VOL. III.
116. Adam Bell, etc.
P. 17 b. I have omitted to mention the Norwegian ballad ‘Hemingjen aa Harald kungen’ in Bugge’s Gamle Norske Folkeviser, No 1, p. 1.
44. ‘A Robynhode,’ etc.
In the Convocation Books of the Corporation of Wells, Somerset, vol. ii, “under the 13th Henry 7, Nicholas Trappe being master, there is the following curious entry, relative, apparently, to a play of Robin Hood, exhibitions of dancing girls, and church ales, provided for at the public expense.
“‘Et insuper in eadem Convocatione omnes et singuli burgenses unanimi assensu ad tunc et ibidem dederunt Magistro Nicolao Trappe potestatem generalem ad inquirendum in quorum manibus pecuniæ ecclesiæ ac communitatis Welliæ sunt injuste detentæ; videlicet, provenientes ante hoc tempus de Robynhode, puellis tripudiantibus, communi cervisia ecclesiæ, et hujusmodi. Atque de bonis et pecuniis dictæ communitati qualitercunque detentis, et in quorumcunque manibus existentibus. Et desuper, eorum nomina scribere qui habent hujusmodi bona, cum summis, etc.’” H. T. Riley in the First Report of the Historical MSS Commission, 1874, Appendix, p. 107.
The passage in the Wells Convocation Records is perhaps illustrated by an entry in the Churchwardens’ Accounts of the Parish of Kingston-upon-Thames, cited by Ritson, Robin Hood, 2d ed., I, cxviii, from Lysons, Environs of London, 1792, I, 228:
“16 Hen. 8. Recd at the church-ale and Robynhode all things deducted
3 10 6.”
With this may be compared the following:
“Anno MDLXVI, or 9 of Eliz., payde for setting up Robin Hoodes bower
0 18”
(Churchwardens’ Accompts of St. Helen’s [at Abingdon, Berks], Archæologia, I, 18). This latter entry is loosely cited by Ritson, I, cxiv, 2d ed., as dating from 1556. Ibidem may be found his opinion as to R. H.’s bower (n. *). Hampson, Medii Ævi Kalendarium, I, 265, quotes this entry, also with the wrong year. He has no doubt about the Bower: “An arbour, called Robin Hood’s Bower, was erected in the church-yard, and here maidens stood gathering contributions.” I, 283. (All the above by G. L. K.)
117. A Gest of Robyn Hode.
P. 46 b, note. The Sloane MS. cited by Ritson as No 715 is No 780 (which is bound up with 715) and is “paper, early xviith century:” Ward, Catalogue of Romances, etc., I, 517. This correction is also to be made at p. 121 b, note; pp. 129 a, 173 b, 175 b.
51 b, sts 62–66.
The late Miss Hamilton McKie, New Galloway, told me this story:
A sturdy beggar, or luscan, came to a farm-house among the hills and asked quarters for the night. The gudewife, before entrusting him with the bedclothes in which to sleep in one of the outhouses, required a pledge or security for their return. He said he had none to offer but his Maker, and got his night’s lodging. In the morning he walked off with the bedclothes, but, becoming bewildered in a mist, he wandered about the whole day, and in the evening, seeing the light of a house, made towards it and knocked at the door. A woman opened it and said, “Your Cautioner has proved gude!” He had come back to the same house.
Mactaggart gives the story in his Gallovidian Encyclopedia, p. 325, but without the trait of the security. (W. Macmath.)
147. Robin Hood’s Golden Prize.
P. 210. The signature to a, L. P., is for Laurence Price: Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 64.
150. Robin Hood and Maid Marian.
P. 218 (and 43–46).
Mr H. L. D. Ward, in his invaluable Catalogue of Romances, etc., while treating of Fulk Fitz-Warine, has made the following important remarks concerning the literary history of Maid Marian (p. 506 f.).
“There were three Matildas who were popularly supposed to have been persecuted by King John. The most historical of these was Matilda de Braose. She was imprisoned, with her son and her son’s wife, in 1210, some (Matthew Paris and others) say at Windsor, but another chronicler says at Corfe Castle (see a volume published by the Soc. de l’Hist. de France in 1840), and they were all starved to death. The second was Fulk’s wife Mahaud, who was the widow of Theobald Walter. The third was the daughter of Robert Fitz-Walter. The only authority that can be quoted for the story of the third Matilda is the Chronicle of Dunmow, of which one copy of the 16th century remains, in the Cotton MS., Cleopatra, C. iii. (ff. 281–7), but which was probably begun by Nicholas de Brumfeld, a canon of Dunmow in the latter part of the 13th century. It is there stated that, when Robert Fitz-Walter fled to France in 1213, his daughter took refuge in Dunmow Priory, where John, after a vain attempt at seduction, poisoned her. Now all these three Matildas may be said to appear in the two plays known as The Downfall and The Death of Robert Earle of Huntington, by Anthony Munday and Henry Chettle, which are first mentioned in Henslowe’s Diary in February and November, 1598. Two of them indeed appear in their own names, Matilda de Braose (or Bruce) and Matilda Fitz-Walter; and the one is starved at Windsor and the other is poisoned at Dunmow in the second play. But in the first play Matilda Fitz-Walter escapes the solicitations of John by joining her newly-married husband in Sherwood, where they are called Robin Hood and Maid Marian. This is clearly owing to a combination of the second and third Matildas. It may have been effected by the course of tradition, or it may have been the arbitrary work of a single author. But if the romance of Fulk Fitz-Warin had been known to either Munday or Chettle, other portions of it would almost certainly have appeared in plays or novels or ballads. Now Munday introduces the piece as a rehearsal, conducted by John Skelton the poet, who himself plays Friar Tuck, with a view to performing it before Henry VIII. And it is not at all unlikely that it was really founded upon a May-day pageant devised by Skelton, but not important enough to be specified in the list of his works in his Garlande of Laurell. We know that Skelton did write Interludes, of which one still remains, Magnyfycence: and Anthony Wood tells us that at Diss in Norfolk, where Skelton was rector, he was ‘esteemed more fit for the stage than the pew or pulpit.’ Thus there was no man more likely than Skelton to devise a new Robin Hood pageant for his old pupil, Henry VIII. And again, there was no man more likely to celebrate the story of Matilda Fitz-Walter, for the patron of his living was Robert Lord Fitz-Walter, who was himself a Ratcliffe, but who had inherited the lordship of Diss through his grandmother, the last of the old Fitz-Walters.[[327]] But whether Skelton may have read the then accessible poem about Fulk, afterwards described by Leland, or whether either he or Munday may have received the story in its composite form, it is pretty evident that the two reputed objects of King John’s desire, Matilda Walter and Matilda Fitz-Walter, have become blended together into the Maid Marian of the play.”
155. Sir Hugh, or, The Jew’s Daughter.
P. 235 a. Bells ringing of themselves (in ballads). Pidal, Asturian Romances, ‘Il Penitente,’ Nos 1, 2, pp. 82, 84; Nigra, ‘Sant’ Alessio,’ No 148, A, B, p. 538 ff., and see p. 541.
161. The Battle of Otterburn.
P. 294. St George our Lady’s knight.
A nemnede sein Gorge our leuedi kniȝt:
Sir Beues of Hamtoun, ed. Kölbing, v. 2817, p. 129; Maitland Club ed., v. 2640. (G. L. K., who also gave me the case in Roister Doister.)
“Now holy St George, myne only avower,
In whom I trust for my protection,
O very Chevalier of the stourished Flower,
By whose Hands thy Sword and Shield hast wone,
Be mediator, that she may to her Sone
Cause me to hear Rex splendens songen on hye,
Before the Trinitye, when that I shall dye.”
Poem on the Willoughbies of Eresby, in the form of a prayer to St George put into the mouth of one of the Willoughby family, Dugdale, Baronage of England, 1676, II, 85, 86. Dugdale does not date the MS. The male line of the Willoughbies became extinct in 1525.
(3. flourished? 4. thou thy?) (G. L. K.)
169. Johnie Armstrong.
P. 371 f. B a, b are signed T. R., the initials of a purveyor or editor of ballads for the popular press. B a of ‘Robin Hood and the Butcher,’ No 122, and a of ‘Robin Hood and the Beggar,’ I, No 133, bear the same signature: see pp. 116, 156 of this volume. No such rhymster as T. R. shows himself to be in these two last pieces could have made ‘Johnie Armstrong,’ one of the best ballads in English.
178. Captain Car, or, Edom o Gordon.
P. 423. “The Donean Tourist,” by Alexander Laing, Aberdeen, 1828, p. 100, has a very bad copy, extended to fifty-nine stanzas.
182. The Laird o Logie.
P. 449. ‘Young Logie’ is among the ballads taken down by Mrs Murison in Aberdeenshire, p. 88 of the collection. The copy is imperfect, and extremely corrupted. Lady Margaret is the daughter of the king (who is not called by that name), but is confused with her mother, who counterfeits her consort’s han-write and steals his right-han glove, as is done in D. Three ships at the pier of Leith, and three again at Queen’s Ferry.
184. The Lads of Wamphray.
P. 458. Mr Macmath has pointed out to me a case in Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, I, 397 f., in which “Jok Johnstoun, callit the Galzeart, Jok J., bruþer to Wille of Kirkhill,” with a Grahame, a couple of Armstrangs, and their accomplices, are accused of the theft of twelve score sheep from James Johnstoune, in February, 1557. We can make no inference as to the relation of Jok the Galliard to the Galliard of our ballad. There were generations of Jocks and Wills in these families, and the sobriquet of The Galliard, as Pitcairn has remarked, “was very prevalent.” He cites a “Gilbert Ellote, callit Gib the Galzart,” III, 441, under the date 1618.
To be Corrected in the Print.
I, 7 b, last line but three of text. Read Fordringer.
71 a, 332. tell thee, ed. 1802; tell to thee, ed. 1833.
132 b, 72. Read Lord John.
159 a, 31,2. to your, in the MS.
186 a, Notes to A b. Add 22. slung at.
256 a, 14. Read Machey for May-hay.
274 b, note [261]. Read Romania IX.
356 b, D c 13. Read O go not.
400 a, I. Read II, 360.
469 a, 223. Read your for yonr.
482 a, D 16, 17, 5th line. Read Hine.
489 a, between 67 a and 84 b. Insert 6. Willie’s Lady.
503 a. The title of I is ‘Hynd Horn.’
504 b, between 226 a and 231. Insert 21. The Maid and the Palmer.
II, 70 a, 184. Fall, ed. 1802; fell, ed. 1833.
104 a, 191,2. Read pat.
129 a, 111. Read ‘O here I am’ the boy says.
135 a, A. a. 111. Drop.
176 b, 113. Read Gae.
179 b, note to B 72. Drop.
192 a, 74. Read maun. 82. Read Ye’r seer. 92. Drop the brackets.
193 a, 204. Read ye never gat. 222. Drop the brackets. 252. Read dreams.
193 b, 281. Read Ge (==Gae) for Ye.
226 a, 229 a, ‘Sweet William’s Ghost,’ A. Read 1750 for 1763.
239 a, B 31. Read O she.
272 f. Read (according to the text of 1755): 21. will I. 74. gar thy.
102. to thy.
183. maun cum.
221. Note: “perhaps fetchie” nurse.
234. hes he.
261. sits.
263. means a’ those folks.
264. mother she.
271. And when he cam to gude grene wod.
273. first saw.
274. Kemeing down.
282. Than, misprint for That.
344. they lay.
354. hip was.
392. ill deed.
275 b. Read, v. 17, You see his heid upon my. v. 20, that did, apparently a misprint for that thocht.
The only variations in the other copy are: 263, these for those; thocht for did, in v. 20 of p. 275 b.
276 a. A. a. Read 1750 for 1763 twice.
276 b, 4th line of the preface. Read Annandale. 13th line of the preface. Read our old. 21. Read man (ed. 1750).
310 a, third paragraph, line seven. Read authenticatable.
343. Read (ed. 1755): 23. And there. 33. And mantel. 121. I have. (Drop the notes to 33, 51.)
348 b, G, H. Read Reifferscheid.
352 b, D 54. MS. has And free.
378 a, last line. Read Andrew Small.
381 b, 203. Read Scotch.
393 a, 142. Read shook.
405 b, notes. 16 belongs to I and should be on p. 406.
437 b, translations. Read E is translated by Grundtvig, etc.; D by Afzelius, etc.
462 a, 264. Read sned for sued.
478, first line after the title. Read 56 b for 27 b.
481 b, third paragraph, sixth line. Read, 27.
500, 20, first line. Read O for M. English N, O should be O, P.
502 b, 34, first line. Read Decurtins for Decurtius.
506 b, 44, 400 a. Drop Q, etc.. Note to 401, drop Revue des Traditions, etc..
513 a, seventh line from bottom. Read quam.
III, 6 a, 121. Read Braidisbauks.
11, M. Say: Reminiscences by Thomas Carlyle, II, 171, 1881, Froude’s Life of Carlyle, II, 416, 1882. In line 2, read, O busk and go with me, me.
46 b, line 9. Read S. S. for S. G.
95 b, note [[86]]. Say: Jock o the Side, B 13, 14, C 10, III, 480, 482.
(The following are mostly trivial variations from the spelling of the text.)
I, 71 b, 511. Oh, ed. 1802; O, ed. 1883.
80 b, 141. Read f[e]ast.
132 a, 51. Read father.
133 a, M. Read Deer.
137 b, S 42. Read cam.
256 b, 32. Read O. 42. Read rocked.
302 a, B1,2. Read Whare.
321 b, 74. Read doun.
325 a, 33. Read Heavn. 62. Read danton.
331 a, C 24. Read thrie. D 23. Read micht.
441 a, 16. Read warsell. 43. Read bloody.
468 a, 41. Read stock. 102. Read saftly. b 132. MS. has bone. 163. Read Beachen.
481 a, 312. Read dazled.
500 a, 104. Read down.
508 a, 74. Read by.
II, 32 a, P 14. Read aboon.
70 a, 194. Read cheik. 202. Read smil’d. b, 304. Read tine.
90 b, 261. Read won, twice.
108 a, 24. Read die. b, 113. Read mony.
130 a, 33. Read Gil. 43. Read Jill.
131 a, 173. Read han. b, 193. Read ain.
152 a, 43, 51. Read grene.
153 b, 223. Read grene.
161 a, 71, 81. Read tane.
192 a, 54. Read An. 73. Read askin.
193 b, 261. Read bour.
240 a, note. Read Madden.
272 f. Read (ed. 1755): 11. Gill Morice. 52. said. 63. red. 83, 163, 173, 243, 261, 363. guid grene wod. 92, 182. slive. 102, 152. Tho. 111. micht. 112. near. 112, 202. coud. 123. I’s. 133. whar he. 142. woud. 158. stracht. 174. Even. 214. welcom. 214, 394. me. 222. lie. 224. she. 232. he. 244. with. 261. Gill. 262. whistld. 264. tarrys. 272, 362. miekle. 272. cair. 282. well. 294, 311, 314, 333, 341. heid. 303. bodie. 334. town. 344. there. 353. ance. 371. credle. 392. die.
275 a, last line but three. Read Wi, pearce. L. l. but one, naithing, heid. Last line, coud. b, v. 3. day. 7. been. 8. me. 15. teirs, wensom. 18. bluid. 22. comly. 25. driry.
321 b, note [152]. Read Balcanqual.
331 b, 31. Read nurice.
343. Read (ed. 1755): 14, favord. 51. spack. 63. bot. 73. bin. 91. coud. 94, 144. die.
352 b, 33. Read pown.
363 b, 111. Read ladie’s.
364 a, 201. Read ladye’s.
389 a, 83. Read You’r.
390 b, 292. Read hir. 51. Read bouer.
