FOOTNOTES:
[304] See the letter of Dr Anderson to Bishop Percy, December 29, 1800, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, VII, 178 f.
[305] Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, pp. 211-224. See, also, Scott's Minstrelsy, IV, 110-116, 129-151, ed. 1833. But, above all, Dr J. A. H. Murray's Introduction to The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, 1875.
[306] Hector Boece (1527) says the surname was Leirmont, but there is no evidence for this that is of value. See Murray, p. xiii.
[307] The five copies have been edited by Dr J. A. H. Murray, and printed by the Early English Text Society. A reconstructed text by Dr Alois Brandl makes the second volume of a Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben, Berlin, 1880.
[308] Murray, pp xxiv-xxvii. As might be expected, the Latin texts corrupt the names of persons and of places, and alter the results of battles. Dr Murray remarks: "The oldest text makes the Scots win Halidon Hill, with the slaughter of six thousand Englishmen, while the other texts, wise after the fact, makes the Scots lose, as they actually did." This, and the consideration that a question about the conflict between the families of Bruce and Baliol would not be put after 1400, when the Baliol line was extinct, disposes Dr Murray to think that verses 326-56 of the second fit, with perhaps the first fit, the conclusion of the poem, and an indefinite portion of fit third, may have been written on the eve of Halidon Hill, with a view to encourage the Scots.
[309] The poem, vv 675-80, says only that Thomas and the lady did not part for ever and aye, but that she was to visit him at Huntley banks.
[310] The relations of Thomas Rhymer and Ogier might, perhaps, be cleared up by the poem of The Visions of Ogier in Fairy Land. The book is thus described by Brunet, ed. 1863, IV, 173: Le premier (second et troisième) livre des visions d'Oger le Dannoys au royaulme de Fairie, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 48 ff. Brunet adds: A la suite de ce poëme, dans l'exemplaire de la Bibliothèque impériale, se trouve, Le liure des visions fantastiques, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 24 ff. The National Library is not now in possession of the volume; nor have all the inquiries I have been able to make, though most courteously aided in France, resulted, as I hoped, in the finding of a copy.
[311] Excepting the two satirical stanzas with which Scott's version (C) concludes. "The repugnance of Thomas to be debarred the use of falsehood when he should find it convenient," may have, as Scott says, "a comic effect," but is, for a ballad, a miserable conceit. Both ballad and romance are serious.
[312] Eildon Tree, the site of which is supposed now to be marked by the Eildon Tree Stone, stood, or should have stood, on the slope of the eastern of the three Eildon Hills. Huntly Banks are about half a mile to the west of the Eildon Stone, on the same hill-slope. Erceldoun, a village on the Leader, two miles above its junction with the Tweed, is all but visible from the Eildon Stone. Murray, pp l-lii.
[313] In B 2, absurdly, the lady holds nine bells in her hand. Ringing or jingling bridles are ascribed to fairies, Tam Lin, A 37, Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 298 ("manes hung wi whustles that the win played on," p. 299). The fairy's saddle has a bordure of bells in the English Launfal, Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, p. 31, but not in Marie's lai. The dwarf-king Antiloie, in Ulrich Von Eschenbach's Alexander, has bells on his bridle: Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, I, 385. These bells, however, are not at all distinctive of fairies, but are the ordinary decoration of elegant "outriders" in the Middle Ages, especially of women. In the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, a messenger's trappings ring with five hundred bells. Besides the bridle, bells were sometimes attached to the horse's breastplate, to the saddle-bow, crupper, and stirrups. Conde Claros's steed has three hundred around his breastplate. See Weber's Metrical Romances, R.C. de Lion, vv 1514-17, 5712-14, cited by T. Wright, History of Domestic Manners in England, 214 f; Liebrecht, Gervasius, p. 122; Kölbing, Englische Studien, III, 105; Zupitza and Varnhagen, Anglia, III, 371, IV, 417; and particularly A. Schultz, Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger, I, 235, 388-91.
[314] The original I suppose to be the very cheerful tale of Ogier, with which the author of Thomas of Erceldoune has blended a very serious one, without any regard to the irreconcilableness of the two. He is presently forced to undo this melancholy transformation of the fairy, as we shall see. Brandl, 'Thomas of Erceldoune,' p. 20, cites from Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriæ, I, 5, a story about one Meilyr, a Welshman, the like of which our poet had in mind. This Meilyr was a great soothsayer, and "owed his skill to the following adventure:" Being in company one evening with a girl for whom he had long had a passion, desideratis amplexibus atque deliciis cum indulsisset, statim loco puellæ formosæ formam quamdam villosam, hispidam et hirsutam, adeoque enormiter deformem invenit, quod in ipso ejusdem aspectu dementire cœpit et insanire. Meilyr recovered his reason after several years, through the merits of the saints, but always kept up an intimacy with unclean spirits, and by their help foretold the future. It is not said that they gave him the tongue that never could lie, but no other tongue could lie successfully in his presence: he always saw a little devil capering on it. He was able, by similar indications, to point out the lies and errors of books. The experiment being once tried of laying the Gospel of John in his lap, every devil instantly decamped. Geoffrey of Monmouth's history was substituted, and imps swarmed all over the book and him, too.
