me how he fareth"';
lastly, of the quest 'the bonnie forest thorough,' until on the trampled
den by Deucharswire, near Whitehope farmhouse, she finds the 'ten slain
men,' and among them 'the fairest rose was ever cropped on Yarrow':
'She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,
She searched his wounds a' thorough,
She kissed them till her lips grew red
On the dowie howms o' Yarrow.'
The story is said to be founded on the slaughter of Walter Scott of
Oakwood, of the house of Thirlstane, by John Scott of Tushielaw, with
whose sister Grizel the murdered man had, in 1616, contracted an
irregular marriage, to the offence of her kin. On this showing, it is of
the later crop of the ballads. But it is well-nigh impossible to think
of rueful Yarrow flowing through her dens to any other measure than that
which keeps repeating
'By strength of sorrow
The unconquerable strength of love.'
But, as Wordsworth reminds us, these ever-youthful waters have their
gladsome notes. On the not unchallengeable ground that it makes mention,
in one version, of 'St. Mary's' as the fourth Scots Kirk at which halt
was made after leaving the English Border, _The Gay Goshawk_ has been
set down among the Yarrow ballads; and Hogg has confirmed the claim by
using the tale as the foundation of his _Flower of Yarrow_. Even here
such happiness as the lovers find comes by a perilous way past the very
gates of the grave. The feigning of death, as the one means of escape
from kinsfolk's ban to the arms of love, was a device known to Juliet
and to other heroines of old plays and romances. But few could have
abode the test suggested by the 'witch woman' or cruel stepmother, whose
experience had taught her that 'much a lady young will do, her ain true
love to win':
'"Tak' ye the burning lead,
And drap a drap on her white bosom
To try if she be dead."'
And Lord William, at St. Mary's Kirk, was more fortunate than Romeo in
the vault of the Capulets; for when he rent the shroud from the face the
blood rushed back to the cheeks and lips, 'like blood-draps in the
snaw,' and the 'leeming e'en' laughed back into his own:
'"Gie me a chive o' your bread, my love,
And ae glass o' your wine,
For I hae fasted for your love
These weary lang days nine."'
_The Nut-brown Bride_ and _Fair Janet_ might also be identified as among
the Yarrow lays, if only it were granted that there is but one 'St.
Mary's Kirk.' In the former, the balladist treats, with dramatic fire
and fine insight into the springs of action, the theme that
'To be wroth with those we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.'
As in Barbara Allan, a word spoken amiss sets division between two
hearts that had beat as one:
'Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest,
Fair Annet took it ill.'
In haste he consults mother and brother whether he should marry the
'Nut-brown Maid, and let Fair Annet be,' and so long as they praise the
tochered lass he scorns their counsel; he will not have 'a fat fadge by
the fire.' But when his sister puts in a word for Annet his resentment
blazes up anew; he will marry her dusky rival in despite. With a heart
not less hot, we may be sure, his forsaken love dons her gayest robes,
and at St. Mary's Kirk she casts the poor brown bride into the shade in
dress as well as in looks. Small wonder if the bride speaks out with
spite when her bridegroom reaches across her to lay a red rose on
Annet's knee. The words between the two angry women are like
rapier-thrusts, keen and aimed at the heart. 'Where did ye get the
rose-water that maks your skin so white?' asks the bride; and when
Annet's swift retort goes home, she can only respond with the long
bodkin drawn from her hair. The word in jest costs the lives of three.
Fair Janet's is another tragic wedding; love, and jealousy, and guilt
again hold tryst in the little kirk whose grey walls are scarce to be
traced on the green platform above the loch. 'I 've seen other days,'
says the pale bride to her lost lover as he dances with her
bridesmaiden:
'"I 've seen other days wi' you, Willie,
And so hae mony mae;
Ye would hae danced wi' me yoursel'
And let a' ithers gae"';
and, dancing, she drops dead.
Fasting, and fire, and sickness unto death were, however, tame ordeals
compared with those which 'Burd Helen' came through, as they are
described in the ballad Professor Child holds, not without reason, to
have 'perhaps no superior' in our own or any other tongue. Patient
Grizel, herself the incarnation in literary form of a type of woman's
faithfulness and meek endurance of wrong that had floated long in
mediaeval tradition, might have shrunk from some of the cruel tasks which
Lord Thomas--the 'Child Waters' of the favourite English variant--lays
upon the mother of his unborn child--the woman whose self-surrender had
been so complete that she has not the blessing of Holy Church and the
support of wifely vows to comfort her in her hour of trial. All the
summer day she runs by his bridle-rein until they come to the Water of
Clyde, which 'Sweet Willie and May Margaret' also sought to ford on a
similar errand:
'And he was never so courteous a knight,
As stand and bid her ride;
And she was never so poor a may,
As ask him for to bide.'