391 a, 121. Read Whan.
396 a, 12. Read blithe.
404 b, 91. Read Whan.
473 b, 173. Read mony.
475 a, 113. Read down, twice.
478. Read: 12, on for an. 41. sir. 62. do. 141. a[t] London. 151. medans. 171. leyne.
483, 13. Read wel. 64. Read beene.
III, 2 a, note, line 5. Read Bennet.
5 a, D 52. Read Lincolm. b, 101. Read there.
8 b, 241. Read betide.
253 b, R, v. 3. Read dochter.
[1]. This manuscript, which Fry bought in Glasgow in 1810, contained several other ballads, “but written so corruptly as to be of little or no authority.” It did not occur to Fry that the illiteracy of the drummer gave his ballads the best of authority. I have done what I could to recover the manuscript, but in vain, though I had the kindest assistance in Bristol from the Rev. J. Percivall, Mr Francis Fry, and Mr J. F. Nicholls.
[2]. See Motherwell’s apt remarks, Minstrelsy, p. 1.
[3]. “It is sometimes said that this outlaw possessed the old Castle of Morton in Dumfriesshire, now ruinous.... The mention of Durisdeer, a neighboring parish, adds weight to the tradition.” Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1833, III, 114 f. Mr W. Bennett, writing in 1826 in The Dumfries Monthly Magazine, III, 250, of which he was editor, speaks of a field a little to the southwest of Lochmaben as still showing the trace of a circular tower, which was “called Cockiesfield, from one John Cock, or O’Cock, who had there his residence, and who during his lifetime was one of the most renowned freebooters in Annandale.” Mr Macmath, who pointed out the passage to me, observes that in Thomson’s map of Dumfriesshire, 1828, the name is given “Cocketfield,” and that there is also a Cocket Hill.
[4]. Colophon: [P]rynted at London, in Fletestrete, at [the si]gne of the Sonne, by me Iohn [By]ddell. In the yere of our lord god m.ccccc.xxxvj. The seconde daye of June. Iohn̄ Byddell.
Eight lines wanting: 1203,4; 121; 1683,4. Mutilated at the beginning: 169; 170. Mutilated at the end: 1641; 1653; 1671.
[5]. Eleven lines wanting: 602,3,4; 674; 681,2; 1003; 1044; 1051,2; 1104. Mutilated at the beginning: 61–641; 643–673; 754–831; 904,5,6; 964; 1053–1103; 1111,2. Mutilated at the end: 601; 1013; 1023; 1031; 1042,3. Elsewhere: 972,3; 1041.
[6]. Colophon. Imprinted at London, in Lothburye, by Wyllyam Copeland.
[7]. “Two leaves, discovered in the pasteboard or fly-leaves of a book received from abroad.”
[8]. b was kindly copied for me by Mr J. P. Collier in 1857. Mr Collier described his fragment as “a scrap which once formed the fly-leaf of a book.” Hazlitt says that the type is clearly older than Copland’s, and very like Wynkyn de Worde’s.
[9]. This old woman gives the title ‘Auld Matrons’ to a ballad in Buchan’s larger collection, II, 238, in which kitchen-tradition has made over some of the incidents in the First Fit of Adam Bell.
[10]. Vischer, Die Sage von der Befreiung der Waldstädte, pp 33, 36 f; Rochholz, Germania, XIII, 56 f. “Wa er das nit hette gethan, so hette er selbs müssen darumb sterben:” Russ’s Chronicle, 1482, Vischer, p. 50.
[11]. Liliencron, Die historischen Volkslieder der Deutschen, II, 109, No 147; Böhme, p. 47, No 10; Vischer, p. 46; Rochholz, Tell u. Gessler, p. 180; Tobler, p. 3. This or a like song was known to Russ, 1482. Tschudi, about a hundred years later, c. 1570, says that the child was five or six, not more than six, years old: Vischer, p. 122. There is another, but later and even worse, “song” about William Tell and the confederacy: Böhme, No 11, p. 49; Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 129; etc.
[12]. Müllenhoff, Sagen, u. s. w., der Herzogthümer Schleswig Holstein u. Lauenburg, p. 57, No 66. The story is localized at another place in Holstein, with the change of apple to pear: Lütolf, Germania, VIII, 213.
[13]. Torfæus, in his history of Norway, III, 371, speaks of a ballad about Heming sung in his time, c. 1700, which would seem to have been the same as this, only somewhat fuller. Landstad, p. 187.
These ballads represent the king as regarding himself as quite unapproachable in athletic exercises. The little boy of ballads, smádrengin, kongins lítil svein, Norwegian B, Färöe A, or, in a Färöe variation (Hammershaimb, p. 161), Harald’s queen, intimates knowledge of an equal or superior. Harald answers, in true ballad style, in Färöe A 6, If he is not my better, you shall burn for it. In Norwegian B, Färöe A, the king immediately sets out to find his rival. Cf. Charlemagne and King Arthur, I, 275, 279, and the beginning of ‘King Estmere,’ II, 51, and Landstad, p. 177, note 1.
[14]. The Witches’ Hammer was composed in 1486, and Punker is there recorded to have exercised his devil’s craft sixty years before. Elsewhere Punker [Pumper] is said to have been torn to pieces by oppressed peasants in 1420. The name is spelled Puncler in the edition of 1620, pp 248 f, and Puncher in the edition followed by Grimm. See Rochholz in Germania, XIII, 48–51.
[15]. The Tell story, complete, Apfelschuss, Felsensprung und Tyrannenmord, is said to occur among the Finns and the Lapps: E. Pabst, cited by Pfannenschmid, Germania, IX, 5. Particulars’, which are very desirable, are not given. This would not add much to the range of the story.
[16]. In the prose Hemings Ðáttr, the intent to take vengeance appears from Hemingr’s wish that the king should stand close to the mark; in the ballads he reserves an arrow. In the Ólafs Saga, Eindriði openly announces his purpose; in all but this version (treating the prose Hemings Ðáttr and the ballads as one), the archer provides himself with two arrows, or three.
[17]. Such as the penalty for missing, as above said; or Tell’s shooting at a hundred and twenty paces, and bearing Cloudesly’s name, William. If the coincidence as to the distance should be held to be very important, I, for one, should have no objection to admitting that this part of the ballad may be derived from the Tell story.
J. Grimm remarked in 1813, Gedanken über Mythos, Epos und Geschichte (Kleinere Schriften, IV, 77), that the similarity of the names Tell, Bell, Velent, Bellerophon (see a little further on, p. 21), could hardly fail to strike even a superficial observer, and also pointed to the identity of Tell’s and Cloudesly’s Christian name. In his Deutsche Mythologie, I, 317, ed. 1875, it is simply said that the surname Bell, as well as Cloudesly’s Christian name, is suggestive of William Tell.
[18]. The poet is Mohammed ben Ibrahim, 1119–c. 1230, and he bore the honorary title of Furîd Uddîn (Pearl of Religion), and the sobriquet of Attâr, perfumer. The title of the poem is The Language of Birds. Garcin de Tassy, La Poésie Philosophique et Religieuse chez les Persans, Extrait de la Revue Contemporaine, t. xxiv, pp. 4, 35. “Nur den Apfel treffen wir hier.... Es bleibt also weiter nichts übrig als anzunehmen dass die persische Sage ... in die grauesten Urzeiten des arischen Alterthums hinaufreichen muss.” (Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 26 f.) A rapid inference.
[19]. Eindriði also had accomplished a harder shot before he tried the chessman. But Hemingr, having done what was thought a masterly thing in cleaving a nut, is compelled to knock the same nut, shooting at the same distance, from his brother’s head.
[20]. Das Inland, No 39, p. 630, cited by Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, p. 40 f. Gerhard’s Wila, I, 147 f, cited by Rochholz, p. 39 f. Eustathius to Iliad, xii, 101, first cited by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie (who says, “Es stimmt auch theilweise,” p. 317, ed. 1875); by others later.
[21]. To Virgil, Ecl. v, 11, cited by Ideler, Die Sage von dem Schuss des Tell, p. 59, note 3.
[22]. Hisely, Recherches Critiques sur l’Histoire de Guillaume Tell, p. 590.
[23]. Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 25; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, p. 41 f.
[24]. T. B. Thorpe, Reminiscences of the Mississippi, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, XII, 30. A story is there related of a famous Mike Fink’s striking an apple from a man’s head by shooting between it and the skull, like the Scandinavian marksmen. In Captain Mayne Reid’s Scalp Hunters, or Romantic Adventures in Northern Mexico, ch. 22, we are told of an Indian’s shooting a prairie-gourd from the head of his sister, which may or may not be an invention. The title of the chapter is A Feat à la Tell, and this may perhaps be the only foundation for an assertion that the Tell story had been found in Mexico; at least, inquiries have not brought to light any other.
[25]. For the interpretation which has been put upon the Tell story, see, among many, Pfannenschmid, in Germania, X, 1–40; Rochholz, Tell und Gessler, in Sage und Geschichte.
The mildew of myth spreads, of course, from William to his comrades. J. Grimm, in his Gedanken über Mythos, etc., 1813, interprets Clim, Cloudesly, and Clough all in the sense of nail, sharp point, arrow; and as Bell is βέλος, Tell is telum, Toko τόξον, and Egil is igel, hedgehog, and therefore the spine of the hedgehog, and therefore dart, the names are all one as to meaning. But Grimm appears to have been less confident about these etymologies in later days. Sir G. W. Cox, on the other hand, says that Cloudesly’s name marks him as an inhabitant of Cloudland. (Meanwhile, every likelihood favors the derivation of Cloudesly from clúd, rock, and leáh, lea, and the interpretation of Clim as Clem and of Clough as ravine.) Cloudesly and his mates are all the more mythical because they are three, and because, as it is asserted, Robin Hood is mythical, with whom they are, one and all, assumed to be identical.
[26]. Camden, Britannia, II, 175, ed. 1772. King Edward the First, when hunting in this forest, is said to have killed two hundred bucks in one day. For Arthur’s hunting there, see Robson, Three Early English Metrical Romances, p. 26, LV7, p. 59, V1; Madden’s Syr Gawayne, p. 298, v. 16; this book, I, 294, st. 9, etc.
[27]. Cronykil of Scotland, Book vii, v. 3523 f, ed. Laing, II, 263.
[28]. John Bell robbed the Chamberlain’s men of cattle, 1337: Exchequer Rolls of Scotland, II, 437. The Bells are included with the Grahams, Armstrongs, and others, among the bad and more vagrant of the great surnames of the border, by the Lord Warden of the Marches of England, 1593 (Rymer’s Fœdera, XVI, 183, ed. 1727, cited by Bishop Percy), and had no better estimation in Scotland.
[29]. a preserves stanzas 1–834, 1184–2083, 3142–3493; with defects at 22,3, 71, 1234–1273, 133–1363. It has therefore about 200 stanzas out of 456.
c preserves 264–603; d, 280–350, very much mutilated; e, 4354–4501, very much mutilated. e, inserted among the Douce fragments, was presented by Mr Halliwell-Phillips.
[30]. Dr Farmer considered these leaves to be of Rastell’s printing, and older by some years than b; which is not quite intelligible, since Rastell’s work is put at 1517–38. c is cited under Rastell’s name in Ritson’s second edition as well as his first.
[31]. 94, a, allther moste: b, all other moste. (f, g, of all other; b, 2833, all ther best; 2841, all theyre best; f, g, al of the best.) 614, a, Muche in fere: b, Much also. 684, a, By xxviii (eight and twenty) score: b (f, g), By eyghtene score, which gives no meaning. 1383, a, frembde bested: b (f, g), frend. 1734, a, same nyght: b, same day. 1764, a, wode hore: b (f, g), wode tre. 3332, a, on rode: b (f, g), on a tre. 3432, a, The sherif: b (f, g), The knyght.
[32]. 133, a, b, husbonde: f, g, husbandeman. 2561, b, in yonder other corser: f, on the other courser: g, in the other coffer. 2744, 2862, 3874, 4122, b, trystell-tre: f, g, trusty tre. 3851, b, “tarpe”: f, g, seale. 3714, b, blyve: f, g, blythe, etc.
[33]. 1112, That all this worldë wrought; 1632, The whilë that he wolde; 3164, To metë can they gone; 724, But his bowë tree; 291, They brought hym to the lodgë dore.
2554, To seke a monkës male; 3603, He shall haue the knyghtës londys; 3691, And I wyll be your ledës man; 3761, Robyn toke the kyngës hors; 3663, 3672, 3684, etc. 3363, For our derë lady loue.
311, With wordës fayre and fre; 344, Of all these wekÿs thre; 2102, Or a man that myrthës can; 3184, The wallës all aboute; 602, 3314, 3322, 3712, etc. 4334, And all his mennës fe.
212, By a dernë strete; 251, Welcome be thou to grenë wode; 2981, But had I the in grenë wode; 3273, 3733, 3743.
564, Ouer the saltë see; 1734, That ylkë samë nyght; 2132, By the hyë way; 2352, Of all this longë day; 2411, 2924, 3032, 3051, 3932, 4554, etc. 252, Hendë knyght & fre; 1133, Out, he sayd, thou falsë knyght; 2423, Therfore I cun the morë thanke.
472, 1002, By God that madë me; 804, To walkë by his syde; 2222, And that shall rewë the; 2974, Other wyse thou behotë me; 4261, So God me helpë, sayd our kynge. d, 2822, 3172, herkeneth.
[34]. Ritson had seen, among Peck’s collections for the history of Premonstratensian monasteries, a Latin poem with the title Prioris Alnwicensis de bello Scotico apud Dunbar, tempore regis Edwardi I, dictamen, sive rithmus Latinus, quo de Willielmo Wallace, Scotico illo Robin Whood, plura sed invidiose canit, and in the margin the date 22 Julii, 1304; whence he concluded that Robin Hood was both mentioned, and compared with Wallace, in 1304. The date refers to matters in the poem. The MS. (Sloane, 4934, pars II, ff 103–106) is of the eighteenth century, Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, etc., III, 279, No 503. The title was supplied by Peck, one of whose marks is the spelling Whood.
[35]. Either Randle the second, earl from 1128 to 1153, or Randle the third, earl from 1181 and for fifty years, would be likely to be the subject of ballads, but especially the latter. He figures in the story of Fulk Fitz Warine: Wright, p. 149.
[36]. Cited by Ritson. I have not found the writs.
[37]. Cited in the Edinburgh Review, 1847, LXXXVI, 134, note; and by Hunter, 1852, The Ballad-Hero, Robin Hood, p. 58 (where the year is wrongly given as 1432). It appears from many cases that the name was very often pronounced Róbinhode.
[38]. “Robertus Hode et Litill-Johanne, cum eorum complicibus, de quibus stolidum vulgus hianter in comœdiis et in tragœdiis prurienter festum faciunt, et præ ceteris romanciis mimos et bardanos cantitare delectantur.”
“Of whom the foolish vulgar in comedies and tragedies make lewd entertainment, and are delighted to hear the jesters and minstrels sing them above all other ballads:” Ritson, whose translation may pass. Ritson rightly observes that comedies and tragedies here are not to be understood as plays. Then follows this abstract of one of the ‘tragedies.’
“De quo etiam quædam commendabilia recitantur, sicut patuit in hoc, quod cum ipse quondam in Barnisdale, iram regis et fremitum principis declinans, missam, ut solitus erat, devotissime audiret, nec aliqua necessitate volebat interrumpere officium, quadam die, cum audiret missam, a quodam vicecomite et ministris regis, eum sæpius perprius infestantibus, in illo secretissimo loco nemorali ubi missæ interfuit exploratus, venientes ad eum qui hoc de suis perceperunt ut omni annisu fugeret suggesserunt. Quod, ob reverentiam sacramenti, quod tunc devotissime venerabatur, omnino facere recusavit. Sed, ceteris suis ob metum mortis trepidantibus, Robertus, in tantum confisus in eum quem coluit, inveritus, cum paucis qui tunc forte ei affuerunt inimicos congressus eos de facili devicit, et, de eorum spoliis ac redemptione ditatus, ministros ecclesiæ et missas in majore veneratione semper et de post habere præelegit, attendens quod vulgariter dictum est:
Hunc deus exaudit qui missam sæpius audit.”