[315] B 83,4 "It was a' that cursed fruit o thine beggared man and woman in your countrie:" the fruit of the Forbidden Tree.
[316] Purgatory is omitted in the Cotton MS. of the romance, as in the ballad.
[317] Ogier le Danois hardly exceeded the proportion of the ordinary hyperbole of lovers: two hundred years seemed but twenty. The British king Herla lived with the king of the dwarfs more than two hundred years, and thought the time but three days: Walter Mapes, Nugæ Curialium, ed. Wright, p. 16 f (Liebrecht). The strongest case, I believe, is the exquisite legend, versified by Trench, of the monk, with whom three hundred years passed, while he was listening to a bird's song—as he thought, less than three hours. For some of the countless repetitions of the idea, see Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Oesterley, No 562, and notes, p. 537; Liebrecht's Gervasins, p. 89; W. Hertz, Deutsche Sage im Elsass, pp 115-18, 263; A. Graf, La Leggenda del Paradiso Terrestre, pp 26-29, 31-33, and notes; J. Koch, Die Siebenschläferlegende, kap. ii.
[318] In an exquisite little ballad obtained by Tommaseo from a peasant-girl of Empoli, I, 26, a lover who had visited hell, and there met and kissed his mistress, is told by her that he must not hope ever to go thence. How the lover escaped in this instance is not explained. Such things happen sometimes, but not often enough to encourage one to take the risk.
Sono stato all' inferno, e son tornato:
Misericordia, la gente che c'era!
V'era una stanza tutta illuminata,
E dentro v'era la speranza mia.
Quando mi vedde, gran festa mi fece,
E poi mi disse: Dolce anima mia,
Non ti arricordi del tempo passato,
Quando tu mi dicevi, "anima mia?"
Ora, mio caro ben, baciami in bocca,
Baciami tanto ch'io contenta sia.
È tanto saporita la tua bocca!
Di grazia saporisci anco la mia.
Ora, mio caro ben, che m'hai baciato,
Di qui non isperar d'andarne via.
[319] A 8, 9, R 34, 35. It was not that Thomas was about to pluck fruit from the Forbidden Tree, though B understands it so: cf. R 32, 33. The curse of this tree seems, however, to have affected all Paradise. In modern Greek popular poetry Paradise occurs sometimes entirely in the sense of Hades. See B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 249.
[320] Jamieson, in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 398: 'Child Rowland and Burd Ellen.'
[321] Niedersächsische Sagen und Märchen, Schambach und Müller, p. 373. Shakspere has this: "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die;" Falstaff, in Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 5. Ancient Greek tradition is not without traces of the same ideas. It was Persephone's eating of the pomegranate kernel that consigned her to the lower world, in spite of Zeus and Demeter's opposition. The drinking of Circe's brewage and the eating of lotus had an effect on the companions of Ulysses such as is sometimes ascribed to the food and drink of fairies, or other demons, that of producing forgetfulness of home: Odyssey, X, 236, IX, 97. But it would not be safe to build much on this. A Hebrew tale makes the human wife of a demon charge a man who has come to perform, a certain service for the family not to eat or drink in the house, or to take any present of her husband, exactly repeating the precautions observed in Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, Nos 41, 49: Tendlan, Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer Vorzeit, p. 141. The children of Shem may probably have derived this trait in the story from the children of Japhet. Aladdin, in the Arabian Nights, is to have a care, above all things, that he does not touch the walls of the subterranean chamber so much as with his clothes, or he will die instantly. This again, by itself, is not very conclusive.
[322] Historia Danica, l. viii: Müller et Velschow, I, 420-25.
[38]
THE WEE WEE MAN
[A]. a. 'The Wee Wee Man,' Herd's MSS, I, 153; Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 95.
[B]. Caw's Poetical Museum, p. 348.
[C]. 'The Wee Wee Man,' Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 234, ed. 1802.
[D]. 'The Wee Wee Man,' Kinloch MSS, VII, 253.
[E]. a. 'The Wee Wee Man,' Motherwell's Note-Book, fol. 40; Motherwell's MS., p. 195. b. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 343.
[F]. 'The Wee Wee Man,' Motherwell's MS., p. 68.
[G]. 'The Little Man,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 263.
This extremely airy and sparkling little ballad varies but slightly in the half dozen known copies. The one in the Musical Museum, No 370, p. 382, and that in Ritson's Scotish Songs, II, 139, are reprinted from Herd.
