A Collection of Ballads. Andrew Lang

Hamilton occurring in a tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear in the variants of the ballad. The lady is there spoken of generally as Mary Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth. Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom, she is not abroad, but in Edinburgh town. Nothing can be less probable than that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719, telling the tale of a yesterday’s tragedy in Russia, should throw the time back by a hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to Scotland (the heart of the sorrow would be Mary’s exile), and, above all, should compose a ballad in a style long obsolete. This is not the method of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as Hardyknute show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.

      We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard Mary Hamilton as an old example of popular perversion of history in ballad, not as “one of the very latest,” and also “one of the very best” of Scottish popular ballads.

      Rob Roy shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. Indeed a kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.

      Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin, composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused among and altered by popular reciters. In England they soon won their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled and moralized by the hack editors.

      No ballad has a stranger history than The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence. Bateman, a captive of “this Turk,” is beloved by the Turk’s daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by her released. The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local bride, but “orders another marriage,” and sends home his bride “in a coach and three.” This incident is stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic. [0b]

      Now Lord Bateman is Young Bekie in the Scotch ballads, who becomes Young Beichan, Young Bichem, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how his Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester’s Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child’s Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example in the state of Cantefable, alternate prose and verse, like Aucassin and Nicolette. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the twelfth century.

      Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad. The examples selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the spirit of the Border raids which they record. A few notes are added in an appendix. The text is chosen from among the many variants in Child’s learned but still unfinished collection, and an effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry with most signs of uncontaminated originality. In a few cases Sir Walter Scott’s versions, though confessedly “made up,” are preferred. Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does not merely plough with Professor Child’s heifer, but has made a study of ballads from his boyhood.

      This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic American critics, from “the common blame of a plagiary.” Indeed, as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas here set forth.

      So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child’s regretted death. He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads, with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research, and a distinguished honour to American scholarship. We are not told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic, with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the Ballads: as to the influences which directed the selection of certain themes of Märchen for poetic treatment, and the processes by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe. No one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of Professor Child. It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it unfinished.

SIR PATRICK SPENS

       Table of Contents

      (Border Minstrelsy.)

      The king sits in Dunfermline town,

       Drinking the blude-red wine o:

       “O whare will I get a skeely skipper

       To sail this new ship of mine o?”

      O up and spake an eldern-knight,

       Sat at the king’s right knee:

       “Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor

       That ever saild the sea.”

      Our king has written a braid letter,

       And seald it with his hand,

       And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens,

       Was walking on the strand.

      “To Noroway, to Noroway,

       To Noroway oer the faem;

       The king’s daughter of Noroway,

       ’Tis thou maun bring her hame.”

      The first word that Sir Patrick read,

       Sae loud, loud laughed he;

       The neist word that Sir Patrick read,

       The tear blinded his ee.

      “O wha is this has done this deed,

       And tauld the king o me,

       To send us out, at this time of the year,

       To sail upon the sea?”

      “Be it wind, be it weet, be it hall, be it sleet,

       Our ship must sail the faem;

       The king’s daughter of Noroway,

       ’Tis we must fetch her hame.”

      They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn,

       Wi’ a’ the speed they may;

       They hae landed in Noroway,

       Upon a Wodensday.

      They hadna been a week, a week

       In Noroway but twae,

       When that the lords o Noroway

       Began aloud to say:

      “Ye Scottishmen spend a’ our king’s goud,

       And a’ our queenis fee.”

       “Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud!

       Fu’ loud I hear ye lie!

      “For I brought as much white monie

       As gane my men and me,

       And I brought a half-fou’ o’ gude red goud,

       Out o’er the sea wi’ me.

      “Make ready, make ready, my merry-men a’!

       Our gude ship sails the morn.”

       “Now ever alake, my master dear,

       I fear a deadly