Scotichronicon, ed. Goodall, II, 104.
[39]. Major was in extreme old age in 1524: see Moir’s Wallace, I, iv. “Robertus Hudus Anglus et Paruus Ioannes, latrones famatissimi in nemoribus latuerunt, solum opulentorum virorum bona diripientes. Nullum nisi eos inuadentem, vel resistentem pro suarum rerum tuitione, occiderunt Centum sagittarios ad pugnam aptissimos Robertus latrociniis aluit, quos 400 viri fortissimi inuadere non audebant. Rebus huius Roberti gestis tota Britannia in cantibus utitur. Fœminam nullam opprimi permisit, nec pauperum bona surripuit, verum eos ex abbatum bonis ablatis opipare pauit.” Historia Maioris Britanniæ, fol. 55 b.
It will be observed that Wyntoun, Bower, and Mair are Scots.
[40]. Because comic and not heroic, and because Robin is put at a disadvantage. In the other ballads Robin Hood is “evermore the best.” Though there is humor in the Gest, it is kept well under, and never lowers Robin’s dignity.
[41]. The only one of these ballads entered in the Stationers’ Registers, or known to have been printed, at a date earlier than the seventeenth century is No 124, ‘Of Wakefylde and a Grene,’ 1557–58.
The earliest known copy of Robin Hood’s Garland is one in the Bodleian Library, Wood, 79, printed for W. Gilbertson, 1663. This contains seventeen ballads. An edition of 1670, in the same library, Douce, H. 80, for Coles, Vere and Wright, omits the first of these, a version of Robin Hood and Queen Katherine which is found nowhere else. There is an edition, printed by J. M. for J. Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, among Pepys’s Penny Merriments, vol. iii, and Gutch had a copy, printed for the same, to which he gives the date 1686. Garlands of the eighteenth century increase the number of ballads to twenty-seven.
[42]. In the Stationers’ Registers, 1562–63, Arber, I, 204, ‘a ballett of Robyn Hod’ is licensed to John Alde. The best one would expect of this would be a better copy of some later broadside. ‘Robyn Hode in Barnysdale stode’ is the first line of a mock-song introduced into the Morality of the Four Elements (which alludes to the discovery of America “within this xx. yere”): Halliwell, Percy Society, vol. xxii, p. 51. It is mentioned (“As R. H.,” etc.) in Udall’s translation of Erasmi Apothegmata, 1542: Hazlitt, Handbook, pp 513 f. This line, Ritson observes, has been repeatedly cited, singularly enough, in law-cases (and always misquoted: in Barnwood stood, in Barnwell stood, upon Greendale stood): Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1832, I, lxxxix ff. We find “Robyn stode in Bernesdale,” Gest, 31; also, “As Robin Hood in the forest stood,” No 138, 21; “When Robin Hood in the greenwood stood,” No 141, 11, both texts very much later than the interlude. It is not strictly necessary to assume, as Ritson does, that the line belongs to a lost ballad; it may be from some older text of one that we have.
[43]. Knights and squires are exempted in the Gest, 14, inconsistently with 7, and, as to knights, with the tenor of what follows.
[44]. Bower, as above. The writer in the L. & W. Review does not distinguish Fordun and Bower.
[45]. Lieut.-Col. Prideaux states the resemblances between the story of Fulk Fitz Warine and that of Robin Hood, in an interesting article in Notes and Queries, 7th series, II, 421 ff, and suggests that the latter has borrowed from the former. Undoubtedly this might be, but both may have borrowed from the common stock of tradition.
[46]. The Pinder of Wakefield became, according to his ballad, one of Robin Hood’s men, but is not heard of in any other. Will Stutly is also one in No 141; Clifton, No 145; David of Doncaster, No 152. Robin Hood assumes the name Locksley in No 145, and by a blunder Locksley is made one of his men in 147 and 153. Scarlet and Scathlock are made two in the Earl of Huntington plays. Grafton says that the name of William of Goldesborough was graven, among others, with that of Robin Hood on Robin’s tombstone: Chronicle, I, 222, ed. 1809. Ritson says that Munday makes Right-hitting Brand one of the band: I have not observed this.
[47]. Robin Hood presents the friar with a “lady free,” not named, who may be meant for a degraded Maid Marian, such as Falstaff refers to in 1 Henry IV, III, iii, 129.
[48]. Stow, Survay of London, 1598, p. 72, in Ritson’s excellent note EE, Robin Hood, I, cix ff, ed. 1832, which contains almost all the important information relative to the subject. Stow adds that in consequence of a riot on Mayday, 1517, the great Mayings and May-games were not after that time “so freely used as afore.”
[49]. These are the people’s sports. Hall, fol. lvi, b, cited by Ritson, gives an account of a Maying devised by the guards for the entertainment of Henry VIII and his queen, in 1516. The king and queen, while riding with a great company, come upon a troop of two hundred yeomen in green. One of these, calling himself Robin Hood, invites the king to see his men shoot, and then to an outlaws-breakfast of venison. The royal party, on their return home, were met by a chariot drawn by five horses, in which sat “the Lady May accompanied with Lady Flora,” who saluted the king with divers songs.
[50]. Lysons, The Environs of London, I, 225–32.
[51]. The last two lines are to be understood, I apprehend, exclusively of the May, and the lord and lady mean Lord and Lady of the May. The Lord of Misrule, “with his hobby-horses, dragons, and other ántiques,” used to go to church: Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, ed. Furnivall, p. 147.
[52]. .sp 1
Myselfe remembreth of a childe, in contreye native mine,
A Maygame was of Robyn Hood, and of his traine, that time,
To traine up young men, stripplings, and eche other younger childe,
In shooting; yearely this with solempne feast was by the guylde
Or brotherhood of townsmen don, etc.
Richard Robinson, 1553, in Ritson, p. cxii f, ed. 1832.
[53]. A Christmas game of very modern date is described in The Mirror, XXVI, 42, in which there was a troop of morris-dancers with Robin Hood and Maid Marian; and also Beelzebub and his wife. Cited by Kuhn, Haupt’s Zeitschrift, V, 481.
[54]. The entries in the Kingston accounts for 28 and 29 Henry VIII, if they refer to the morris-dance only, would show the morris to be constituted as follows:
(28 Henry VIII.) Four dancers, fool, Maid Marian, friar, and piper. A minstrel is also mentioned.
(29 Henry VIII.) Friar, Maid Marian, Morian (Moor?), four dancers, fool. This entry refers to the costume of the characters, which may account for the omission of the piper. Lysons, Environs of London, I, 228 f.
[55]. It need hardly be remarked that the morris was neither an exclusively English dance nor exclusively a May-game dance. A Flemish morris, delineated in an engraving dated 1460–70, has for personages a lady, fool, piper, and six dancers: Douce, p. 446 f. In Robert Laneham’s description of a bride-ale at Kenilworth, 1575, there is a morris-dance, “according to the ancient manner,” in the which the parties are Maid Marian, the fool, and six dancers: Furnivall, Captain Cox, p. 22 f. A painting of about 1625 has a morris-dance of seven figures, a Maid Marian, fool, piper, hobby-horse, and three dancers. A tract, of Elizabeth’s time, speaks of “a quintessence, beside the fool and the Maid Marian, of all the picked youth, footing the morris about a Maypole,” to the pipe and tabor, and other music; and a poem of 1614 describes a country morris-dance of a fool, Maid Marian, hobby-horse, and piper: Ellis’s Brand, p. 206 f.
[56]. The well-to-do Codrus says to the starving Menalcas, who has been venting his spleen against “rascolde” rivals,
‘Yet would I gladly heare some mery fit
Of Maide Marian, or els of Robin Hood.’
Codrus is here only suggesting themes which would be agreeable to him. We are not to deduce from his words that there were ballads about Maid Marian. But if there had been, they would have been distinct from ballads about Robin Hood.
[57]. See Monmerqué et Michel, Théatre Français au Moyen Age, 1842, Notice sur Adam de la Halle, pp 27 ff, the songs, pp 31 ff, the play, pp 102 ff; Ducange, Robinetus. Henryson’s Robin and Ma’kyne was undoubtedly suggested by the French pastorals.
[58]. I must invoke the spirit of Ritson to pardon the taking of no very serious notice of Robin Hood’s noble extraction. The first mention of this seems to be in Grafton’s Chronicle, 1569. Grafton says: In an olde and auncient pamphlet I finde this written of the sayd Robert Hood. This man, sayth he, discended of a noble parentage; or rather, beyng of a base stocke and linage, was for his manhoode and chiualry aduaunced to the noble dignitie of an erle.... But afterwardes he so prodigally exceeded in charges and expences that he fell into great debt, by reason whereof so many actions and sutes were commenced against him, wherevnto he aunswered not, that by order of lawe he was outlawed, etc.: I, 221, ed. 1809. (Some such account furnished a starting-point for Munday.) Leland also, Ritson adds, has expressly termed him “nobilis” (Ro: Hood, nobilis ille exlex), Collectanea, I, 54, ed. 1770, and Warner, in Albion’s England (1586), p. 132, ed. 1612, calls him a “county”:
Those daies begot some mal-contents, the principall of whom
A countie was, that with a troop of yeomandry did roam.
Ritson also cites the Sloane MS., 715, “written, as it seems, toward the end of the sixteenth century;” and Harleian MS., 1233, which he does not date, but which is of the middle of the seventeenth century. Against the sixteenth-century testimony, so to call it, we put in that of the early ballads, all of which describe Robin as a yeoman, the Gest emphasizing the point.
[59]. The Edinburgh Review, LXXXVI, 123 (with a slight correction in one instance), mostly from Ritson, I, cix, cxxvi ff, 1832, and from Wright’s Essays, etc., II, 209 f, 1846. Of course the list might be extended: there are some additions in The Academy, XXIV, 231, 1883, and four Robin Hood’s wells in Yorkshire alone are there noted.
[60]. A Robin Hood’s Stone, near Barnsdale, of what description we are not told, is mentioned in an account of a progress made by Henry VII, and Robin Hood’s Well, in the same region, in an account of a tour made in 1634: Hunter’s Robin Hood, p. 61. The well is also mentioned by Drunken Barnaby. A Robin Hood’s Hill is referred to in Vicars’ account of the siege of Gloucester in 1643: The Academy, XXIV, 231.
[61]. Gough, in the Gentleman’s Magazine, March 8, 1793, cited by Gutch. Wright has, somewhat naively, furnished his own refutation: “A large tumulus we know well in our own county, near Ludlow in Shropshire, which is also called Robin Hood’s But, and which affords us a curious instance how new stories were often invented to account for a name whose original import was forgotten. The circumstances, too, in this case, prove that the story was of late invention. The barrow, as regarded superstitiously, had borne the name of Robin Hood. On the roof of one of the chancels of the church of Ludlow, which is called Fletchers’ chancel, as having been, when ‘the strength of England stood upon archery,’ the place where the fletchers held their meetings, and which is distant from the aforesaid barrow two miles, or two miles and a half, there stands an iron arrow, as the sign of their craft. The imagination of the people of the place, after archery and fletchers had been forgotten, and when Robin Hood was known only as an outlaw and a bowman, made a connection between the barrow (from its name) and the chancel (from the arrow on its roof), and a tale was invented how the outlaw once stood upon the former and took aim at the weathercock on the church steeple; but the distance being a little too great, the arrow fell short of its mark, and remained up to the present day on the roof of the chancel.” (Essays, I, 209 f.)
A correspondent of The Academy, XXIV, 181, remarks that one of the Anglo-Saxon charters in Kemble’s Codex Diplomaticus mentions a “place” in Worcestershire called Hódes ác (now Hodsoak), that there is a village in Nottinghamshire called Hodsock, that it is improbable that two men living in districts so widely apart should each have given his name to an oak-tree, and that therefore we may safely conclude Hód to be a mythical personage. Somebody’s tree is given as a boundary mark more than thirty times in these charters, somebody’s thorn at least ten times, somebody’s oak at least five times. How often such a mark might occur in connection with any particular name would depend upon the frequency of the name. Hód or Hóde is cited thirteen times by Kemble, and few names occur oftener. The name, we may infer, was relatively as common then as it is in our century, which has seen three Admiral Hoods (who, by virtue of being three, may be adjudged as mythical by and by) and one poet Hood alive together. Why may not three retired wícings and one scóp, of the name, have been living in Berks, Hants, Wilts, and Worcestershire in the tenth century?
[62]. Plot’s History of Staffordshire, p. 434, cited in Ellis’s Brand, I, 383; The Mirror, XX, 419, cited by Kuhn, Haupt’s Zeitschrift, V, 474 f. The Kentish sport is also described in the Rev. W. D. Parish’s Dictionary of the Kentish Dialect, p. 77, under Hoodening.
[63]. In West Worcestershire h is put for w, “by an emphatic speaker,” in such words as wood, wool: Mrs Chamberlain’s Glossary. Hood for wood occurs in East Sussex; also in Somerset, according to Halliwell’s Dictionary. The derivation of Hood from wood has often been suggested: as by Peele, in his Edward I, “Robin of the Wood, alias Robin Hood,” Works, Dyce, I, 162. The inventive Peck was pleased always to write Robin Whood.
[64]. The Hobby-Horse, Schimmel, Fastnachtspferd, Herbstpferd, Adventspferd, Chevalet, Cheval Mallet, is maintained by Mannhardt to be figurative of the Corn-Sprite, Korndämon; nichts anderes als das Kornross, Vegetationsross, nicht aber eine Darstellung Wodans, wie man nach Kuhns Vorgang jetzt allgemein annimmt: Mannhardt, Mythologische Forschungen, in Quellen u. Forschungen, LI, p. 165. “Man sieht den Ungrund der bei deutschen Mythologen so beliebten Identifizierung von Robin Hood und Wodan:” Mannhardt, Wald- u. Feldkulte, I, 546, note 3.
[65]. The reasoning, in the instance of Robin Hood, has been signally loose and incautious; still, the general conclusion finds ready acceptance with mythologists, on one ground or another, and deductions are made with the steadiness of a geometer. Robin Hood, being one of the “solar heroes,” “has his faint reflection in Little John, who stands to him in the same relation as Patroclus to Achilles,” etc. “Maid Marian will therefore be the dawn-maiden, to be identified with Briseis,” etc. “Friar Tuck is one of the triumvirate who appear also in the Cloudesly and Tell legends,” etc. And again, by an interpreter of somewhat different views: “though a considerable portion of this story is ultimately derived from the great Aryan sun-myth, there is the strongest reason for believing that the Anglian Hód was not originally a solar personage, but a degraded form of the God of the Wind, Hermes-Woden. The thievish character of this divinity explains at once why his name should have been chosen as the popular appellation of an outlaw chief.” (The Academy, XXIV, 250, 384.)
The Potter in the later Play of Robin Hood (not in the corresponding ballad) wears a rose garland on his head. So does a messenger in the history of Fulk Fitz Warine, Wright, p. 78, not to mention other cases referred to by Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 200, ed. 1832. Fricke, Die Robin-Hood Balladen, p. 55, surmises that the rose garland worn by the Potter may be a relic of the strife between Summer and Winter; and this view, he suggests, would tend to confirm “the otherwise well-grounded hypothesis” that Robin Hood is a mythological personage.