She stables his steed; she waits humbly at table as the little page-boy;
she listens, her colour coming and going, to the mother's scorns and the
young sister's naive questions. But never, until the supreme moment of
her distress, does she draw one sign of pity or relenting from her harsh
lord. Then, indeed, love and remorse, as if they had been dammed back,
break forth like a flood, that bursts the very door, and makes it 'in
flinders flee.' And because
'The marriage and the kirkin'
Were baith held on ae day,'
our simple balladist bids us believe that the twain lived happily ever
after.
The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European
country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace
them to the thirteenth century _Tale of the Ash_, by Marie of France.
The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed
both name and history directly from the 'Skiaen Annie' of Danish
folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was
thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the
bridal bed for her supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy
chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither
from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint.
The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart:
'"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe,
Lie still as lang 's ye may;
For your father rides on high horseback,
And cares na for us twae."'
And again,
'"Gin my seven sons were seven young rats,
Runnin' upon the castle wa';
And I were a grey cat mysel',
Soon should I worry ane and a'."'
Wide, surely, is the gulf between the Original Woman of old romance and
the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doubt, is for the
better; and yet is it altogether for the better?
According to all modern canons, the conduct of these too-tardy
bridegrooms was brutal beyond words; and as for the heroines of the
Romantic Ballad, Mother Grundy, had she the handling of them, would use
them worse than ever did moody brother or crafty stepmother. But the
balladists and ballad characters had their own gauges of conduct. Their
morals were not other or better than the morals of their age. They
strained out the gnats and swallowed the camels of the law as given to
Moses; perhaps if they could look into modern society and the modern
novel they would charge the same against our own times and literature.
If they broke, as they were too ready to do, the Sixth Commandment, or
the Seventh, they made no attempt to glose the sin; they dealt not in
innuendo or _double entendre_. Beside the page of modern realism, the
ballad page is clean and wholesome. Human passion unrestrained there may
be; but no sickly or vicious sentiment. There is a punctilious sense of
honour; and if it is sometimes the letter rather than the spirit of vow
or promise that is kept, the knights and ladies in the ballads are no
worse than are the Pharisees of our day; and they are always ready to
pay, and generally do pay, the utmost penalty.
Thus, in that most powerful and tragic ballad, _Clerk Saunders_, May
Margaret ties a napkin about her eyes that she 'may swear, and keep her
aith,' to her 'seven bauld brothers,' that she had not seen her lover
'since late yestreen'; she carries him across the threshold of her
bower, that she may be able to say that his foot had never been there.
The story of the sleeping twain--the excuses for their sin; the reason
why ruth should turn aside vengeance--is told, in staccato sentences, by
the brothers as they stand by the bedside of their 'ae sister,' with
'torches burning bright':
'Out and spake the first o' them,
"I wot that they are lovers dear";
And out and spake the second o' them,
"They 've been in love this mony a year";
And out and spake the third o' them,
"His father had nae mair than he."'
And so until the seventh--the Rashleigh of the band--who spake no word,
but let his 'bright brown brand' speak for him. What follows rises to
the extreme height of the balladist's art; literature might be
challenged for anything surpassing it in simplicity and power, in the
mingling of horror and pathos:
'Clerk Saunders he started and Margaret she turned,
Into his arms as asleep she lay;
And sad and silent was the night
That was atween the twae.
And they lay still and sleeped sound,
Until the day began to daw,
And softly unto him she said,
"It 's time, true love, you were awa'."
But he lay still and sleeped sound,
Albeit the sun began to sheen;
She looked atween her and the wa',
And dull and drumlie were his een.'
In the majority of ballads of the _Clerk Saunders_ class there is some
base agent who betrays trust and brings death upon the lovers. 'Fause
Foodrage' takes many forms in these ancient tales without changing type.
He is the slayer of 'Lily Flower' in _Jellon Graeme_; and the boy whom
he has preserved and brought up sends the arrow singing to his guilty
heart. Lammiken, the 'bloodthirsty mason,' who must have a life for his
wage, is another enemy within the house who finds his way through
'steekit yetts'; and he is assisted by the 'fause nourice.' In other
ballads it is the 'kitchen-boy,' the 'little foot-page,' the 'churlish
carle,' or the bower-woman who plays the spy and tale-bearer. In
_Glenkindie_, 'Gib, his man,' is the vile betrayer of the noble harper
and his lady. Sometimes, as in _Gude Wallace_, _Earl Richard_, and _Sir
James the Rose_, it is the 'light leman' who plays traitor. But she
quickly repents, and meets her fate in the fire or at the sword's point,
in 'Clyde Water' or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' In
_Gil Morice_, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie,
the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice
and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He
calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord
Barnard's lady--to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir nae bauld
baron's leave.'