Singularly enough, there is a poem in eight-line stanzas, in a fourteenth-century manuscript, which stands in somewhat the same relation to this ballad as the poem of Thomas of Erceldoune does to the ballad of Thomas Rymer, but with the important difference that there is no reason for deriving the ballad from the poem in this instance. There seems to have been an intention to make it, like Thomas of Erceldoune, an introduction to a string of prophecies which follows, but no junction has been effected. This poem is given in an appendix.
A is translated by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 210; B, with a few improvements from E b, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 12.
A.
Herd's MSS, I, 153, Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 95.
1
As I was wa'king all alone,
Between a water and a wa,
And there I spy'd a wee wee man,
And he was the least that ere I saw.
2
His legs were scarce a shathmont's length,
And thick and thimber was his thigh;
Between his brows there was a span,
And between his shoulders there was three.
3
He took up a meikle stane,
And he flang't as far as I could see;
Though I had been a Wallace wight,
I couldna liften 't to my knee.
4
'O wee wee man, but thou be strang!
O tell me where thy dwelling be?'
'My dwelling's down at yon bonny bower;
O will you go with me and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we came to yon bonny green;
We lighted down for to bait our horse,
And out there came a lady fine.
6
Four and twenty at her back,
And they were a' clad out in green;
Though the King of Scotland had been there,
The warst o them might hae been his queen.
7
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we came to yon bonny ha,
Whare the roof was o the beaten gould,
And the floor was o the cristal a'.
8
When we came to the stair-foot,
Ladies were dancing, jimp and sma,
But in the twinkling of an eye,
My wee wee man was clean awa.
B.
Caw's Poetical Museum, p. 348.
1
As I was walking by my lane,
Atween a water and a wa,
There sune I spied a wee wee man,
He was the least that eir I saw.
2
His legs were scant a shathmont's length,
And sma and limber was his thie;
Atween his shoulders was ae span,
About his middle war but three.
3
He has tane up a meikle stane,
And flang 't as far as I cold see;
Ein thouch I had been Wallace wicht,
I dought na lift 't to my knie.
4
'O wee wee man, but ye be strang!
Tell me whar may thy dwelling be?
'I dwell beneth that bonnie bouir;
O will ye gae wi me and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we cam to a bonny green;
We lichted syne to bait our steid,
And out there cam a lady sheen.
6
Wi four and twentie at her back,
A' comely cled in glistering green;
Thouch there the King of Scots had stude,
The warst micht weil hae been his queen.
7
On syne we past wi wondering cheir,
Till we cam to a bonny ha;
The roof was o the beaten gowd,
The flure was o the crystal a'.
8
When we cam there, wi wee wee knichts
War ladies dancing, jimp and sma,
But in the twinkling of an eie,
Baith green and ha war clein awa.
C.
Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 234, ed. 1802, incorporated with 'The Young Tamlane.' From recitation.
1
'Twas down by Carterhaugh, father,
I walked beside the wa,
And there I saw a wee wee man,
The least that eer I saw.
2
His legs were skant a shathmont lang,
Yet umber was his thie;
Between his brows there was ae span,
And between his shoulders three.
3
He's taen and flung a meikle stane,
As far as I could see;
I could na, had I been Wallace wight,
Hae lifted it to my knee.
4
'O wee wee man, but ye be strang!
Where may thy dwelling be?'
'It 's down beside yon bonny bower;
Fair lady, come and see.'
5
On we lap, and away we rade,
Down to a bonny green;
We lighted down to bait our steed,
And we saw the fairy queen.
6
With four and twenty at her back,
Of ladies clad in green;
Tho the King of Scotland had been there,
The worst might hae been his queen.
7
On we lap, and away we rade,
Down to a bonny ha;
The roof was o the beaten goud,
The floor was of chrystal a'.
8
And there were dancing on the floor,
Fair ladies jimp and sma;
But in the twinkling o an eye,
They sainted clean awa.
D.
Kinloch MSS, VII, 253. From Mrs Elder.
1
As I gaed out to tak a walk,
Atween the water and the wa,
There I met wi a wee wee man,
The weest man that ere I saw.
2
Thick and short was his legs,
And sma and thin was his thie,
And atween his een a flee might gae,
And atween his shouthers were inches three.
3
And he has tane up a muckle stane,
And thrown it farther than I coud see;
If I had been as strong as ere Wallace was,
I coud na lift it to my knie.
4
'O,' quo I, 'but ye be strong!
And O where may your dwelling be?'
'It 's down in to yon bonnie glen;
Gin ye dinna believe, ye can come and see.'
5
And we rade on, and we sped on,
Till we cam to yon bonny glen,
And there we lichted and louted in,
And there we saw a dainty dame.