[66]. “Desde la última década del siglo xvi hasta pocos años hace, no eran ya los héroes del pueblo ni los Bernardos, ni los Cides, ni los Pulgares, ni los Garcilasos, ni los Céspedes, ni los Paredes, porque su pueblo estaba muerto ó trasformado en vulgo, y este habia sustituido á aquellos los guapos Francisco Estéban, los Correas, los Merinos, los Salinas, los Pedrajas, los Montijos.” (Duran, p. 389, note.)
[67]. Bernardo del Montijo, Duran, No 1342, kills an alcalde at the age of eighteen, “con bastante causa:” upon which phrase Duran observes, “para el vulgo era bastante causa, sin duda, el ser alcalde.” Beginning with so much promise of spirit, he afterwards, in carrying off his mistress, who was about to be wedded against her will, kills six constables, a corregidor, the bridegroom, and a captain of the guard. For differences, compare the English broadside R. H. and Allen-a-Dale, No 138.
[68]. “Doch sind sie meist ohne grossen poetischen Werth, nur als Zeugniss für die Denkweise des Volkes über die ‘armen Bursche,’ die es lange nicht für so grosse Verbrecher hält als der Staat, und die es, ihre Vorurtheile theilend, im Gegentheile oft als kühne Freiheitshelden betrachtet, die gegen grössere oder kleinere Tyrannen sich zu erheben und denselben zu trotzen wagen, und als ungerecht verfolgte Söhne seines Stammes in Schutz nimmt gegen die fremden Gesetzvollstrecker.” (Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, p. xxvi f.)
[69]. J. Hunter (Critical and Historical Tracts, No IV), whom I follow here, shows that Barnsdale was peculiarly unsafe for travellers in Edward the First’s time. Three ecclesiastics, conveyed from Scotland to Winchester, had a guard, sometimes of eight archers, sometimes of twelve, or, further south, none at all; but when they passed from Pontefract to Tickhill, the number was increased to twenty, propter Barnsdale: p. 14.
[70]. Hunter suspects that the Nottinghamshire knight, Sir Richard at the Lee, in the latter half of the Gest, was originally a different person from the knight in the former half, “the knight of the Barnsdale ballads,” p. 25. Fricke makes the same suggestion, Die Robin-Hood Balladen, p. 19. This may be, but the reasons offered are not quite conclusive.
[71]. And so, as to Nottingham and Barnsdale, in No 118; and perhaps No 121, for the reference to Wentbridge, st. 6, would imply that Robin Hood is in Barnsdale rather than Sherwood.
[72]. I say Barnsdale, though the place is not specified, and though Sherwood would remove or reduce the difficulty as to distance. We have nothing to do with Sherwood in the Gest: a rational topography is out of the question. In the seventh fit the king starts from Nottingham, 365, walks “down by yon abbey,” 368, and ere he comes to Nottingham, 370, falls in with Robin, 375.
[73]. This was a custom of Arthur’s only upon certain holidays, according to the earlier representation, but in later accounts is made general. For romances, besides these mentioned at I, 257, in which this way of Arthur’s is noted (Rigomer, Jaufré, etc.), see Gaston Paris, Les Romans en vers du Cycle de la Table Ronde, Histoire Litt. de la France, XXX, 49.
[74]. Pothouis Liber de Miraculis S. D. G. Mariæ, c. 33, p. 377; Vincentius B., Speculum Hist., vii. c. 82. Mussafia, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Akad., Phil.-Hist. Classe, CXIII, 960–91, notes nine Latin copies, besides that attributed to Potho, in MSS mostly of the 13th century. Gautier de Coincy, ed. Poquet, cols. 543–52; Adgar’s Marienlegenden, Neuhaus, p. 176, No 29; Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages, G. Paris et U. Robert, VI, 171–223, No 35; Romania, VIII, 16, No 3 (Provençal). Berceo, in Sanchez, II, 367, No 23. Unger, Mariu Saga, No 15, pp. 87–92, 1064–67. Mone’s Anzeiger, VIII, col. 355, No 8, as a broadside ballad. Afanasief, Skazki, vii, No 49, as a popular tale, the Jew changed to a Tartar, and the Cross taken as surety, Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales, p. 27. “God-borg” in Alfred’s Laws, c. 33, Schmid, Gesetze der Angelsachsen, p. 88 f., was perhaps only an asseveration with an invocation of the Deity, like the Welsh “briduw.” And so “Ich wil dir got ze bürgen geben,” “Got den wil ich ze bürgen han,” in the Ritter v. Staufenberg, vv. 403, 405, Jänicke, Altdeutsche Studien.
[75]. Le Doctrinal de Sapience, fol. 67 b, cited by Legrand, is not to the purpose. Scala Celi refers to a Speculum Exemplorum.
In Peele’s Edward I, the friar, having lost five nobles at dice to St Francis, pays them to St Francis’ receiver; but presently wins a hundred marks of the saint, and makes the receiver pay. (The story has in one point a touch of the French fabliau.) Peele’s Works, ed. Dyce, I, 157–61.
[76]. hey hoy.
[77]. 435. The three in 433, as in 416, is for rhyme, and need not be taken strictly.
[78]. Critical and Historical Tracts, No IV, Robin Hood, p. 28 ff.
[79]. Think of Robin as light porter,—Robin who had been giving and taking buffets that might fell an ox. Think of him as worn out with the work in eleven months, and dropped for disability. Think of his being put on threepence a day, after paying his yeomen at thrice the rate, 171, not to speak of such casual gratuities as we hear of in 382. “There is in all this, perhaps, as much correspondency as we can reasonably expect between the record and the ballad,” says Hunter, p. 38.
[80]. Hunter asks if it is not possible to find in this Robert Hood of Wakefield, near Barnsdale, “the identical person whose name has been so strangely perpetuated.” This Robert Hood would be a person of some consideration, and he would thus be qualified “for his station among the vadlets of the crown,”—three-penny vadlets, Great Hob, Little Coll, Robert Trash, and their fellows. The Wakefield Robert’s wife was named Matilda, “and the ballad testimony is—not the Little Gest, but other ballads of uncertain antiquity,—that the outlaw’s wife was named Matilda, which name she exchanged for Marian when she joined him in the green-wood.” (Pp 46–48.) Hunter has made a trivial mistake about Matilda: she belongs to Munday’s play, and not to the ballads (ballad) he has in mind.
[81]. The sheriff flees from Barnsdale “towards his house in Nottingham,” in stanza 57. In fact, though these places are fifty miles apart, this ballad treats them as adjacent. See p. 50 f.
[82]. Formerly among Sir John Fenn’s papers (for the history of which see Gairdner, Paston Letters, I, vii. ff); now in the possession of Mr William Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge. The fragment, Mr Wright informs me, is written on a paper which was evidently the last half-leaf of a folio MS. On the back are various memoranda, and among them this: Itm. Rd of Rechard Wytway, penter [or peuter], for hes hosse rent, in full payment, lx [ix?] s’, the vij day of November, aº Ed. iiijti xv \[1475]. The grammatical forms of themselves warrant our putting the composition further back. This interesting relic has already been printed in Notes and Queries, First Series, XII, 321, from a very incorrect copy made by Dr Stukely. It is given here from a transcript made for me by Henry Bradshaw, of honored memory. Mr Wright has compared this with the original, and given me the history of the paper, so far as known.
This paper, as far as we can see, came into Sir John Fenn’s hands in company with the Paston Letters. In a letter of the date 1473, Sir John Paston writes: W. Woode, whyche promysed ... he wold never goo fro me, and ther uppon I have kepyd hym thys iii yer to pleye Seynt Jorge, and Robyn Hod and the Shryff off Nottyngham, and now, when I wolde have good horse, he is gone into Bernysdale, and I without a keeper. Fenn, Original Letters, etc., 1787, II, 134, cited by Ritson; Gairdner, Paston Letters, III, 89. The play cited above might be called one of Robin Hood and the Sheriff of Nottingham, and may possibly have been the very one in which William Wood was used to perform, before he went “into Barnysdale,” that is, ran away from service.
[83]. The [d]oo in the last line is not quite certain. I am not sure that the parts are always rightly assigned in the third dialogue.
[84]. Norray should be Nornee, or Norny, the name of a court fool. He is mentioned in James IV’s Treasurer’s Accounts, 1503–12. See Laing’s Dunbar, II, 307 f. Allan Bell being sly at shot, it is probable that Allan is miswritten in the MS. for Adam.
[85]. The gap at 302 occurs between two pages, and is peculiarly regrettable. The former reading of “Robyns men” in 301 made matters much worse, since there was no way of accounting for the appearance of his men at this point. We must suppose that some one of Robin’s many friends carries the news of his capture to his band, and not simply that; with this there must have come information that their leader was to be held to await knowledge of the king’s pleasure, otherwise delay would be dangerous, and summary measures for his deliverance be required.
[86]. The porter or warden, in such cases, may commonly look to have his neck wrung, to be thrown over the wall, into a well, etc.: compare Adam Bell, st. 65; Jock o the Side, sts 13, 14; the Tale of Gamelyn, Skeat, v. 303–05; Fulk Fitz Warine, Wright, pp 44, 82 f; King Horn. ed. Wissmann, vv 1097–99; Romance de don Gaiferos, F. Wolf, Ueber eine Sammlung spanischer Romanzen, p. 76, Wolf y Hofmann, Primavera, II, 148, No 174; etc.
[87]. En le temps de Averyl e May, quant les prees e les herbes reverdissent, et chescune chose vivaunte recovre vertue, beaute e force, les mountz e les valeys retentissent des douce chauntz des oseylouns, e les cuers de chescune gent, pur la beaute du temps e la sesone, mountent en haut e s’enjolyvent, etc.: Wright, Warton Club, 1855, p. 1; Stevenson, Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, etc., p. 277.
[88]. Already cited at p. 41. Bower wrote 1441–47, and died 1449: Skene, Johannis de Fordun Chronica, pp xv, xli.
[89]. .sp 1
Par cest exemple bien veons
Que li dous Deux en qui creons
Ame et chierist et honneure
Celui qui volentiers demeure
Pour oïr messe en sainte eglise, etc.
‘Du chevalier qui ooit la messe, et Notre-Dame estoit pour lui au tournoiement,’ Barbazan et Méon, Fabliaux, 1808, I, 86.
[90]. These resemblances are noted by Fricke, Die Robin Hood Balladen, a dissertation, reprinted in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen (vol. 69), in which the relations of the ballads in question are discussed with sagacity and vigilance.
[91]. “You shall never hear more of me” might mean something stronger, but it is unlikely that Will is so touchy as to throw up fealty for a testy word from a sick man. A stanza or more seems to be lost here. Arthur is equally hasty with Gawain. He makes his vow to be the bane of Cornwall King. It is an unadvised vow, says Gawain.
And then bespake him noble Arthur,
And these were the words said he:
Why, if thou be afraid, Sir Gawaine the gay,
Goe home, and drink wine in thine own country.
I, 285, sts 33–35.
[92]. John is again his sole companion when Robin goes in search of Guy of Gisborne. The yeoman in stanza 3 should be Red Roger; but a suspicion has more than once come over me that the beginning of this ballad has been affected by some version of Guy of Gisborne.
[93]. I can make nothing of “give me mood,” in 231,2. ‘Give me God’ or ‘Give me my God,’ seems too bold a suggestion: at any rate I have no example of God used simply for housel.
[94]. A few verses are wanting at the end. The “met-yard” of the last line is one of the last things we should think Robin would care for.
[95]. It seemed to me at one time that there was a direction to shoot an arrow to determine the place of a grave also in No 16, A 3, I, 185.
Now when that ye hear me gie a loud cry,
Shoot frae thy bow an arrow, and there let me lye.
But upon considering the corresponding passage in 16 B, C, and in 15 B, the idea seems rather to be, that the arrow is to leave the bow at the moment when the soul shoots from the body.
[96]. Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 46, who cites B 17, 18. Mr Ralston observes that most of the so-styled Robber Songs of the Russians are reminiscences of the revolt of the Don Cossacks against Tsar Alexis Mikhailovich. Stenka Razín, the chief of the insurgents, after setting for several years the forces of the Tsar at defiance, was put to a cruel death in 1672: p. 45, as above.
[97]. The personage may have been varied in the broadside ballads to catch the pence of tanners, tinkers, and the rest; or possibly some member of the respective fraternities might do this for the glory of his craft. A parallel case seems to be afforded by the well-known German ballad, ‘Der Zimmergesell und die junge Markgräfin,’ which is also sung of a journeyman shoemaker, tailor, locksmith, etc.; as remarked by A. Grün, Robin Hood, Ein Balladenkranz, p. 47 f.
[98]. Fricke, Die Robin-Hood-Balladen, p. 20 f, suggests a ballad of Robin Hood and the Sheriff (How Robin took revenge for the sheriff’s setting a price on his head), which may have been blended with another, of the Rescue of a Knight, to form the sixth fit of The Gest; and points to st. 329 of the Gest, ‘Robyn Hode walked in the forest,’ etc., as the probable beginning of such a ballad.
[99]. b would have taken precedence of a, having been printed earlier (1607–41), but I am at liberty only to collate Pepys copies. The Wood copies of Robin Hood ballads are generally preferable to the Pepys.
[100]. “A wet weary man,” A 71, should probably be “wel weary.” Why should R. H. be wet? And if wet, he may as well be a little wetter.
[101]. Like terms are assured the cook by John in the Gest, sts 170, 171, and offered the Tanner by Robin Hood, R. H. and the Tanner, st. 26. Cf. Adam Bell, sts 163–65.
The ‘Life’ in the Sloane MS., which is put not much before 1600, says: He procurd the Pynner of Wakefeyld to become one of his company, and a freyr called Muchel; though some say he was an other kynd of religious man, for that the order of freyrs was not yet sprung up.
[102]. Curtilarius (Old English curtiler) qui curtile curat aut incolit: Ducange.
[103]. I suppose that it must already have been pointed out that the story of King Ramiro, versified by Southey from the Portuguese, Poetical Works, 1838, VI, 122, is a variety of that of Solomon. There are curious points of resemblance between ‘R. H. rescuing Three Squires’ and the conclusion of the story of Solomon.
[104]. Dodsley’s Old Plays, 4th ed., by W. C. Hazlitt, VIII, 195, 232.
[105]. A very serious offence: see E. Peacock, Hales and Furnivall, Percy Folio Manuscript, I, lxii, note to p. 34.
[106]. Further on, Brathwayte alludes to a difference between Robin Hood and the Shoemaker of Bradford, which had been treated of by stage-poets. This refers to the fight that Robin Hood and George a Green have with the shoemakers, in chap. xii of the History (Thoms, p. 52 f), which is introduced into Robert Greene’s play (Dyce, p. 199 f), but only George does the fighting there. It is mere carelessness when Munday, ‘Downfall,’ etc., applies the name of George a Greene to the Shoemaker of Bradford (Hazlitt, as above, p. 151). In the same play and the same scene he makes Scathlock and Scarlet two persons.
[107]. Robin Hood Newly Revived (which, by the way, is in the same bad style as Robin Hood and Little John) is directed to be sung ‘to a delightful new Tune.’ The tune, as is seen from the burden, was that of Arthur a Bland, etc., called in Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon (the Second Part of Robin Hood Newly Revived) Robin Hood, or Hey down, down a down. The earliest printed copy of the air is preserved in the ballad-opera of The Jovial Crew, 1731 (Rimbault, in Gutch’s Robin Hood, II, 433, Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 391), and the song which is there sung to it has middle rhyme in the first line as well as the third, which is the case with no Robin Hood ballad except Robin Hood and the Peddlers.
