Ever and again, in the literary and antiquarian papers, there flickers
up debate as to the Mystery of Lord Bateman. This problem in no way
concerns the existing baronial house of Bateman, which, in Burke,
records no predecessor before a knight and lord mayor of 1717. Our
Bateman comes of lordlier and more ancient lineage. The question really
concerns ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by George
Cruikshank, London: Charles Tilt, Fleet Street. And Mustapha Syried,
Constantinople. MDCCCXXXIX.’
The tiny little volume in green cloth, with a design of Lord Bateman’s
marriage ceremony, stamped in gold, opens with a ‘Warning to the Public,
concerning the Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman.’ The Warning is signed
George Cruikshank, who, however, adds in a postscript: ‘The above is not
my writing.’ The ballad follows, and then comes a set of notes, mainly
critical. The author of the Warning remarks: ‘In some collection of old
English Ballads there is an ancient ditty, which, I am told, bears some
remote and distant resemblance to the following Epic Poem.’
Again, the text of the ballad, here styled ‘The Famous History of Lord
Bateman,’ with illustrations by Thackeray, ‘plain’ (the original designs
were coloured), occurs in the Thirteenth Volume of the Biographical
Edition of Thackeray’s works. (pp. lvi-lxi).
The problems debated are: ‘Who wrote the Loving Ballad of Lord
Bateman, and who wrote the Notes?’ The disputants have not shown much
acquaintance with ballad lore in general.
First let us consider Mr. Thackeray’s text of the ballad. It is closely
affiliated to the text of ‘The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman,’ whereof
the earliest edition with Cruikshank’s illustrations was published in
1839.* The edition here used is that of David Bryce and Son, Glasgow (no
date).
*There are undated cheap broadside copies, not illustrated, in the
British Museum.
Mr. Blanchard Jerrold, in his ‘Life of Cruikshank,’ tells us that the
artist sang this ‘old English ballad’ at a dinner where Dickens and
Thackeray were present. Mr. Thackeray remarked: ‘I should like to print
that ballad with illustrations,’ but Cruikshank ‘warned him off,’ as he
intended to do the thing himself. Dickens furnished the learned notes.
This account of what occurred was given by Mr. Walter Hamilton, but Mr.
Sala furnished another version. The ‘authorship of the ballad,’ Mr. Sala
justly observed, ‘is involved in mystery.’ Cruikshank picked it up from
the recitation of a minstrel outside a pot-house. In Mr. Sala’s opinion,
Mr. Thackeray ‘revised and settled the words, and made them fit for
publication.’ Nor did he confine himself to the mere critical work;
he added, in Mr. Sala’s opinion, that admired passage about ‘The young
bride’s mother, who never before was heard to speak so free,’ also
contributing ‘The Proud Young Porter,’ Jeames. Now, in fact, both the
interpellation of the bride’s mamma, and the person and characteristics
of the proud young porter, are of unknown antiquity, and are not due
to Mr. Thackeray--a scholar too conscientious to ‘decorate’ an ancient
text. Bishop Percy did such things, and Scott is not beyond suspicion;
but Mr. Thackeray, like Joseph Ritson, preferred the authentic voice of
tradition. Thus, in the text of the Biographical Edition, he does not
imitate the Cockney twang, phonetically rendered in the version of
Cruikshank. The second verse, for example, runs thus:
Cruikshank:
He sail-ed east, he sail-ed vest,
Until he came to famed Tur-key,
Vere he vos taken and put to prisin,
Until his life was quite wea-ry.
Thackeray:
He sailed East, and he sailed West,
Until he came to proud Turkey,
Where he was taken and put to prison,
Until his life was almost weary.
There are discrepancies in the arrangement of the verses, and a most
important various reading.
Cruikshank:
Now sevin long years is gone and past,
And fourteen days vell known to me;
She packed up all her gay clouthing,
And swore Lord Bateman she would go see.
To this verse, in Cruikshank’s book, a note (not by Cruikshank) is
added:
‘“Now sevin long years is gone and past,
And fourteen days well known to me.”’
In this may be recognised, though in a minor degree, the same gifted
hand that portrayed the Mussulman, the pirate, the father, and the
bigot, in two words (“This Turk”).
‘“The time is gone, the historian knows it, and that is enough for the
reader. This is the dignity of history very strikingly exemplified.”’