6
There was four and twenty wating on her,
And ilka ane was clad in green,
And he had been the king of fair Scotland,
The warst o them micht hae been his queen.
7
There war pipers playing on ilka stair,
And ladies dancing in ilka ha,
But before ye coud hae sadd what was that,
The house and wee manie was awa.
E.
a. Motherwell's Note-Book, fol. 40, "from Agnes Lyle;" Motherwell's MS., p. 195, "from the recitation of Agnes Laird, Kilbarchan." b. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 343.
1
As I was walking mine alone,
Betwext the water and the wa,
There I spied a wee wee man,
He was the least ane that eer I saw.
2
His leg was scarse a shaftmont lang,
Both thick and nimble was his knee;
Between his eyes there was a span,
Betwixt his shoulders were ells three.
3
This wee wee man pulled up a stone,
He flang't as far as I could see;
Tho I had been like Wallace strong,
I wadna gotn't up to my knee.
4
I said, Wee man, oh, but you're strong!
Where is your dwelling, or where may't be?
'My dwelling's at yon bonnie green;
Fair lady, will ye go and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Until we came to yonder green;
We lichtit down to rest our steed,
And there cam out a lady soon.
6
Four and twenty at her back,
And every one of them was clad in green;
Altho he had been the King of Scotland,
The warst o them a' micht hae been his queen.
7
There were pipers playing in every neuk,
And ladies dancing, jimp and sma,
And aye the owre-turn o their tune
Was 'Our wee wee man has been lang awa.'
F.
Motherwell's MS., p. 68, "from the recitation of Mrs Wilson, of the Renfrewshire Tontine; now of the Caledonian Hotel, Inverness."
1
As I was walking mine alane,
Between the water and the wa,
And oh there I spy'd a wee wee mannie,
The weeest mannie that ere I saw.
2
His legs they were na a gude inch lang,
And thick and nimble was his thie;
Between his een there was a span,
And between his shouthers there were ells three.
3
I asked at this wee wee mannie
Whare his dwelling place might be;
The answer that he gied to me
Was, Cum alang, and ye shall see.
4
So we'll awa, and on we rade,
Till we cam to yon bonnie green;
We lichted down to bait our horse,
And up and started a lady syne.
5
Wi four and twenty at her back,
And they were a' weell clad in green;
Tho I had been a crowned king,
The warst o them might ha been my queen.
6
So we'll awa, and on we rade,
Till we cam to yon bonnie hall;
The rafters were o the beaten gold,
And silver wire were the kebars all.
7
And there was mirth in every end,
And ladies dancing, ane and a,
And aye the owre-turn o their sang
Was 'The wee wee mannie's been lang awa.'
G.
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 263.
1
As I gaed out to tak the air,
Between Midmar and bonny Craigha,
There I met a little wee man,
The less o him I never saw.
2
His legs were but a finger lang,
And thick and nimle was his knee;
Between his brows there was a span,
Between his shoulders ells three.
3
He lifted a stane sax feet in hight,
He lifted it up till his right knee,
And fifty yards and mair, I'm sure,
I wyte he made the stane to flee.
4
'O little wee man, but ye be wight!
Tell me whar your dwelling be;'
'I hae a bower, compactly built,
Madam, gin ye'll cum and see.'
5
Sae on we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we come to yon little ha;
The kipples ware o the gude red gowd,
The reef was o the proseyla.
6
Pipers were playing, ladies dancing,
The ladies dancing, jimp and sma;
At ilka turning o the spring,
The little man was wearin's wa.
7
Out gat the lights, on cam the mist,
Ladies nor mannie mair coud see
I turnd about, and gae a look,
Just at the foot o' Benachie.
[A].
22. The printed copy has thighs.
43. dwelling down.
There is a copy of this ballad in Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, I, 303. Though no confidence can be felt in the genuineness of the "several variations from recitation and singing," with which Cunningham says he sought to improve Herd's version, the more considerable ones are here noted.
13. O there I met.
21. a shathmont lang.
33. been a giant born.
41. ye're wonder strong.
44. O ladie, gang wi me.
51. away we flew.
52. to a valley green.
53. down and he stamped his foot.
54. And up there rose.
61. Wi four.
62. the glossy green.
72. stately ha.
8.
And there were harpings loud and sweet,
And ladies dancing, jimp and sma;
He clapped his hands, and ere I wist,
He sank and saunted clean awa.
[E]. a.
41. your.
Motherwell has made one or two slight changes in copying from his Note-Book into his MS.
b. Besides some alterations of his own, Motherwell has introduced readings from F.
24. there were.
33 as Wallace.
54. lady sheen.
61. Wi four.
62. And they were a' weel clad.
After 6 is inserted F 6, with the first line changed to
So on we lap, and awa we rade.