Robin Hood and Maid Marian, which has the middle rhyme in the third line, is directed to be sung to Robin Hood Revived. Robin Hood and the Scotchman, as already said, has middle rhyme in the third line; so have The King’s Disguise, etc., R. H. and the Golden Arrow, R. H. and the Valiant Knight; but the tune assigned to the last is Robin Hood and the Fifteen Foresters, that is, Robin Hood’s Progress to Nottingham.
It ought to be added that Robin Hood Newly Revived is found in the Garland of 1663, in company with R. H. and the Bishop, R. H. and the Butcher, etc., and that Robin Hood and Little John is not there; but I do not consider this circumstance sufficient to offset the probability in favor of the supposition, that by Robin Hood and the Stranger is meant Robin Hood and Little John.
[108]. Fourteen foot, as proved by his bones, preserved, according to Hector Boece, in the kirk of Pette, in Murrayland. See Ritson’s Robin Hood, 1832, I, cxxxii f; and Gutch, II, 112, note *.
[109]. The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood, No 132, is a traditional variation of Robin Hood Revived.
[110]. Though Mr W. C. Hazlitt, in his Handbook to the Popular, Poetical, and Dramatic Literature of Great Britain, p. 514, No 25, has: “Robin Hood and the Stranger. In two parts. [Col.] London: printed by and for W. O., and to be sold at the booksellers. Roxb. and Wood Colls.” This colophon belongs only to Robin Hood, Will Scadlock, and Little John, otherwise Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon, which see. The title Robin Hood and the Stranger is adopted from Ritson.
[111]. ‘Robin Hood and the Prince of Aragon,’ in Thackeray’s list, Ballad Society, I, xxiv, and in the late Garlands, 1749, etc.
[112]. Remarked by Fricke, p. 88 f.
[113]. Mr E. Maunde Thompson, Keeper of the Manuscripts in the British Museum, in an obliging letter to Harvard College Library, and in The Academy, 1885, March 7, p. 170. No 8 C of this collection is in this manuscript.
[114]. A verse in the passage from Drayton’s Polyolbion, Song xxvi, cited by Ritson, I, viii of Robin Hood, 1795, may refer to this version of the ballad: “The widow in distress he graciously relievd.”
[115]. In st. 2 Robin is in his proper Lincoln green. He wears scarlet red again in No. 141, st. 6 and in No 145, st. 18, his men being in green.
[116]. Fricke has observed this, pp 59, 69, and at p. 58 the resemblance to Wallace.
[117]. Even the author of A seems not to be aware that Much, the Miller’s Son, is the standing name of one of Robin Hood’s men, and therefore would not answer for a disguise. In B, C, nothing is expressly said about the change of names, and in fact this arrangement seems not to be understood, since in B 211 Clifton is spoken of as one Clifton. Comparing B 33, 34, 37, we see that Clifton should be Little John, but Midge, the Miller’s Son, himself, not Scathlock, still less John.
[118]. Also says Ritson, Robin Hood, II, 97, by Francis Coule, 13th June, 1631; but the ballad there entered is The Noble Fisherman.
[119]. Robin Hood, ed. 1832, p. xxxvi, note, p. lxxxvii.
[120]. The mutilated parts are supplied, to a slight extent, from a copy in the Bodleian Library (L. 78. Art., 5th tract), which happens to be injured on the right side of the title-page in nearly the same places as the Museum copy, and also has the lower portion cut off, to the loss of the printer’s name; the rest from an edition printed for J. Clark, W. Thackeray, and T. Passinger, 1686. Mr J. P. Collier possessed a copy with the same imprint as that of the Museum, which he lent Gutch, and which Gutch says he used for his text. If Gutch followed the Collier copy, then that was not identical with the Museum copy. Ritson reprinted the text of 1686.
[121]. “Now, under this precise gentleman’s favor, one would be glad to know what these same superstitious words were; there not being anything of the kind in Dr Gale’s copy, which seems to be the original, and which is shorter by two lines than the above. Thirteen should be thirty.” Ritson, Robin Hood, ed. 1832, II, 127 f. For the epitaph and the gravestone, see the same volume, pp. liv-lvii.
[122]. Percy: “As for Mirryland Town, it is probably a corruption of Milan (called by the Dutch Meylandt) town; the Pa is evidently the river Po, although the Adige, not the Po, runs through Milan.” B, 1 is unintelligible. Do the lads run down the Pa?
[123]. In J, 4, he will be beaten for losing his ball. In the Irish F, 8, the mother takes a little rod in her hand, meaning to bate him for staying so long: cf. J 10, N 4, 12,and the last verse of T. Hood’s ‘Lost Heir.’
[124]. Dem Volke war die Glocke nicht herzlos; sie war ihm eine beseelte Persönlichkeit, und stand als solche mit dem Menschen in lebendigem Verkehr.... Die Glocken ... scheinen auch von höheren Mächten berührt zu werden; sie sprechen wie Gottesstimmen, ertönen oft von selbst, als Mahnung von oben, als Botschaft vom Tode bedeutender Personen, als Wahrzeichen der Unschuld eines Angeklagten, zur Bewährung der Heiligkeit eines von Gott erwählten Rüstzeugs. Uhland, Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung u. Sage, VIII, 588 f.
[125]. Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, II, 346 ff. “From 1219 to 1266 the MS. was written contemporaneously with the events described, from year to year:” p. xxxvi.
[126]. Chronica Majora, ed. Luard, V, 516–19. Matthew Paris died in 1259.
[127]. Seventy-one were thus reserved, but escaped, by the use of money or by the intercession of the Franciscans, or both. See the same volume, p. 546; but also the account which follows, from the Annals of Burton.
[128]. Annales de Burton, in Annales Monastici, Luard, I, 340–48. Hugh of Lincoln is commemorated in the Acta Sanctorum, July (27), VI, 494.
[129]. Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, etc., from a MS. in the “Bibliothèque royale, No 7268, 3. 3. A. Colb. 3745, fol. 135, rº, col. 1.” Reprinted by Halliwell, Ballads and Poems respecting Hugh of Lincoln, p. 1, and from Halliwell by Hume, Sir Hugh of Lincoln, etc., p. 43 ff. In stanzas 13, 75, there is an invocation in behalf of King Henry (Qui Deu gard et tenge sa vie!), which implies that he is living. The ballad shows an acquaintance with the localities.
[130]. “A la gule de aust.” The day, according to the Annals of Burton, was the vigil of St Peter ad vincula. We find in Henschel’s Ducange, “ad festum S. Petri, in gula Augusti,” and “le jour de feste S. Pere, en goule Aoust.” Strictly taken, goule should be the first day, Lammas.
Peitevin was actually resident in Lincoln at the time. “He was called Peitevin the Great, to distinguish him from another person who bore the appellation of Peitevin the Little. The Royal Commission issued in 1256 directs an inquisition to be taken of the names of all those who belonged to the school of Peytevin Magnus, who had fled on account of his implication in the crucifixion of a Christian boy.” London Athenæum, 1849, p. 1270 f.
[131]. The site of the Jewry was on the hill and about the castle: London Athenæum, 1849, p. 1271.
[132]. These renegades play a like part in many similar cases.
[133]. Les Jus, 821; but this is impossible, and we have li justis in 911.
[134]. “Canwick is pleasantly situated on a bold eminence, about a mile northward of Lincoln.” Allen, History of the County of Lincoln, I, 208.
[135]. I do not find this story in the Basel edition of c. 1475.
[136]. A case cited by Eisenmenger, Entdecktes Judenthum, 2r Theil, p. 220, from Socrates, Ecclesiastical History, l. vii, 16, differs from later ones by being a simple extravagance of drunkenness. Some Jews in Syria, “A. D. 419,” who were making merry after their fashion, and indulging in a good deal of tomfoolery, began, as they felt the influence of wine, to jeer at Christ and Christians; from which they proceeded to the seizing of a Christian boy and tying him to a cross. At first they were contented to make game of him, but, growing crazy with drink, they fell to beating him, and even beat him to death; for which they were properly punished.
[137]. See the ballads ‘Vom Judenmord zu Deggendorf,’ 1337, ‘Von den Juden zu Passau,’ 1478, in Liliencron, I, 45, No 12, II, 142, No 153.
[138]. Nothing could be more just than these words of Percy: “If we consider, on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who record them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by the barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand, the great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate motives they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror, we may reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and malicious.” Reliques, 1795, I, 32.
[139]. Read the indictment against Christians filed by Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, pp 19–58, covering the time from the eleventh century to the middle of the sixteenth. It is regrettable that Zunz has not generally cited his authorities. See also Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, p. 183 ff., and notes, p. 280 ff., where the authorities are given.
[140]. In vol. viii, pp 225, 344, 476, 598, 730, vol. ix, 107, 219, 353, 472, 605, the confessions of the defendants are given from the original minutes of the trial; and it fully appears from these confessions that blood is requisite for a proper performance of the Paschal ceremonies, and also that the blood must be got from a boy, and from a boy while he is undergoing torment. Only it is to be remembered that the inducements to these confessions were the same as those which led the Jews of Passau to acknowledge that blood exuded from the Host when it was stabbed, and that when two bits of the wafer were thrown into an oven two doves flew out: Train, as above, p. 116, note 57.
[141]. For other pictures of these martyrdoms, see the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, fol. ccliiii, vº, for Simon of Trent; Lacroix, Mœurs, Usages, etc., 1875, p. 473, for Richard of Pontoise, p. 475, for Simon, repeated from the N. Chron.; that of Munich, 1285, and the children of Ratisbon, reproduced in Cosmos, March 30, 1885 (according to Drumont, II, 418, note). See also Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, p. 54, note 41.
[142]. The extraordinary occurrence in Damascus in the same year, 1840, which excited the indignation, sympathy, and active interposition of nearly all the civilized world, requires but the briefest allusion. A capuchin friar was in this instance the victim immolated, and for blood to mix with the Paschal bread. The most frightful torture was used, under the direction of the Turkish pacha, assisted by the French consul, under which three unhappy men succumbed. See Illgen’s detailed account of this persecution in the periodical and article above cited, pp. 153 ff. Drumont is of the same mind as he would have been four or five hundred years ago: “les faits étaient prouvés, démontrés, indiscutables” (La France Juive, II, 411).
[143]. The threat implied in E 34 has no motive; and the phrase “haly spark” in 54 is an unadvised anticipation.
[144]. Found also in the ballad, A Warning-Piece to England against Pride and Wickedness: Being the Fall of Queen Eleanor, Wife to Edward the First, King of England, who, for her Pride, by God’s Judgments, sunk into the Ground at Charing-Cross and rose at Queen-Hithe. A Collection of Old Ballads, I, 97.
[145]. There attributed to Jacques de Vitry, but not found in his Exempla. Professor Crane informs me that, though the Scala Celi cites Jacques de Vitry sixty-two times, only fourteen of such exempla occur among J. de V.’s.
[146]. The story does not occur in Doni’s Marmi, iii, 27, as has been said. What is there found is somewhat after the fashion of ‘The Baffled Knight,’ No 112.
[147]. Cunningham, in his loose way, talks of several fragments which he had endeavored to combine, but can spare room for only one couplet:
Though lame of a leg and blind of an ee,
You’re as like William Wallace as ever I did see.
But this is the William of ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter,’ No 110.
[148]. A 15, B 12, D 12, are somewhat corrupted. In F 14 Wallace says he never had a better bode. In E 10 Wallace’s reply is, Pay down, for if your answer be not good you shall have the downfall of Robin Hood; and in G 30, Tell down, and ye shall see William Wallace with the downcome of Robin Hood; that is, I suppose, you shall be knocked down as if by Robin Hood.
[149]. Post enim conflictum de Roslyn, Wallace, ascensa navi, Franciam petit, ubi quanta probitate refulsit, tam super mare a piratis quam in Francia ab Anglis perpessus est discrimina, et viriliter se habuit, nonnulla carmina, tam in ipsa Francia quam Scotia, attestantur. Scotichronicon, Goodall, II, 176, note.
[150]. “Thou hadst twenty ships hither, thou’st have twenty away,” B 37. It would be more in the ballad-way were the second twenty doubled.
[151]. In the London Athenæum, about twenty-five years ago, there was (I think) a story of an Englishman in Russia resembling Hugh Spencer’s. I have wrongly noted the number as 1871, and have not recovered the story after much rummaging. This ballad is not very unlike Russian bylinas.
[152]. Presbyteri, fratres et clerici, sutores et mechanici, Bower; agricolæ ac pastores, et capellani imbecilles et decrepiti, Knyghton; miseri monachi, improbi presbyteri, porcorum pastores, sutores et pelliparii, Chronicon de Lanercost; clericos et pastores, Walsingham, Hist. Angl.
[153]. It is very doubtful whether there was an Earl of Buchan in 1346. Henry de Beaumont, according to the peerages, died in 1341. He was an Englishman, had fought against the Scots at Duplin, 1332, and was after that in the service of Edward III.
[154]. ‘Famous,’ the MS. reading in 141, may probably be an error for James, which occurs so often in 28–33. William Douglas, the Knight of Liddesdale, had a brother James, but this James had been killed in 1335. He had also a brother John, Scotichronicon and Chronicon de Lanercoste, and the latter, as has been mentioned, puts John in Murray’s division. Knyghton, col. 2590, gives as among the prisoners dominus Willielmus Duglas et frater ejusdem Willielmi.
[155]. When William Douglas, in the Chronicle of Lanercost, tells the king that the English are at hand, and David replies, there is nothing in England but monks, priests, swineherds, etc., Douglas says, ‘aliter invenietis; sunt varii validi viri.’
[156]. Froissart says that the English force was in four battalions: the first commanded by the Bishop of Durham and Lord Percy; the second by the Archbishop of York and Lord Neville; the third by the Bishop of Lincoln and Lord Mowbray; the fourth by Edward Balliol and the Archbishop of Canterbury.
[157]. Crécy, 26 August, 1346; Durham, 17 October, 1346; Poitiers, 19 September, 1356.
[158]. “Froissart describes a Scottish host of the same period as consisting of ‘.iiii. M. of armes, knightis and squiers, mounted on good horses, and other .x. M. men of warre, armed after their gyse, right hardy and firse, mounted on lytle hackeneys, the whiche were never tyed nor kept at hard meate, but lette go to pasture in the feldis and busshes.’” Happily cited by Scott, in illustration of C 16: Lord Berners’ translation, cap. xvii, Pynson, 1523, fol. viii.
[159]. A consolation as old as wise. So Paris, for himself: νίκη δ’ ἐπαμείβεται ἄνδρας, Iliad, vi, 339.
[160]. Buchanan has these numbers, with the exception of 1840, for 1860, killed: ed. 1582, fol. 101. “That there was a memorable slaughter in this affair, a slaughter far beyond the usual proportion to the numbers engaged, cannot be doubted; nor was there ever bloodshed more useless for the practical ends of war. It all came of the capture of the Percy’s pennon. The Scots might have got clear off with all their booty; the English forgot all the precautions of war when they made a midnight rush on a fortified camp without knowledge of the ground or the arrangements of their enemy. It was for these specialties that Froissart admired it so. He saw in it a fight for fighting’s sake, a great passage at arms in which no bow was drawn, but each man fought hand to hand; in fact, about the greatest and bloodiest tournament he had to record. Hence his narrative is ever interrupted with bursts of admiration as his fancy contemplates the delightful scene raised before it.” Burton, History of Scotland, II, 364, ed. 1873 (who, perhaps by an error of the press, makes the losses of the English in killed eight hundred and forty, in place of Buchanan’s eighteen hundred and forty).
[161]. Bower and Barry say St Oswald’s day, Wednesday, the 5th, Scotichronicon, II, 405, 407; Knyghton also; the continuator of Higden’s Polychronicon, August 12, Wednesday. The ballad, A 184, gives the day as Wednesday. There was a full moon August 20, which makes the 19th of itself far more probable, and Froissart says the moon was shining. See White, Battle of Otterburn, p. 133.