That note to Cruikshank’s text is, like all the delightful notes, if
style is evidence, not by Dickens, but by Thackeray. Yet, in his own
text, with an exemplary fidelity, he reads: ‘And fourteen days well
known to THEE.’ To whom? We are left in ignorance; and conjecture,
though tempting, is unsafe. The reading of Cruikshank, ‘vell known to
ME’--that is, to the poet--is confirmed by the hitherto unprinted
‘Lord Bedmin.’ This version, collected by Miss Wyatt Edgell in 1899, as
recited by a blind old woman in a workhouse, who had learned it in
her youth, now lies before the present writer. He owes this invaluable
document to the kindness of Miss Wyatt Edgell and Lady Rosalind
Northcote. Invaluable it is, because it proves that Lord Bateman (or
Bedmin) is really a volkslied, a popular and current version of the
ancient ballad. ‘Famed Turkey’ becomes ‘Torquay’ in this text, probably
by a misapprehension on the part of the collector or reciter. The speech
of the bride’s mother is here omitted, though it occurs in older texts;
but, on the whole, the blind old woman’s memory has proved itself
excellent. In one place she gives Thackeray’s reading in preference to
that of Cruikshank, thus:
Cruikshank:
Ven he vent down on his bended knee.
Thackeray:
Down on his bended knees fell he.
Old Woman:
Down on his bended knee fell he.
We have now ascertained the following facts: Cruikshank and Thackeray
used a text with merely verbal differences, which was popular among
the least educated classes early in last century. Again, Thackeray
contributed the notes and critical apparatus to Cruikshank’s version.
For this the internal evidence of style is overpowering: no other man
wrote in the manner and with the peculiar humour of Mr. Titmarsh. In the
humble opinion of the present writer these Notes ought to be appended to
Mr. Thackeray’s version of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Finally, Mr. Sala was wrong
in supposing that Mr. Thackeray took liberties with the text received
from oral tradition.
What was the origin of that text? Professor Child, in the second part of
his ‘English and Scottish Popular Ballads’ * lays before us the learning
about Lord Bateman, Lord Bedmin, Young Bicham, Young Brechin, Young
Bekie, Young Beichan and Susie Pie (the heroine, Sophia, in Thackeray),
Lord Beichan, Young Bondwell, and Markgraf Backenweil; for by all
these names is Lord Bateman known. The student must carefully note that
‘Thackeray’s List of Broadsides,’ cited, is NOT by Mr. W. M. Thackeray.
*Pt. ii. p. 454 et seq., and in various other places.
As the reader may not remember the incidents in the Thackeray,
Cruikshank, and Old Woman version (which represents an ancient ballad,
now not so much popularised as vulgarised), a summary may be given.
Lord Bateman went wandering: ‘his character, at this time, and his
expedition, would seem to have borne a striking resemblance to those of
Lord Byron.... SOME foreign country he wished to see, and that was the
extent of his desire; any foreign country would answer his purpose--all
foreign countries were alike to him.’--(Note, apud Cruikshank.) Arriving
in Turkey (or Torquay) he was taken and fastened to a tree by his
captor. He was furtively released by the daughter of ‘This Turk.’ ‘The
poet has here, by that bold license which only genius can venture upon,
surmounted the extreme difficulty of introducing any particular Turk, by
assuming a foregone conclusion in the reader’s mind; and adverting, in
a casual, careless way, to a Turk hitherto unknown as to an old
acquaintance.... “THIS Turk he had” is a master-stroke, a truly
Shakespearian touch’--(Note.) The lady, in her father’s cellar
[‘Castle,’ Old Woman’s text), consoles the captive with ‘the very best
wine,’ secretly stored, for his private enjoyment, by the cruel and
hypocritical Mussulman. She confesses the state of her heart,
and inquires as to Lord Bateman’s real property, which is ‘half
Northumberland.’ To what period in the complicated mediaeval history of
the earldom of Northumberland the affair belongs is uncertain.
The pair vow to be celibate for seven years, and Lord Bateman escapes.
At the end of the period, Sophia sets out for Northumberland, urged,
perhaps, by some telepathic admonition. For, on arriving at Lord
Bateman’s palace (Alnwick Castle?), she summons the proud porter,
announces herself, and finds that her lover has just celebrated a
marriage with another lady. In spite of the remonstrances of the bride’s
mamma, Lord Bateman restores that young lady to her family, observing
She is neither the better nor the worse for me.
So Thackeray and Old Woman. Cruikshank prudishly reads,
O you’ll see what I’ll do for you and she.
