APPENDIX

ANNAN WATER

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1833, III, 282; 1802, II, 138.

The first edition lacks stanzas 5, 6, 8, 9. Two of these were inserted “from another copy of the ballad in which the conclusion proves fortunate.”

“The ballad,” says Scott, “is given from tradition,” for which a more precise expression would perhaps be “oral repetition.” It is asserted in the Minstrelsy to be “the original words of the tune of ‘Allan Water,’ by which name the song is mentioned in Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany” (‘Allan Water, or, My love Annie’s very bonny,’ T. T. M., vol. i, p. 105, of the Dublin edition of 1729). This assertion is not justified by any reasons, nor does it seem pertinent, if the Allan was originally the river of the ballad, to add, as the editor does, that “the Annan and the Frith of Solway, into which it falls, are the frequent scenes of tragical accidents.”

A song which may pass for the original Allan Water until an earlier is produced is among the Laing broadsides (now in the possession of Lord Rosebery), No 59. There is no date or place, but it is thought to have been printed toward the end of the seventeenth century, or the beginning of the eighteenth, and probably at Edinburgh.

The title is: ‘Allan Water, or, A Lover in Captivity.[[111]] A new song, sung with a pleasant new air.’ There are three eight-line stanzas, and it begins:

Allan Water’s wide and deep,

and my dear Anny’s very bonny;

Wide’s the straith that lyes above ‘t,

if ‘t were mine, I’de give it all for Anny.

Allan Cunningham says of the ballad, Songs of Scotland, II, 102: “I have heard it sung on the banks of the Annan. Like all traditional verses, there are many variations.” And he cites as “from an old fragment” these couplets:

O Annan water’s wading deep, [i.e. wide and]

Yet I am loth to weet my feet;

But if ye’ll consent to marry me,

I’ll hire a horse to carry thee.[[112]]

It is my conviction that ‘Anna Water,’ in Ramsay’s language, is one of the “Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before” 1800.

“By the Gatehope Slack,” says Sir Walter Scott, “is perhaps meant the Gate Slack, a pass in Annandale.”

1

‘Annan water’s wading deep,

And my love Annie’s wondrous bonny,

And I am laith she suld weet her feet,

Because I love her best of ony.

2

‘Gar saddle me the bonny black,

Gar saddle sune, and make him ready,

For I will down the Gatehope-Slack,

And all to see my bonny ladye.’

3

He has loupen on the bonny black,

He stirrd him wi the spur right sairly;

But, or he wan the Gatehope-Slack,

I think the steed was wae and weary.

4

He has loupen on the bonny grey,

He rade the right gate and the ready;

I trow he would neither stint nor stay,

For he was seeking his bonny ladye.

5

O he has ridden oer field and fell,

Through muir and moss, and mony a mire;

His spurs o steel were sair to bide,

And frae her fore-feet flew the fire.

6

‘Now, bonny grey, now play your part!

Gin ye be the steed that wins my deary,

Wi corn and hay ye’se be fed for aye,

And never spur sall make you wearie.’

7

The grey was a mare, and a right good mare,

But when she wan the Annan water

She couldna hae ridden a furlong mair

Had a thousand merks been wadded at her.

8

‘O boatman, boatman, put off your boat!

Put off your boat for gowden money!

I cross the drumly stream the night,

Or never mair I see my honey.’

9

‘O I was sworn sae late yestreen,

And not by ae aith, but by many;

And for a’ the gowd in fair Scotland

I dare na take ye through to Annie.’

10

The ride was stey, and the bottom deep,

Frae bank to brae the water pouring,

And the bonny grey mare did sweat for fear,

For she heard the water-kelpy roaring.

11

O he has poud aff his dapperpy coat,

The silver buttons glanced bonny;

The waistcoat bursted aff his breast,

He was sae full of melancholy.

12

He has taen the ford at that stream tail;

I wot he swam both strong and steady;

But the stream was broad, and his strength did fail,

And he never saw his bonny ladye!