[162]. Walsingham writes in the vein of Froissart: “Erat ibidem cernere pulchrum spectaculum, duos tam præclaros juvenes manus conserere et pro gloria decertare.” Walsingham says that the English were few. Malverne puts the Scots at 30,000, and here, as in the ballad A 35, the cronykle does not layne (indeed, the ballad is all but accurate), if the main body of the Scots be included, which was at first supposed to be supporting Douglas.
[163]. ‘The perssee and the mongumrye met, that day, that day, that gentil day,’ which I suppose to be either a different reading from any that has come down, or a blending of a line from Otterburn with one from The Hunting of the Cheviot, A 241; indicating in either case the present ballad only, for The Hunttis of Cheuet had been cited before. Furnivall holds that the second line means another ballad: Captain Cox, p. clix.
[164]. The History of the Houses of Douglas and Angus, 1644, p. 104.
[165]. For Motherwell’s views, see his Minstrelsy, li, lii, and lxxi, note 30.
[166]. .sp 1
B 20.
Ingen iomfru maa ieg loffue,
huerchen lønlig eller aaben-bahre;
det haffuer ieg iomfru Maria loffuet
hindis tienere skall ieg verre.
[167]. The burden is ‘O kiennicheinn Maria’ in the first, ‘Hilf Maria’ in the second; in both George declines the king’s daughter, and orders a church to be built ‘mit Mariabeild,’ or to himself and Mary. This, and perhaps the hint for St George’s addiction to Mary altogether, is from the Golden Legend, where the king “in honorem beatæ Mariæ et beati Georgii ecclesiam miræ magnitudinis construxit”: Grässe, p. 261.
[168]. Following in part Buchanan, who, however, says nothing of Melrose, or of the prophecy, which is the point here. Illa vero a vobis postrema peto: primum, vt mortem meam et nostros et hostes cœletis; deinde, ne vexillum meum dejectum sinatis; demum, vt meam cædem vlciscamini. Hæc si sperem ita fore, cætera æquo animo feram. Fol. 101, ed. 1582.
[169]. I have not resorted to the MS. in this case, for the reason that I could not expect to get a transcript which would merit the confidence which must attach to one made by the hand of Professor Skeat.
[170]. British Bibliographer, IV, 99 f; Wright, Songs and Ballads, p. viii; etc.
[171]. The grammatical forms of the Hunting of the Cheviot are, however, older than those of the particular copy of Otterburn which has been preserved. The plural of the noun is very often in -ës or -ys, as lordës, 231; longës, 371; handdës, 601; sydis, 82; bowys, 132, 251, 291, etc., at least sixteen cases. We find, also, sydë at 62, and possibly should read fayllë at 93. The plural in -ës is rare in The Battle of Otterburn: starrës, 454; swordës, 542; Skottës, 591, 621. Probably we are to read swordës length in 553.
[172]. See the passage in the Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, referred to in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, I, 235, and given at length in Hales and Furnivall, II, 3 f.
[173]. The minstrel was not too nice as to topography either: Otterburn is not in Cheviot.
[174]. Tytler, History of Scotland, III, 293, though citing only the Scotichronicon, says Sir Robert Ogle, and also Scott, I, 270; for reasons which do not appear.
[175]. An Apologie for Poetrie, p. 46 of Arber’s reprint of the first edition, 1595. For the date of the writing, 1581–85, see Arber, p. 7 f.
[176]. The courtly poet deserves much of ballad-lovers for avowing his barbarousness (one doubts whether he seriously believed that the gorgeous Pindar could have improved upon the ballad), but what would he not have deserved if he had written the blind crowder’s song down!
[177]. Popular Music, I, 198. Chevy Chase is entered in the Stationers’ Registers, among a large parcel of ballads, in 1624, and clearly was no novelty: Arber, IV, 131. “Had it been printed even so early as Queen Elizabeth’s reign,” says Percy, “I think I should have met with some copy wherein the first line would have been, God prosper long our noble queen.” “That it could not be much later than that time appears from the phrase doleful dumps, which in that age carried no ill sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request, and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of had it been in the least exceptionable; see above, Book ii, song v, ver. 2 [by Richard Edwards, 1596?]. Yet, in about half a century after, it was become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Pt. I, c. 3, v. 95.” Reliques, 1794, I, 268, note, 269.
The copy in the Percy MS., B a, though carelessly made, retains, where the broadsides do not, two of the readings of A: bade on the bent, 282; to the hard head haled he, 454.
[178]. Addison was not behind any of us in his regard for traditional songs and tales. No 70 begins: “When I travelled, I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to son and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, tho they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man. Human nature is the same in all reasonable creatures, and whatever falls in with it will meet with admirers amongst readers of all qualities and conditions.”
[179]. A Description of the Parish of Melrose [by the Revd. Adam Milne], Edinburgh, 1743, p. 21. Scott cites the epitaph, with some slight variations (as “English louns”), Appendix to The Eve of St. John, Minstrelsy, IV, 199, ed. 1833. The monument was “all broken in pieces” in Milne’s time; seems to have been renewed and again broken up (The Scotsman, November 12, 1873); but, judging from Murray’s Handbook of Scotland, has again been restored.
Squire Meldrum’s valor was inferior to nobody’s, but as his fortune was happier than Witherington’s and Lilliard’s, a note may suffice for him. “Quhen his schankis wer schorne in sunder, vpon his knees he wrocht greit wounder:” Lindsay, ed. 1594, Cv. recto, v. 30 f, Hall, p. 358, v. 1349 f. But really he was only “hackit on his hochis and theis,” or as Pittscottie says, Dalyell, p. 306, “his hochis war cutted and the knoppis of his elbowis war strikin aff,” and by and by he is “haill and sound” again, according to the poet, and according to the chronicler he “leived fyftie yeires thairefter.”
[180]. As stanch as some of these was a Highlander at the battle of Gasklune, 1392, who, though nailed to the ground by a horseman’s spear, held fast to his sword, writhed himself up, and with a last stroke cut his foeman above the foot to the bone, “through sterap-lethire and the bute, thre ply or foure”: Wyntoun’s Chronicle, B. ix, ch. 14, Laing, III, 59.
[181]. Legally just: Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, Historical and Traditionary, I, 349 ff.
[182]. And afterwards, 1748, by Robert Foulis, Glasgow: “Two old Historical Scots Poems, giving an account of the Battles of Harlaw and the Reid-Squair.”
[183]. Ane Catalogue of the Books, Manuscripts and Pamphlets Belonging to Robert Mylne, Wryter in Edr
., 1709: Advocates Library. Mr Macmath, who has come to my aid here, writes: “So far as I can make out, this catalogue contains no MSS. It is in two divisions: 1st, Printed Books; 2d, Pamphlets. The following is in the second division, and I understand the reference to be, year of publication, volume, or bundle of pamphlets, number of piece in bundle or volume:
“Harlaw The Battle yrof An: 1411 ... 1668, 79, 5.”
Mylne died in 1747, at the age, it is said, of 103 or 105: [Maidment], A Book of Scotish Pasquils, p. 423.
[184]. He talks like a canny packman:
I wist nocht quha was fae or freind;
Yet quietly I did me carrie,
. . . . . . .
And thair I had nae tyme to tairie,
For bissiness in Aberdene.
[185]. So with The Battle of Balrinnes and The Haughs of Cromdale. The first line of The Battle of Balrinnes is, ‘Betuixt Dunother and Aberdein.’
[186]. Not only were these long and affectionately remembered, but their heirs were exempted from certain feudal taxes, because the defeat of the Celts was regarded as a national deliverance: Burton’s History, II, 394.
[187]. A macaronic ascribed to Drummond of Hawthornden.
Interea ante alios dux piperlarius heros
Præcedens, magnamque gestans cum burdine pipam,
Incipit Harlai cunctis sonare Batellum.
(Poems, Maitland Club, p. 413, after the first
dated edition of 1684.)
[188]. 32. Away and away and away, e, f, i, k. 121. The first that fired it was the French, f, g, h. 124. were forced to flee, f, i, m (first to flee, e). 143. in all French land, e, f, g, (in our) h, m. Etc.
[189]. English balls again in m, tennis-balls in i, k.
[190]. Whose work was printed in 1850, ed. Benjamin Williams. I am for the most part using Sir Harris Nicolas’s excellent History of the Battle of Agincourt, 2d ed., 1832, here; see pp. 8–13, 301 f.
[191]. Nicolas, p. 302 f, slightly corrected; much the same in another copy of the poem, ib., Appendix, p. 69 f. The jest in Henry’s reply is carried out in detail when he comes to Harfleur, ib., pp. 308–310.
[192]. Nicolas, p. 10, as corrected by Hales and Furnivall, II, 161, and in one word emended by me. By several of the above writers the Dauphin Louis is called Charles, through confusion with his father or his younger brother.
[193]. The gifts are a whip (σκῦτος), a ball, and a casket of gold. In Julius Valerius’s version, Müller, as above, σκῦτος is rendered habena, whip or reins; in Leo’s Historia de Preliis, ed. Landgraf, p. 54, we have virga for habena; in Lamprecht’s Alexander, Weismann, I, 74, 1296–1301, the habena is a pair of shoe-strings. The French romance, Michelant, p. 52, 25 ff, to make sure, gives us both rod (verge) and reins; the English Alexander, Weber, I, 75, 1726–28, has a top, a scourge, and a small purse of gold. Weber has noticed the similarity of the stories, Romances, III, 299, and he remarks that in ‘The Famous Victories of Henry Fifth’ a carpet is sent with the tun of tennis-balls, to intimate that the prince is fitter for carpet than camp.
[194]. Cheshire, Lancashire, and the Earl of Derby are made to carry off the honors in ballad-histories of Bosworth and Flodden: see the appendix to No 168. Perhaps the hand of some minstrel of the same clan as the author or authors of those eulogies may be seen in this passage.
[195]. Henry of Monmouth, or Memoirs of the Life and Character of Henry the Fifth, II, 121, 197. Jewitt, Derbyshire Ballads, p. 2, says that there is a tradition in the Peak of Derby that Henry V would take no married man or widow’s son, when recruiting for Agincourt; but he goes on to say that the ballad is not unfrequently sung by the hardy sons of the Peak, which adequately accounts for the tradition.
[196]. Cf. g 6 and ‘Lord Bateman,’ 14, II, 508.
[197]. Vol. cxiii, fol. 14, Bodleian Library: cited (p. 303 f.) in Beamont’s Annals of the Lords of Warrington, Chetham Society, 1872, where may be found the fullest investigation yet attempted of this obscure matter. I have freely and thankfully used chapters 17–19 of that highly interesting work.
[198]. For Lord Grey’s making the suit void, and his lady’s resolution to be buried near Sir John, see Beamont, p. 319 f, pp. 297–99.
[199]. Beamont, p. 304.
[200]. Pennant, in the second half of the last century, heard that both Sir Thomas and his lady were murdered in his house by assassins, who, in the night, crossed the moat in leathern boats. Again, Sir Peter Legh, simply, was said to have slain Sir Thomas Butler. Sir Thomas died quietly in his bed, and Sir Peter, who had turned priest, administered ghostly consolations to him not long before his decease.
[201]. See Beamont, p. 308; and also p. 296 for another hypothesis.
[202]. Beamont, pp. 259, 321.
[203]. These are duly interpreted in Hales and Furnivall.
[204]. Lord Strange’s hair-breadth escape is, however, perhaps apocryphal: see Croston, County Families of Lancashire and Cheshire, 1887, p. 25 f.
[205]. B begins vilely, but does not go on so ill. The forty merchants coming ‘with fifty sail’ to King Henry on a mountain top, 31,2, requires to be taken indulgently.
[206]. .sp 1
“God’s curse on his hartt,’ saide William,
‘Thys day thy cote dyd on;
If it had ben no better then myne,
It had gone nere thy bone.’
(Vol. iii, 23, st. 27.)
[207]. An approach to sense may be had by reading ‘either in hach-bord or in hull,’ that is, by striking with his beam either the side or the body of the vessel; but I do not think so well of this change as to venture it.
[208]. The letters granted to the Bartons authorized them to seize all Portuguese ships till repaid 12,000 ducats of Portugal. Pinkerton, whose excellent account, everywhere justified by documents, I have been indebted to above, remarks: “The justice of letters of reprisal after an interval of thirty years may be much doubted. At any rate, one prize was sufficient for the injury, and the continuance of their captures, and the repeated demands of our kings, even so late as 1540, cannot be vindicated. Nay, these reprisals on Portugal were found so lucrative that, in 1543, Arran, the regent, gave similar letters to John Barton, grandson of the first John. In 1563 Mary formally revoked the letters of marque to the Bartons, because they had been abused into piracy.” Pinkerton’s History of Scotland, II, 60 f, 70.
[209]. Robert was skipper of the Great Michael, a ship two hundred and forty feet long, with sides ten feet thick, and said to be larger and stronger than any vessel in the navy of England or of France.
[210]. A mistake of Edmund for Edward and an anticipation. Sir Edward Howard was not made admiral till the next year. Edmund was his younger brother. Lesley has Edmund again; Stowe has Edward.
[211]. Britanus. “Breton, whom our chroniclers call Barton,” says Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Life of Henry VIII, 1649, p. 15.
[212]. Another anticipation. Sir Thomas Howard became admiral only after his brother Edward’s death, in 1513. The expedition of the Howards against Barton appears to have been a private one, though with the consent of the king.
[213]. The commissioners met, and “the wrongs done unto Scotland many ways, specially of the slaughter of Andrew Barton and taking of his ships, were conferred,” but the commissioners of England would not consent to make any redress or restitution till after a certain date when they expected to know the issue of their king’s invasion of France. Hereupon a herald was sent to King Henry in France, with a letter from King James, rehearsing the great wrongs and unkindnesses done to himself and his lieges, and among these the slaughter of Andrew Barton by Henry’s own command, though he had done no offence to him or his lieges; and no satisfaction being obtained, the herald, according to his instructions, “denounced war to the king of England,” August, 1513. (Lesley, pp. 87–91.)
[214]. B 633, “Lord Howard shall Earl Bury hight.” Admiral Thomas Howard, for his good service at Flodden and elsewhere, was created Earl of Surrey in 1514. Bury is, one would suppose, a corruption of Surrey, and if so, Surrey may have been the reading of earlier copies, and perhaps Thomas again, instead of Charles.
[215]. By reading midwinter in A 173 this difficulty would be removed.
[216]. These beams, Henry Hunt intimates in 32, would be dangerous to boarders, which is conceivable should they chance to hit the right heads; but they are evidently meant to be dropped on the adversary’s vessel, and this by a process which is not distinctly described, and was, I fear, not perfectly grasped by the minstrel. The veriest landsman must think that a magazine of heavy timbers stowed in either castle (there is an upper and a lower in the pictures of Henry VII’s Great Harry and of Henry VIII’s Grace de Dieu, and the lower is well up the mast) would not be favorable to sailing; but this is a minor difficulty. Stones and fire-balls were sometimes thrown from the topcastle, which, properly, should be a stage at the very tip of the mast, as we find it in old prints: see Nicolas’s History of the Royal Navy, II, 170. Stones and iron bars thrown from the high decks of Spanish ships did much harm to the English in a fight in 1372: Froissart, Buchon, V, 276. An intelligible way of operating the ancient “dolphins,” heavy masses of metal dropped from the end of a yard, is suggested in Graser, De veterum re navali, 1864, p. 82 f.
[217]. A better, but defective, copy is in the second volume of Chetham Miscellanies, edited by Dr J. Robson, 1855.