'The lady stamped wi' her foot
And winked wi' her e'e;
But for a' that she could say or do
Forbidden he wadna be.'
It is the angry and jealous baron who, in woman guise, meets and slays
the youth who is waiting in gude greenwood, and brings back the bloody
head to the mother.
Other fine ballads in which mother and son carry on tragic colloquy are
_Lord Randal_ and _Edward_. These versions of a story of treachery and
blood, conveyed in the dark hints of a strange dialogue, have received
many touches from later hands; but the germ comes down from the age of
tradition. It has even been noted that, with the curious tenacity with
which the ballad memory often clings to a detail while forgetting or
mislaying essential fact, the food with which, in the version Burns
recovered for Johnson's _Museum_, Lord Randal is poisoned--'eels boiled
in broo'--is identical with that given to his prototype in the
folk-ballads of Italy and other countries. The structure of this
ballad, like the beautiful old air to which it is sung, bears marks of
antiquity, and its wide diffusion militates against Scott's not very
convincing suggestion that it refers to the alleged poisoning of the
Regent Randolph. But it lacks the terrible and dramatic intensity of
_Son Davie_, better known in the version transmitted, under the name of
_Edward_, by Lord Hailes to Bishop Percy's _Reliques_. Here it is the
murderer, and not the victim, who answers; and it is the questioning
mother, and not the absent false love, with whom the curse is left as a
legacy. Despair had never a more piercing utterance than this:
'"And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife?
Edward, Edward!
And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife
When ye gang over the sea, O?"
"The warld 's room, let them beg through life,
Mither, Mither!
The warld 's room, let them beg through life,
For them never mair will I see, O!"
"And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear?
Edward, Edward!
And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear,
My dear son, now tell me, O?"
"The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,
Mither, Mither!
The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,
Sic counsels ye gae me, O!"'
Although Yarrow be the favoured haunt on Scottish soil--may we not also
say on the whole round of earth?--of the Romantic Ballad, and has
coloured them, and taken colour from them, for all time, yet there are
other streams and vales that only come short of being its rivals.
'Leader Haughs,' for instance, which the harp of Nicol Burne, the 'Last
Minstrel' who wandered and sang in the Borderland, has linked
indissolubly with Yarrow braes, know of ballad strains well-nigh as
sweet as those of the neighbour water. But cheerfulness rather than
sadness is their prevailing note. _Auld Maitland_, the lay which James
Hogg's mother repeated to Scott, has its scene on Leader side, and at
the 'darksome town'--a misnomer in these days--of Lauder. Long before
the time of that tough champion, St. Cuthbert and True Thomas had
wandered and dreamed and sang by Leader. It was a Lord Lauderdale who
rode to Traquair to court, after the older fashion, Katherine Janferie:
'He toldna her father, he toldna her mither,
He toldna ane o' her kin;
But he whispered the bonnie may hersel',
And has her favour won.'
He it was, according to the old ballad, who rode to the bridal at the
eleventh hour, with four and twenty Leader lads behind him:
'"I comena here to fight," he said,
"I comena here to play;
But to lead a dance wi' the bonnie bride,
And mount and go my way"';
and it was Lord Lochinvar (although 'he who told the story later' has
taught us so differently) who played the inglorious part of the deserted
bridegroom. Scott himself drank in the passion for Border romance and
chivalry on the braes of Sandyknowe, between Leader and Eden waters, not
far from Smailholm and Dryburgh, and Huntly Bank and Mellerstain, and
Rhymer's Tower and the Broom o' the Cowdenknowes. According to Mr. Ford,
the ballad which takes its name from this last-mentioned spot is
traditionally assigned to a Mellerstain maid named Crosbie, whose words
were set to music by no less famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So
that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and
of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and
'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral
laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ballad romance:
'The hills were high on ilka side,
And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,
And aye as she sang her voice it rang
Out ower the head o' yon hill.
There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,
Merrily riding by,
And ane o' them rade out o' the way
To the bucht to the bonnie may.'
Nowhere has the ballad inspiration and the ballad touch lingered longer
than by Eden and Leader and Whitadder. Lady Grizel Baillie (who also
wonned in Mellerstain) had them--
'There once was a may and she lo'ed nae men,
And she biggit her bonnie bower doun in yon glen'--
and it still lives in Lady John Scott, who has sung of _The Bonnie
Bounds of Cheviot_ as if the mantle of the Border minstrels had fallen
upon her.
After all, the ballads of Yarrow and Ettrick, of the Merse and
Teviotdale, owe their superior fame as much as anything to the happy
chance that the Wizard of Abbotsford dwelt in the midst of them, and
seizing upon them before they were forgotten, made them and the
localities classical. Other districts have in this way been despoiled to
some extent of their proper meed of honour. Fortune as well as merit has
favoured the Border Minstrelsy in the race for survival and for
precedence in the popular memory. But Galloway, a land pervaded with
romance, claims at least one ballad that can rank with the best. _Lord
Gregory_ has aliases and duplicates without number. But the scene is
always Loch Ryan and some castled island within sight of that arm of the
sea, whither the love-lorn Annie fares in her boat 'wi' sails o' the
light green silk and tows o' taffetie,' in quest of her missing lord:
'"O row the boat, my mariners,
And bring me to the land!