‘Lord Bateman then prepared another marriage, having plenty of
superfluous wealth to bestow upon the Church.’--(Note.) All the rest was
bliss.
The reader may ask: How did Sophia know anything about the obscure
Christian captive? WHY did she leave home exactly in time for his
marriage? How came Lord Bateman to be so fickle? The Annotator replies:
‘His lordship had doubtless been impelled by despair of ever recovering
his lost Sophia, and a natural anxiety not to die without leaving an
heir to his estate.’ Finally how was the difficulty of Sophia’s religion
overcome?
To all these questions the Cockney version gives no replies, but the
older forms of the ballad offer sufficient though varying answers, as we
shall see.
Meanwhile one thing is plain from this analysis of the pot-house version
of an old ballad, namely, that the story is constructed out of fragments
from the great universal store of popular romance. The central ideas are
two: first, the situation of a young man in the hands of a cruel captor
(often a god, a giant, a witch, a fiend), but here--a Turk. The youth
is loved and released (commonly through magic spells) by the daughter
of the gaoler, god, giant, witch, Turk, or what not. In Greece, Jason is
the Lord Bateman, Medea is the Sophia, of the tale, which was known
to Homer and Hesiod, and was fully narrated by Pindar. THE OTHER YOUNG
PERSON, the second bride, however, comes in differently, in the Greek.
In far-off Samoa, a god is the captor.* The gaoler is a magician in Red
Indian versions.**
*Turner’s ‘Samoa,’ p. 102.
**For a list, though an imperfect one, of the Captor’s Daughter story,
see the Author’s Custom and Myth, pp. 86-102.
As a rule, in these tales, from Finland to Japan, from Samoa to
Madagascar, Greece and India, the girl accompanies her lover in his
flight, delaying the pursuer by her magic. In ‘Lord Bateman’ another
formula, almost as widely diffused, is preferred.
The old true love comes back just after her lover’s wedding. He returns
to her. Now, as a rule, in popular tales, the lover’s fickleness is
explained by a spell or by a breach of a taboo. The old true love has
great difficulty in getting access to him, and in waking him from a
sleep, drugged or magical.
The bloody shirt I wrang for thee,
The Hill o’ Glass I clamb for thee,
And wilt thou no waken and speak to me?
He wakens at last, and all is well. In a Romaic ballad the deserted
girl, meeting her love on his wedding-day, merely reminds him of old
kindness. He answers--
Now he that will may scatter nuts,
And he may wed that will,
But she that was my old true love
Shall be my true love still.
This incident, the strange, often magically caused oblivion of the
lover, whose love returns to him, like Sophia, at, or after, his
marriage, is found in popular tales of Scotland, Norway, Iceland,
Germany, Italy, Greece, and the Gaelic Western Islands. It does not
occur in ‘Lord Bateman,’ where Mr. Thackeray suggests probable reasons
for Lord Bateman’s fickleness. But the world-wide incidents are found in
older versions of ‘Lord Bateman,’ from which they have been expelled by
the English genius for the commonplace.
Thus, if we ask, how did Sophia at first know of Bateman’s existence?
The lovely and delicate daughter of the Turk, doubtless, was unaware
that, in the crowded dungeons of her sire, one captive of wealth,
noble birth, and personal fascination, was languishing. The Annotator
explains: ‘She hears from an aged and garrulous attendant, her only
female adviser (for her mother died while she was yet an infant), of the
sorrows and sufferings of the Christian captive.’ In ancient versions
of the ballad another explanation occurs. She overhears a song which
he sings about his unlucky condition. This account is in Young Bekie
(Scottish: mark the name, Bekie), where France is the scene and the
king’s daughter is the lady. The same formula of the song sung by the
prisoner is usual. Not uncommon, too, is a TOKEN carried by Sophia when
she pursues her lost adorer, to insure her recognition. It is half of
her broken ring. Once more, why does Sophia leave home to find Bateman
in the very nick of time? Thackeray’s version does not tell us; but
Scottish versions do. ‘She longed fu’ sair her love to see.’ Elsewhere
a supernatural being, ‘The Billy Blin,’ or a fairy, clad in green,
gives her warning. The fickleness of the hero is caused, sometimes, by
constraint, another noble ‘has his marriage,’ as his feudal superior,
and makes him marry, but only in form.
There is a marriage in yonder hall,
Has lasted thirty days and three,
The bridegroom winna bed the bride,
For the sake o’ one that’s owre the sea.