[218]. Harleian MS. No 3526, date of about 1636; a printed copy of 1664, from which the poem was edited by Weber, Edinburgh, 1808; a printed copy of 1755–62, from a different source, excellently edited by Charles A. Federer, Manchester, 1884. See further this last, pp. 134–37.
[219]. Articles of the bataill betwix the Kinge of Scottes and the Erle of Surrey in Brankstone Feld, the 9 day of September: State Papers, vol. iv, King Henry the Eighth, Part iv, p. 2, 1836.
[220]. Hall’s Chronicle, p. 564.
[221]. Who are celebrated also in three other pieces, ‘Scottish Field,’ ‘Bosworth Field,’ and ‘Lady Bessie:’ Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, I, 212, III, 235, 321.
[222]. “He never loved thee, for thy uncle [that is, Sir William Stanley] slew his father” [the Duke of Norfolk]; which, however, is not true.
[223]. Sir Ralph Egerton is made marshal in st. 91; but this Rowland is really Ralph over again. Ralph was knighted at Tournay, and was granted the manor of Ridley in February of the next year.
[224]. “Where they lay a long time, and left the town as they found it:” Hall, p. 861.
[225]. .sp 1
‘Where got thou these targits, Jony,
That hings so low down by thy knee?’
‘I got them, cukel king, in the field,
Where thow and thy men durst not come see.’
[226]. This copy I have in MS. and have not noted, neither can I remember, how I came by it, but it is probably a transcript from recent print. It diverges from the ordinary text more than any that I have seen. After 17 comes this stanza (cf. ‘Robin Hood rescuing Three Squires,’ No 140, B 29):
They took the gallows frae the slack,
An there they set it on a plain,
An there they hanged Johnnie Armstrong,
Wi fifty of his warlike men.
18–20, 23 are wanting. A “pretty little boy,” in what corresponds to 21, 22, says, ‘Johnnie Armstrong you’ll never see,’ and the lady ends the ballad with:
If that be true, my pretty little boy,
Aye the news you tell to me,
You’ll be the heir to a’my lands,
You an your young son after thee.
[227]. A tract on the extreme western border, beginning between the mouths of the Sark and Esk and stretching north and east eight miles, with a greatest breadth of four miles. The particulars of the boundaries are given from an old roll in Nicolson and Burn’s Westmorland and Cumberland, I, xvi, and as follows by Mr T. J. Carlyle, The Debateable Land, Dumfries, 1868, p. 1: “bounded on the west by the Sark and Pingleburn, on the north by the Irvine burn, Tarras, and Reygill, on the east by the Mereburn, Liddal, and Esk, and on the south by the Solway Frith.” The land was parted between England and Scotland in 1552, with no great gain to good order for the half century succeeding.
[228]. It has been maintained that there was a Gilnockie tower on the eastern side of the Esk, a very little lower than the Hollows tower. “We can also inform our readers that Giltknock Hall was situate on a small rocky island on the river Esk below the Langholm, the remains of which are to be seen:” Crito in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, March 8, 1773. “Many vestiges of strongholds can be traced within the parish, although there is only one, near the new bridge already described, that makes an appearance at this point, its walls being yet entire:” Statistical Account of Canoby, Sinclair, XIV, 420.
Sir John Sinclair, 1795, says, in a note to this last passage, that the spot of ground at the east end of “the new bridge” is, “indeed, called to this day, Gill-knocky, but it does not exhibit the smallest vestige of mason-work.” Mr. T. J. Carlyle, The Debateable Land, p. 17, gives us to understand that the foundations of the tower were excavated and removed when the bridge was built; but this does not appear to be convincingly made out.
[229]. The History of Liddesdale, Eskdale, Ewesdale, Wauchopedale, and The Debateable Land, by Robert Bruce Armstrong, 1883, pp 177 f, 227 f, 245, 259 f; Appendix, pp. xxvi, xxxi.
[230]. The Cronicles of Scotland, etc., edited by J. G. Dalyell, 1814, II, 341 ff. (partially modernized, for more comfortable reading).
[231]. Wherein, if this be true, John differed much from Sym.
[232]. Rerum Scoticarum Historia, 1582, fol. 163 b, 164.
[233]. History of Scotland, Bannatyne Club, 1830, p. 143.
[234]. Anderson’s History, MS., Advocates Library, I, fol. 153 f. Anderson flourished about 1618–35. He gives the year both as 1527 and 1528. Cited by Armstrong, History of Liddesdale, etc., p. 274 f. For what immediately follows, Armstrong, pp. 273, 279.
[235]. A place two miles north of Mosspaul, on the road from Langholm to Hawick.
[236]. Scott remarks that the “common people of the high parts of Teviotdale, Liddesdale, and the country adjacent, hold the memory of Johnie Armstrong in very high respect.” “They affirm, also,” he adds, “that one of his attendants broke through the king’s guard, and carried to Gilnockie Tower the news of the bloody catastrophe:” but that is in the English ballad, B 20.
[237]. Dr Hill Burton has made a slight slip here, III, 146, ed. 1863; compare Pitcairn’s Criminal Trials, I, 154.
[238]. He lived in the West March, if that helps to an explanation.
[239]. Found also in one copy of Hugh the Græme, Buchan’s MSS, I, 63, st. 15. Borrowed by Sir Walter Scott in The Lay of the Last Minstrel, Canto I, ix.
[240]. See many cases in Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 210 f, to which may be added: Milà, Romancerillo, No 243, pp. 219–21; Briz, II, 222; Amador de los Rios, Historia de la Lit. Esp., VII, 449; El Folk-Lore Andaluz, 1882, pp. 41, 77; Almeida-Garrett, II, 56, note; Nigra, C. P. del Piemonte, No I, E-I, N, O; ‘Le serpent vert,’ Poésies p. de la France, MS., III, fol. 126, 508, now printed by Rolland, III, 10; Kolberg, Pieśni ludu polskiego, No 18, p. 208; Luzel, I, 81, II, 357, 515; Brewer, Dictionary of Miracles, pp. 205, 355 f.; Gaidoz, and others, Mélusine, IV, 228 ff., 272 ff., 298, 323 f., 405.
[241]. Grundtvig, No 84, ‘Hustru og Mands Moder,’ is not so good a case, though a boy just born announces that he will revenge his mother, because the boy is born nine years old; II, 412, D 30, E 18. This again in Kristensen, I, 202 f, No 74, B 12, C 11, and II, 113 ff, No 35, A 18, B 14, C 11. The stanza cited by Dr Prior, I, 37, from ‘Hammen von Reystett,’ Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 179, is hardly to the purpose.
[242]. Jamieson cites the first two verses in The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, and says: Of this affecting composition I have two copies, both imperfect, but they will make a pretty good and consistent whole between them.
[243]. Burnet; Rapin-Thoyras, 1724, V, 401.
[244]. W. Patten, The Expedicion into Scotlande, etc., reprinted in Dalyell’s Fragments of Scottish History, pp. 51, 66.
[245]. Deceivin, Abbey, are of course savin misunderstood. One of the reciters of D (42) gave ‘saving.’
[246]. History of the Reformation, Knox’s Works, ed. Laing, II, 415 f. Knox continues: “But yet was not the court purged of whores and whoredom, which was the fountain of such enormities; for it was well known that shame hasted marriage betwix John Semple, called the Dancer, and Mary Livingston, surnamed the Lusty. What bruit the Maries and the rest of the dancers of the court had, the ballads of that age did witness, which we for modesty’s sake omit.” This Mary Livingston is one of the Four Marys, but, as already said, is mentioned in version F only of our ballad.
[247]. “In this set of the ballad” [D], says Motherwell, “from its direct allusion to the use of the savin tree, a clue is perhaps afforded for tracing how the poor mediciner mentioned by Knox should be implicated in the crime of Mary Hamilton.” Maidment goes further: “The reference to the use of the savin tree in Motherwell induces a strong suspicion that the lover was a mediciner.” Maidment should have remembered that there is a popular pharmacopœia quite independent of the professional. No apothecary prescribes in ‘Tam Lin.’
[248]. In an extract from Gordon’s History of Peter the Great, Aberdeen, 1755, II, 308 f.
[249]. ‘Maid-of-Honor Hamilton,’ by M. I. Semefsky, in Slovo i Dyelo (Word and Deed), 1885, St Petersburg, 3d edition, p. 187. I am indebted to Professor Vinogradof, of the University of Moscow, for pointing out this paper, and to Miss Isabel Florence Hapgood for a summary of its contents.
[250]. The parentage of these was not ascertained. Some accounts make Mary Hamilton to have been Peter’s mistress: for example [J. B. Schérer’s], Anecdotes intéressantes et secrètes de la cour de Russie, London, 1792, II, 272 ff. See also Mélanges de Littérature, etc., par François-Louis, comte d’Escherny, Paris, 1811, I, 7 f. (The white gown with black ribbons is here.)
[251]. “Hamilton, imperturbable, niait. Menzikoff engagea l’empereur à faire une perquisition dans les coffres d’Hamilton, ou l’on trouva le corps du délit, l’arrière-faix et du linge ensanglanté.” Schérer, Anecdotes, p. 274.
[252]. Bedford and Randolph to the Council, Wright’s Queen Elizabeth, etc., p. 227; Burton, History of Scotland, IV, 145.
[253]. Ruthven’s Relation, p. 30 f, London, 1699.
[254]. The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 6; Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 105 f; Tytler’s History, VII, 83.
[255]. To save appearances, we may understand “old copies” to mean copies restored or brought nearer to what is imagined to have been the original form. The variations will be given in notes as pièces justificatives.
[256]. Sir Cuthbert Sharp, Memorials of the Rebellion of 1569, p. 202; a collection of many original papers pertaining to this rising, with much subsidiary information. But the story should be read in the eighteenth chapter of Mr Froude’s Reign of Elizabeth. Both works have been used here passim; Froude in the edition of New York, 1870.
[257]. Northumberland, on being asked how much money he spent in the quarrel, says, “about one hundred and twenty pound.” The Queen’s proclamation, Nov. 24, declares that the earls were two persons as ill chosen for the reformation of any great matters as any could lie in the realm, for they were both in poverty, etc. Sharp, pp. 208, 66; also 290.
[258]. Sharp, p. 113.
[259]. The dun-bull of the Nevilles is given in Sharp, p. 87, and one greyhound’s head, with what may pass for a golden collar, at p. 316; the three dogs are not warranted. Percy’s half-moon is improperly mixed up with the banner of the five wounds in 31.
[260]. Sharp, pp. 92, 95, 97 f.
[261]. Sharp, pp. 114 f, 118. “My lord Regent convened with Martin Eliot that he should betray Thomas, Earl of Northumberland, who was fled in Liddesdale out of England for refuge, in this manner: that is to say, the said Martin caused Heckie Armstrong desire my lord of Northumberland to come and speak with him under trust, and caused the said earl believe that, after speaking, if my lord Regent would pursue him, that he and his friends should take plain part with the Earl of Northumberland. And when the said earl came with the same Heckie Armstrong to speak the said Martin, he caused certain light-horsemen of my lord Regent’s, with others his friends, to lie at await, and when they should see the said earl and the said Martin speaking together, that they should come and take the said earl; and so as was devised, so came to pass.” Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 154.
[262]. From a letter of January 6, we learn that the Earl of Northumberland was then in Edinburgh, attended by James Swyno, William Burton, and others. James Swyno is apparently the chamberlain of the ballad. Sharp, p. 139.
[263]. Lord Hunsdon, Sharp, p. 125.
[264]. Sharp, pp. 324–29. To whom the money went, if to anybody besides William Douglas, we are not distinctly told. Tytler intimates that Morton had a share: “this base and avaricious man sold his unhappy prisoner to Elizabeth,” VII, 395. There was baseness enough without the addition of avarice: “The Earl of Northumberland was rendered to the Queen of England, forth of the castle of Lochleven, by a certain condition made betwix her and the Earl of Morton for gold.... And indeed this was unthankfully remembered, for when Morton was banisht from Scotland he found no such kind man to him in England as this earl was.” Historie of King James the Sext, p. 106 f. Sir Richard Maitland, who spares Morton and Lochleven no epithets in his spirited invective against those who delivered the Earl of Northumberland, says that they “of his bluide resavit the pygrall pryce,” but does not charge Morton with an act of ingratitude.
[265]. Stanza 43 is corrupted.
[266]. Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s Historical Account of Witchcraft in Scotland, pp. 38–54, ed. 1884.
[267]. Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau, II, 162; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 783 f, ed. 1876, and Saxo Grammaticus (p. 34, ed 1576, Holder, p. 66), quoted by Grimm. These citations are furnished by Liebrecht, Göttingen Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1868, p. 1899, who finds hydromancy in st. 26, where, however, all that seems to be meant is that the mother would let her daughter see from Lochleven what was doing in London. Of dactyliomancy proper there is something in Delrio, IV, ii, 6, 4, 5, p. 547, ed. 1624.
[268]. Sharp’s Memorials, pp. 138, 142, 298 ff, 346 ff.
[269]. The most favorable interpretation has been given to ‘Now hath Armstrong taken.’ The meaning is rather, perhaps, that Armstrong has detained Neville and his followers.
[270]. 713. ‘spekest soe litle.’
[271]. This is the date given me. It is very near to that of the event.
[272]. Lieut.-Col. H. W. Lumsden has very kindly allowed me a discretional use of an unpublished paper of his upon the historical basis of this ballad, and I freely avail myself of his aid, all responsibility remaining, of course, with me.
[273]. The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 95 ff. The History of the Feuds and Conflicts among the Clans, etc., p. 51 ff, in Miscellanea Scotica, vol. I. Diurnal of Occurrents, pp. 251, 253, 255.
[274]. Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 255. What place is meant by Carrigill here is of no present consequence, since it was Towie that was burnt. Many writers, as Tytler, VII, 367, following Crawfurd’s spurious Memoirs, p. 240, 1706, make the number that perished in the house thirty-seven.
[275]. Journal of the Transactions in Scotland during the contest between the adherents of Queen Mary and those of her son, 1570, 1571, 1572, 1573, p. 302 f., Edinburgh, 1806.
[276]. History of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1666, p. 259.
[277]. “For many miserable months Scotland presented a sight which might have drawn pity from the hardest heart: her sons engaged in a furious and constant butchery of each other; ... nothing seen but villages in flames, towns beleagured by armed men, women and children flying from the cottages where their fathers or husbands had been massacred; ... prisoners tortured, or massacred in cold blood, or hung by forties and fifties at a time.” Tytler, VII, 370.
[278]. These are nearly the words of Lieut.-Col. Lumsden, upon whom I am very glad to lean. That Ker was a valuable officer is well known.
[279]. The History of the Feuds and Conflicts among the Clans, p. 54 f.
[280]. Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 304 f. Also The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 111.
As to the ‘Bank of Fair,’ otherwise called Corrichie, the Earl of Huntly and two of his sons, John and Adam, were made prisoners at the battle there in 1562. The father, a corpulent man, “by reason of the throng that pressed him, expired in the hands of his takers.” John was executed, but Adam was spared because of his tender age. (Spottiswood, p. 187.)
Tytler observes of Adam Gordon: “In his character we find a singular mixture of knightly chivalry with the ferocity of the highland freebooter.... Such a combination as that exhibited by Gordon was no infrequent production in these dark and sanguinary times.” VII, 367. But it would have been a good thing to cite other instances.
[281]. Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, II, 355 f., 420, 480, 720. Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 350. Chronicle of Aberdeen, in The Miscellany of the Spalding Club, II, 53.
[282]. Register of the Privy Council, II, 199, 725; III, 10; V, 46, 187. Register of the Great Seal, No 1554, vol. V. Miscellany of the Spalding Club, III, 163. Historie of King James the Sext, pp 339 f., 342. The so-called ballad in Dalzell’s Scotish Poems of the Sixteenth Century, II, 347, which was in circulation as a broadside.