For yonder I see my love's castle
Close by the salt sea strand."'
Alas! cold is her welcome as she stands with her young son in her arms,
and knocks and calls on her love, while 'the wind blaws through her
yellow hair, and the rain draps o'er her chin.' A voice, that seems that
of Lord Gregory, bids her go hence as 'a witch or a wil' warlock, or a
mermaid o' the flood'; and with a woful heart she turns back to the sea
and the storm. And when he wakes up from boding dreams to find his true
love and his child have been turned from his door, it is too late. His
cry to the waves is as vain as Annie's cry to that 'ill woman,' his
mother, who has betrayed them:
'"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
O Annie, winna ye bide?"
But aye the mair that he cried Annie,
The braider grew the tide.
"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!
Dear Annie, speak to me!"
But aye the louder he cried Annie,
The louder roared the sea.'
The shores and basin of the Forth have also their rowth of ballads; and
some of them have, like _The Lass of Lochryan_, the sound of the waves
and the salt smell of the sea mingled with their plaintive music. _Gil
Morice_ has been 'placed' by Carronside--Ossian's 'roaring Carra'--a
meet setting for the story. _Sir Patrick Spens_ cleaves to the shores of
Fife; though some, eager for the honour of the North, have claimed that
it is Aberdour in Buchan that is spoken of in the ballad. By the
powerful spell of this old rhyme, the king still sits and drinks the
blood-red wine in roofless Dunfermline tower; the ladies still haunt the
windy headland--Kinghorn or Elie Ness--with 'their kaims intil their
hands' waiting in vain the return of their 'good Scots lords'; the
wraith of Sir Patrick himself in misty days strides the silver strand
under the Hawes Wood, reading the braid letter. Near by is Donibristle;
and it keeps the memory of the 'Bonnie Earl of Moray,' slain here, hints
the balladist--though history is silent on the point--for pleasing too
well the Queen's eye at Holyrood.
Edinburgh, too, draws a good part of its romance from the ballad bard.
Mary Hamilton, of the Queen's Maries, rode through the Netherbow Port to
the gallows-foot:
'"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she 'll hae but three;
There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beaton,
And Marie Carmichael, and me."'
The Marchioness of Douglas wandered disconsolate on Arthur's Seat and
drank of St. Anton's well:
'"O waly, waly, love be bonnie
A little time while it is new,
But when it 's auld it waxes cauld
And fades awa' like morning dew.
But had I wist before I kissed
That love had been so ill to win,
I 'd locked my heart within a kist
And fastened it wi' a siller pin"';
and across the hill lies the 'Wells o' Wearie.' Nowhere else has the
wail of forsaken love found such wistful expression--except in _The
Fause Lover_:
'"But again, dear love, and again, dear love,
Will you never love me again?
Alas! for loving you so well,
And you not me again."'
From Edinburgh wandered Leezie Lindsay, kilting her coats of green satin
to follow her Lord Ronald Macdonald the weary way to the Highland
Border; and to its plainstanes came the faithful Lady of Gicht to ransom
her Geordie:
'My Geordie, O my Geordie,
The love I bear my Geordie!
For the very ground I walk upon
Bears witness I lo'e Geordie.'
And these regions of the North have as much of the 'blood-red wine' of
ballad romance coursing through them as Tweedside or Lothian, although
it may be of harsher and coarser flavour. Space does not allow of doing
justice to the Northern Ballads, some of them simple strains, made
familiar by sweet airs, like _Hunting Tower_, or _Bessie Bell and Mary
Gray_, or the _Banks of the Lomond_; others, and these chiefly from the
wintry side of Cairn o' Mount, 'bleak and bare' as that wilderness of
heather; still others, and from the same quarter, gallant, warm-hearted,
light-stepping tunes as ever were sung--_Glenlogie_, for instance:
'There were four-and-twenty nobles
Rode through Banchory fair;
And bonnie Glenlogie
Was flower o' them there.'
For the most part they are variants, many of them badly mutilated in the
rhymes, that are familiar, under other names, farther south. They gather
about the family history and the family trees of the great houses--the
Gordons for choice--planted by Dee and Don and Ythan, where Gadie runs
at the 'back o' Benachie,' and in the Bog o' Gicht; and they tell of
love adventures and mischances that have befallen the Lords of Huntly or
Aboyne, the Lairds of Drum or Meldrum, and even the humble Trumpeter of
Fyvie.