Up spoke the young bride’s mother,
Who never was heard to speak so free,
wrongly attributed to Mr. Thackeray’s own pen.
The incident of the magical oblivion which comes over the bridegroom
occurs in Scandinavian versions of ‘Lord Bateman’ from manuscripts of
the sixteenth century.* Finally, the religious difficulty in several
Scottish versions is got over by the conversion and baptism of Sophia,
who had professed the creed of Islam. That all these problems in ‘Lord
Bateman’ are left unsolved is, then, the result of decay. The modern
vulgar English version of the pot-house minstrel (known as ‘The Tripe
Skewer,’ according to the author of the Introduction to Cruikshank’s
version) has forgotten, has been heedless of, and has dropped the
ancient universal elements of folk-tale and folk-song.
*Child, ii. 459-461.
These graces, it is true, are not too conspicuous even in the oldest and
best versions of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Choosing at random, however, we find a
Scots version open thus:
In the lands where Lord Beichan was born,
Among the stately steps o’ stane,
He wore the goud at his left shoulder,
But to the Holy Land he’s gane.
That is not in the tone of the ditty sung by the Tripe Skewer. Again, in
his prison,
He made na his moan to a stock,
He made na it to a stone,
But it was to the Queen of Heaven
That he made his moan.
The lines are from a version of the North of Scotland, and, on the face
of it, are older than the extirpation of the Catholic faith in the loyal
North. The reference to Holy Land preserves a touch of the crusading
age. In short, poor as they may be, the Scottish versions are those of
a people not yet wholly vulgarised, not yet lost to romance. The singers
have ‘half remembered and half forgot’ the legend of Gilbert Becket
(Bekie, Beichan), the father of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Gilbert, in
the legend, went to Holy Land, was cast into a Saracen’s prison, and
won his daughter’s heart. He escaped, but the lady followed him, like
Sophia, and, like Sophia, found and wedded him; Gilbert’s servant,
Richard, playing the part of the proud young porter. Yet, as Professor
Child justly observes, the ballad ‘is not derived from the legend,’
though the legend as to Gilbert Becket exists in a manuscript of about
1300. The Bateman motive is older than Gilbert Becket, and has been
attached to later versions of the adventures of that hero. Gilbert
Becket about 1300 was credited with a floating, popular tale of the
Bateman sort, and out of his legend, thus altered, the existing ballads
drew their ‘Bekie’ and ‘Beichan,’ from the name of Becket.
The process is: First, the popular tale of the return of the old true
love; that tale is found in Greece, Scandinavia, Denmark, Iceland,
Faroe, Spain, Germany, and so forth. Next, about 1300 Gilbert Becket is
made the hero of the tale. Next, our surviving ballads retain a trace or
two of the Becket form, but they are not derived from the Becket form.
The fancy of the folk first evolved the situations in the story, then
lent them to written literature (Becket’s legend, 1300), and thirdly,
received the story back from written legend with a slight, comparatively
modern colouring.
In the dispute as to the origin of our ballads one school, as Mr. T. F.
Henderson and Professor Courthope, regard them as debris of old literary
romances, ill-remembered work of professional minstrels.* That there are
ballads of this kind in England, such as the Arthurian ballads, I do
not deny. But in my opinion many ballads and popular tales are in origin
older than the mediaeval romances, as a rule. As a rule the romances
are based on earlier popular data, just as the ‘Odyssey’ is an artistic
whole made up out of popular tales. The folk may receive back a literary
form of its own ballad or story, but more frequently the popular ballad
comes down in oral tradition side by side with its educated child, the
literary romance on the same theme.
Cf. The Queen’s Marie.
Mr. Henderson has answered that the people is unpoetical. The degraded
populace of the slums may be unpoetical, like the minstrel named ‘Tripe
Skewer,’ and may deprave the ballads of its undegraded ancestry into
such modern English forms as ‘Lord Bateman.’ But I think of the people
which, in Barbour’s day, had its choirs of peasant girls chanting rural
snatches on Bruce’s victories, or, in still earlier France, of Roland’s
overthrow. If THEIR songs are attributed to professional minstrels, I
turn to the Greece of 1830, to the Finland of to-day, to the outermost
Hebrides of to-day, to the Arapahoes of Northern America, to the
Australian blacks, among all of whom the people are their own poets and
make their own dirges, lullabies, chants of victory, and laments for
defeat. THESE peoples are not unpoetical. In fact, when I say that the
people has been its own poet I do not mean the people which goes to
music halls and reads halfpenny newspapers. To the true folk we owe the
legend of Lord Bateman in its ancient germs; and to the folk’s degraded
modern estate, crowded as men are in noisome streets and crushed by
labour, we owe the Cockney depravation, the Lord Bateman of Cruikshank
and Thackeray. Even that, I presume, being old, is now forgotten, except
by the ancient blind woman in the workhouse. To the workhouse has come
the native popular culture--the last lingering shadow of old romance.
That is the moral of the ballad of Lord Bateman.
In an article by Mr. Kitton, in Literature (June 24, 1899, p. 699), this
learned Dickensite says: ‘The authorship of this version’ (Cruikshank’s)
‘of an ancient ballad and of the accompanying notes has given rise to
much controversy, and whether Dickens or Thackeray was responsible for
them is still a matter of conjecture, although what little evidence
there is seems to favour Thackeray.’
For the ballad neither Thackeray nor Dickens is responsible. The Old
Woman’s text settles that question: the ballad is a degraded Volkslied.
As to the notes, internal evidence for once is explicit. The notes are
Thackeray’s. Any one who doubts has only to compare Thackeray’s notes to
his prize poem on ‘Timbuctoo.’
The banter, in the notes, is academic banter, that of a university man,
who is mocking the notes of learned editors. This humour is not
the humour of Dickens, who, however, may very well have written the
Introduction to Cruikshank’s version. That morceau is in quite a
different taste and style. I ought, in fairness, to add the following
note from Mr. J. B. Keene, which may be thought to overthrow belief in
Thackeray’s authorship of the notes:--
Dear Sir,--Your paper in the ‘Cornhill’ for this month on the Mystery of
Lord Bateman interested me greatly, but I must beg to differ from you as
to the authorship of the Notes, and for this reason.
I have before me a copy of the first edition of the ‘Loving Ballad’
which was bought by my father soon after it was issued. At that
time--somewhere about 1840--there was a frequent visitor at our house,
named Burnett, who had married a sister of Charles Dickens, and who gave
us the story of its production.
He said, as you state, that Cruikshank had got the words from a
pot-house singer, but the locality he named was Whitechapel,* where he
was looking out for characters. He added that Cruikshank sung or hummed
the tune to him, and he gave it the musical notation which follows the
preface. He also said that Charles Dickens wrote the notes. His personal
connection with the work and his relation to Dickens are, I think, fair
evidence on the question.
I am, dear Sir, Yours truly,
J. B. KEENE.
Kingsmead House, 1 Hartham Road, Camden Road, N., Feb. 13,1900.
Mr. Keene’s evidence may, perhaps, settle the question. But, if Dickens
wrote the Introduction, that might be confused in Mr. Burnett’s memory
with the Notes, from internal evidence the work of Thackeray. If not,
then in the Notes we find a new aspect of the inexhaustible humour
of Dickens. It is certain, at all events, that neither Dickens nor
Thackeray was the author of the ‘Loving Ballad.’
P.S.--The preface to the ballad says Battle Bridge.