[283]. That a Margaret Campbell was the wife of John Forbes of Towie in 1556–63 appears from the Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, Nos 1124, 1404, 1469. But Lieut.-Col. Lumsden remarks that Sir John Campbell of Calder had no daughter of the name of Margaret, and that there is no record of such a marriage in the Cawdor papers. It may be observed in passing that Buchanan’s and Spottiswood’s error (as it seems to be) of substituting Alexander Forbes for John might easily arise, since, according to the Genealogy, John’s father, one of his brothers, a son, and a grandson, all bore the name Alexander.
[284]. “After making considerable researches upon the subject, I am come to the conclusion that it was Towie House that was burnt. Cargarf never was in possession of a Forbes.” (Joseph Robertson, Kinloch MSS, VI, 28.) What is said of Corgarf in the View of the Diocese of Aberdeen, 1732, Robertson, Collections for a History of the Shires of Aberdeen and Banff, pp. 611, 616, is derived from Lumsden. Robert Gordon, writing about 1654, says, “Non procul a fontibus [Donæ] jacet Corgarf, exigui nominis.” A description of the parish of Strathdon, written about 1725, in Macfarlane’s Geographical Collections, MS., says of Curgarf, “This is an old castle belonging to the earls of Mar, but nothing remarkable about it:” pp. 26, 616, of the work last cited. The Statistical Accounts of Scotland give no light; the older tells the story of Corgarf, the later of both Corgarf and Towie, and the one is as uncritical as the other.
John Forbes of Towie (Tolleis) is one of a long list of that name in an order of the Lords of Council concerning an action of the Forbes clan against the Earl of Huntly in 1573; and in another paper, dated July, 1578, which has reference to the same action, the Forbeses complain that “sum of thair housiss, wyiffis and bairnis being thairin, were all uterlie wraikit and brount.” (Robertson, Illustrations, etc., IV, 762, 765.) Bearing in mind the latitude of phraseology customary in indictments, we are perhaps under no necessity of thinking that the atrocity of Towie was but one of several instances of houses burnt, wives (women) and bairns being therein. There may be those who will think it plausible that “Carrigill” in the Diurnal of Occurrents should be Corgarf, and that both were burnt.
[285]. The making Gordon burn a house of the Hamiltons, who were of the queen’s party, is a heedless perversion of history such as is to be found only in ‘historical’ ballads. The castle of Hamilton had been burnt in 1570, “and the toun and palice of Hamiltoun thairwith,” more than a year before the burning of Towie, but by Lennox and his English allies. (Diurnal of Occurrents, p. 177.)
“The old castle of Loudoun,” says the Rev. Norman Macleod, “was destroyed by fire about 350 years ago [that is, about 1500]. The current tradition regarding the burning of the old castle ascribes that event to the clan Kennedy at the period above mentioned, and the remains of an old tower at Achruglen, on the Galston side of the valley, is still pointed out as having been their residence.”
[286]. F. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18. G. 1, 2, 3, 4, 13, 14, 5, 6, 30, 20, 15, 16, 22, 24, 25, 26, 34, 35.
[287]. “At the queen last being at Stirling, the prince being brought unto her, she offered to kiss him, but he would not, but put her away, and did to his strength scratch her. She offered him an apple, but it would not be received of him, and to a greyhound bitch having whelps was thrown, who eat it, and she and her whelps died presently. A sugar-loaf also for the prince was brought at the same time; it is judged to be very ill compounded.” Calendar of State Papers, Foreign, May 20, 1567, p. 235: cited by Burton. Considering that the prince had only just passed his eleventh month, it would seem that the apple or the sugar-loaf might have served without any compounding.
[288]. Historie of King James the Sext, p. 165 ff; Tytler’s History, VIII, 35 ff; Burton, V, 163 ff.
[289]. Historie of King James the Sext, p. 246.
[290]. Spottiswood’s History, ed. 1666, p. 387. See also The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 246 ff.; Moysie’s Memoirs, p. 88 ff.; Birrel’s Diary, p. 26 f.
[291]. History of the Church of Scotland, published by the Wodrow Society, Edinburgh, 1844, V, 173; in Maidment’s Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1859, p. 8.
[292]. History of the Church of Scotland, ed. 1666, p. 389.
[293]. Calendar of the State Papers relating to Scotland, Thorpe, II, 611.
[294]. Carta Ioanni, filio natu maximo et heredi Andreæ Weymis de Myrecarny, et Margarete Weiksterne, sue sponse, Terrarum de Myrecarny, etc. Fife, 25 Decrs, 1594. Weymis de Myrecarny and Wemys de Logy are one, as appears by a charter of July 25, 1564. Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, Index, in the Signet Library, noted for me by Mr Macmath.
[295]. Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, V, 11. And again: 1594, April 13. Caution in £2000 by ——Wemys, apparent of that Ilk, for Johnne Wemyss, apparent of Logy, that he shall remain in ward with David Wemys of that Ilk till relieved.
May 2. Caution in 300 merks by Johnne Wemys, younger of that Ilk, for Johnne Wemys of Logy, that he shall answer before the Privy Council at Edinburgh upon 22d instant “to sic thingis as salbe inquirit of him.”
September 27. Sir Johnne Wemys of Tullibrek, Michaell Balfour of Monquhaine, and Andro Wemyss of Myrecairny, for Johnne Wemyss, son and apparent heir of Andro, £20,000, to go abroad by the 15th October next and not return without licence. Deleted by warrant subscribed by the king and treasurer-depute at Haliruidhous 20th February, 1594. Ib., pp 141 f., 144, 638. The entries in 1594 may have reference to later offences.
[296]. Sir John Carmichael was appointed captain of the king’s guard in 1588, and usually had the keeping of state criminals of rank. Scott.
[297]. The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 303 f.; Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, V, 144.
[298]. Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland, Thorpe, II, 611, No 6.
[299]. The History of the Feuds and Conflicts among the Clans, etc., p. 41 f, in Miscellanea Scotica, Spottiswood, ed. 1666, p. 390.
[300]. Lesley, History of Scotland, p. 235; Gregory, History of the Western Highlands, ed. 1881, p. 184; Browne, History of the Highlands, IV, 476. For the traditional story, Finlay, II, 95, note; Laing’s Thistle of Scotland, p. 107 f.; Whitelaw, p. 248.
[301]. “In the end of this year [1593] there fell out great troubles in the west marches. Some of the surname of Johnston having in the July preceding made a great depredation upon the lands of Sanwhare and Drumlanrig, and killed eighteen persons that followed for rescue of their goods,” etc. Spottiswood, p. 400, ed. 1666.
[302]. 37 does not come in happily. Scott put this stanza after 29, omitting ‘Sin’; but there is no rational sense gained, unless the Johnstones are supposed to deny the cattle-lifting. Admitting a bold anacoluthon in the first verse (a mixture of since—so and neither—nor), 37 might stand as and where it is. The Johnstones have done no wanton injury; they have only revenged in a proper way the death of the Galliard. But even then the Johnstones would be made to blink the Galliard’s horse-stealing.
[303]. As there was no great “routh” of Christian names among the clansmen of the borders, to-names became necessary for the distinction of the numerous Jocks, Christies, Watties and Archies. The name of parent, or of parent and grandparent, was sometimes prefixed, as John’s Christie, Agnes’ Christie, Peggie’s Wattie, Gibb’s Jack’s Johnie, Pattie’s Geordie’s Johnie; sometimes the place of abode was added, as Jock o the Side; sometimes there was distinction by personal peculiarities, dress, or arms, as Fair Johnie, Red Cloak, John with the Jack, etc., etc. See lists of all varieties in Mr R. B. Armstrong’s History of Liddesdale, etc., p. 78 f.
[304]. Ties them with St Mary’s knot: hamstrings them, says Caw, and say others after him. A St John’s knot is double, a St Mary’s triple. Observe that in 31 it is simply said that there is only one horse loose in the stable.
[305]. “The Armstrongs at length got Dick o the Cow in their clutches, and, out of revenge, they tore his flesh from his bones with red-hot pincers:” note in Caw’s Museum, p. 35. “At the conclusion of the ballad, the singer used invariably to add that Dickie’s removal to Burgh under Stainmuir did not save him from the clutches of the Armstrongs. Having fallen into their power, several years after this exploit, he was plunged into a large boiling pot, and so put to death. The scene of this cruel transaction is pointed out somewhere in Cumberland.” Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 55, note. No well-wisher of Dick has the least occasion to be troubled by these puerile supplements of the singers.
[306]. I am indebted to Mr R. B. Armstrong for all information not hitherto published.
[307]. “It was not unusual to call two sons by a favorite name, and the brother of Gilnockie would have probably called his sons by that name:” R. B. A.
[308]. “The place which is alluded to by Scott was pointed out to me about thirty years since. There then were the remains of a tower which stood on a small plateau where the Dow Sike and the Blaik Grain join the Stanygillburn, a tributary of the Tinnisburn. Some remains of the building may still be traced at the northern angle of the sheepfold of which it forms part. The walls that remain are 4 feet 3 inches thick, and measured on the inside about 6 feet high. They extend about 18 feet 6 inches in one direction and 14 feet in another, forming portions of two sides with the angle of the tower.... There must have been a considerable building of a rude kind.... This place, as the crow flies, is quite two miles and a quarter from Kershope-foot, and by the burn two miles and a half.... The Laird’s Jock’s residence is marked on a sketch map of Liddesdale by Lord Burleigh, drawn when Simon was laird of Mangerton. (Simon, son of Thomas, was laird in 1578–9.) It is also marked at the mouth of the Tinnisburn on a ‘platt’ of the country, of 1590.” R. B. A.
[309]. The Archbishop’s account is apparently based upon a more minute “relation of the maner of surprizeing of the Castell of Cairlell by the lord of Buccleugh,” given, from a manuscript of the period, in the later edition of the Minstrelsy, II, 32. There is another account of the rescue in The Historie of King James the Sext, p. 366 ff.
[310]. Near the water of Sark, in the Debateable Land, and belonging to Kinmont Willie: “William Armstrong, in Morton Tower, called Will of Kinmouth, 1569.” Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, II, 44.
[311]. “The queen of England, having notice sent her of what was done, stormed not a little,” and her ambassador was instructed to say that peace could not continue between the two realms unless Buccleuch were delivered to England, to be punished at the queen’s pleasure. Buccleuch professed himself willing to be tried, according to ancient treaties, by commissioners of the respective kingdoms, and the Scots made the proposal, but Elizabeth did not immediately consent to this arrangement. At last, to satisfy the queen, Buccleuch was put in ward at the castle of St Andrews. Spotiswood adds that he was “afterwards entered in England, where he remained not long” (and Tytler to the same effect, IX, 226). According to one of the MSS of The Historie of King James the Sext, the king, to please and pleasure her Majesty, entered Buccleuch in ward at Berwick with all expedition possible, and the queen, of her courtesy, released him back in due and sufficient time: p. 421. But Buccleuch seems to have been entered in England only once, and that in 1597, and not for the assault on Carlisle castle, or for a raid which he made in the next year, but because he did not deliver his pledges, as he was under obligation to do according to a treaty made by a joint commission in 1597. See Ridpath’s Border History, 1848, pp. 473, 477.
[312]. Tytler’s History, IX, 437. “The greatest nomber whareof war ordinar nycht-walkers” (H. of K. J. the Sext, p. 369).
[313]. “Dike Armestronge of Dryup dwelleth neare High Morgarton” (Mangerton). Dike Armestronge of Dryup appears in a list of the principal men in Liddesdale, drawn up when Simon Armstrong was laird of Mangerton, among Simon’s uncles or uncles’ sons. Dick of Dryup is complained of, with others, for reif and burning, in 1583, 1586, 1587, 1603, and his name is among the outlaws proclaimed at Carlisle July 23, 1603. (Notes of Mr R. B. Armstrong.)
[314]. “The informer saith that Buclughe was the fifth man which entered the castle:” Lord Scroop’s letter, Tytler, IX, 437. But the MS. used by Scott, Spotiswood’s account (founded chiefly or altogether upon that MS.), and The Historie of King James the Sext agree in saying that Buccleuch remained outside, “to assure the retreat of his awin from the castell againe.”
[315]. “Red Rowy Forster” is one of the list complained of to the Bishop of Carlisle, about 1550 (see ‘Hughie Grame’), and he is in company with Jock of Kinmont, one of Will’s four sons, Archie of Gingles, Jock of Gingles, and George of the Gingles, who may represent “The Chingles” in the informer’s list already cited. Nicolson and Burn, I, lxxxii.
[316]. This is also to be observed: “There are in this collection no fewer than three poems on the rescue of prisoners, the incidents in which nearly resemble each other, though the poetical description is so different that the editor did not think himself at liberty to reject any one of them, as borrowed from the others. As, however, there are several verses which, in recitation, are common to all these three songs, the editor, to prevent unnecessary and disagreeable repetition, has used the freedom of appropriating them to that in which they seem to have the best poetic effect.” ‘Jock o the Side,’ Minstrelsy, II, 76, ed. 1833.
[317]. Campbell “projected” his work as early as 1790, and he intimates in his preface, p. viii (if I have rightly understood him), that he gave help to Scott.
[318]. For the Laird’s Jock, see ‘Dick o the Cow,’ No 185. “I do not say there never was a Laird’s Wat, but I do not recollect having met with an Armstrong called Walter during the sixteenth century:” Mr R. B. Armstrong.
[319]. If the text is right, John (or was it Hobbie Noble?) had killed Peeter a Whifeild. See ‘Hobbie Noble,’ 94.
[320]. “I am a bastard brother of thine,” says Hobby in 263; cf. 282. But in B 7 and ‘Hobie Noble,’ 3, he is an Englishman, born in Bewcastle, and banished to Liddesdale.
[321]. This device, whether of great practical use or not, has much authority to favor it: Hereward, De Gestis Herwardi, Michel, Chroniques A. Normandes, p. 81; Fulk Fitz-Warin, Wright, p. 92; Eustache le Moine, Michel, p. 55, vv. 1505 ff. (see Michel’s note, p. 104 f.); Robert Bruce, Scotichronicon, Goodall, II, 226; other cases in Miss Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore, pp. 16, 20, 93 note. It is repeated in ‘Archie o Cawfield.’
[322]. Bay and grey should be exchanged in B 10, C 7.
[323]. Miswritten Capeld; again in 124.
[324]. “Tradition says that his [Archie’s] name was Archibald Armstrong.” (Note at the end of the MS.)
[325]. Belonging to John’s Christie, son of Johnie Armstrong. Christie of Barnglish was in Kinmont Willie’s rescue. R. B. Armstrong, Appendix, p. cii, No LXIV; T. J. Carlyle, The Debateable Land, p. 22. Tytler, IX, 437.
[326]. The “white hand” in the Slovenian ballad, II, 350, is hard to explain unless there is a mixture of a prison-ballad and a snake-ballad.
[327]. “The earldom of Huntingdon was vacant from about 1487 to 1529, and, as the Fitz-Walters were lineally descended from the daughter of the first Simon de St Liz, Earl of Huntingdon, this may have suggested to Skelton the idea of giving that title to the husband of Matilda Fitz-Walter.”
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
- P. [204], changed "3. unto her lovely." to "33. unto her lovely.".
- P. [287], changed "25. 5 score" to "251. 5 score".
- Except as noted, all spelling errors were left uncorrected.
- All punctuation was left uncorrected, except as follows.
- A beginning or ending quote mark was added for obviously unbalanced pairs of quotes.
- Full stops and commas were made consistent for the verse & line references, for example, "121," was corrected to "121."
- Footnotes have been re-indexed using numbers and collected together at the end of the last chapter.