TAM LIN
ἀλλ᾽ ἦ τοι πρώτιστα λέων γένετ᾽ ἠϋγένειος,
αὐτὰρ ἔπειτα δράκων καὶ πάρδαλις ἠδὲ μέγας σῦς‧
γίγνετο δ’ ὑγρὸν ὕδωρ καὶ δένδρεον ὑψιπέτηλον.[A]
Odyssey, IV. 456-8.
The Text here given is from Johnson’s Museum, communicated by Burns. Scott’s version (1802), The Young Tamlane, contained certain verses, ‘obtained from a gentleman residing near Langholm, which are said to be very ancient, though the language is somewhat of a modern cast.’ —‘Of a grossly modern invention,’ says Child, ‘and as unlike popular verse as anything can be.’ Here is a specimen:—
‘They sing, inspired with love and joy,
Like skylarks in the air;
Of solid sense, or thought that’s grave,
You’ll find no traces there.’
A copy in the Glenriddell MSS. corresponds very closely with the one here printed, doubtless owing to Burns’s friendship with Riddell. Both probably were derived from one common source.
The Story .—Although the ballad as it stands is purely Scottish, its main feature, the retransformation of Tam Lin, is found in popular mythology even before Homer’s time.
A Cretan ballad, taken down about 1820-30, relates that a young peasant, falling in love with a nereid, was advised by an old woman to seize his beloved by the hair just before cock-crow, and hold her fast, whatever transformation she might undergo. He did so; the nymph became in turn a dog, a snake, a camel, and fire. In spite of all, he retained his hold; and at the next crowing of the cock she regained her beauty, and accompanied him home. After a year, in which she spoke no word, she bore a son. The peasant again applied to the old woman for a cure, and was advised to tell his wife that if she would not speak, he would throw the baby into the oven. On his carrying out the old woman’s suggestion the nereid cried out, ‘Let go my child, dog!’ tore her baby from him, and vanished.
This tale was current among the Cretan peasantry in 1820. Two thousand years before, Apollodorus had told much the same story of Peleus and Thetis (Bibliotheca, iii. 13). The chief difference is that it was Thetis who placed her son on the fire, to make him immortal, and Peleus who cried out. The Tayl of the yong Tamlene is mentioned in the Complaint of Scotland (1549).
Carterhaugh is about a mile from Selkirk, at the confluence of the Ettrick and the Yarrow.
The significance of 34.3, ‘Then throw me into well water,’ is lost in the present version, by the position of the line after the ‘burning gleed,’ as it seems the reciter regarded the well-water merely as a means of extinguishing the gleed. But the immersion in water has a meaning far deeper and more interesting than that. It is a widespread and ancient belief in folklore that immersion in water (or sometimes milk) is indispensable to the recovery of human shape, after existence in a supernatural shape, or vice versâ. The version in the Glenriddell MSS. rightly gives it as the last direction to Janet, to be adopted when the transformations are at an end:—
‘First dip me in a stand o’ milk,
And then a stand o’ water.’
For the beginning of Tam Lin, compare the meeting of Akin and Lady Margaret in Elmond-wood in Young Akin.
all’ ê toi prôtista leôn genet’ êugeneios,
autar epeita drakôn kai pardalis êde megas sus;
gigneto d’ hugron hudôr kai dendreon hupsipetêlon.