13

‘O wae betide the frush saugh wand!

And wae betide the bush of brier!

It brake into my true-love’s hand,

When his strength did fail, and his limbs did tire.

14

‘And wae betide ye, Annan Water,

This night that ye are a drumlie river!

For over thee I’ll build a bridge,

That ye never more true love may sever.’

216
THE MOTHER’S MALISON, OR, CLYDE’S WATER

A. ‘Clyde’s Water,’ Skene MS., p. 50.

B. ‘Willie and May Margaret,’ Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, 1806, I, 135.

C. ‘The Drowned Lovers,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 140; ‘Willie and Margaret,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 611; printed in part in Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. iii.

Stanzas 1, 5, 6, 7, 16, of B were printed by Jamieson (under the title of Sweet Willie and May Margaret) in the Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 700, in the hope of obtaining a complete copy.

In notes to B are here given some various readings and supplementary verses which were entered by Motherwell in a copy of his Minstrelsy, without indication of their origin.[[113]] Motherwell made a few changes in transcribing C into his MS., and others in the verses which he printed in the appendix to his Minstrelsy.

The copy of this ballad in Nimmo’s Songs and Ballads of Clydesdale, p. 134, was compounded from B and C.

Willie orders his horse and his man to be fed, for he means to be that very night with his love Margaret. His mother would have him stay with her: he shall have the best bed in the house and the best hen in the roost, A; the best cock in the roost and the best sheep in the flock, B; a sour wind is blowing and the night will be dark, C. He cares for none of these, and will go. My malison drown thee in Clyde! says his mother. Clyde is roaring fearfully, but he wins through. Arrived at Margaret’s bower, he tirls at the pin and calls to her to open. A voice asks, Who is there? It is her lover, his boots full of Clyde’s water. An answer comes, as if from Margaret, that she has no lovers without and none within, and she will not open, A, C; her mother is fast asleep, and she dares make no din, B. Then he begs for some shelter for the night; but is told that one chamber is full of corn, another full of hay, and the third full of gentlemen, who will not go till morning. Farewell, then; he has won his mother’s malison by coming. Clyde’s water is half up over the brae, B, and sweeps him off his horse, C. Margaret wakens from a dreary dream that her love had been ‘staring’ (standing?) at the foot of her bed, A; had been at the gates, and nobody would let him in, C. Her mother informs her that her lover had really been at the gates but half an hour before. Margaret instantly gets up and goes after Willie, crying to him against the loud wind. She does not stop for the river. No more was ever seen of Willie but his hat, no more of Margaret but her comb and her snood, A, which might end well so, but has lost a few lines. C ends like the preceding ballad: Margaret finds Willie in the deepest pot in Clyde; they shall sleep together in its bed.

C 20, 21 absurdly represents Willie’s brother as standing on the river-bank and expostulating with him; this in the dead of night.[[114]]

The passage in two of the copies, A 10–16, C 11–15, 22–25, in which the mother, pretending to be her daughter, repels the lover, and the daughter, who has dreamed that her lover had come and had been refused admittance, is told by her mother that this had actually happened, and sets off in pursuit of her lover, seems to have been adopted from ‘The Lass of Roch Royal,’ No 76. Parts are exchanged, as happens not infrequently with ballads; in the ‘Lass of Roch Royal,’ the lass is turned away by her lover’s mother, pretending to speak in his person. There is verbal correspondence, particularly in A 16; cf. No 76, D 26, 27, E 22, 23. In D 19 of No 76 the professed Love Gregor tells Annie that he has another love, as the professed Meggie in A 11 (inconsistently with what precedes) tells Willie.

The three steps into the water, C 26–28, occur also in ‘Child Waters,’ No 63, B 7–9, C 6–8, I 3, 4, 6. Nose-bleed, C 1, is a bad omen; see No 208.

Verses A 81,2, C 101,2,

Make me your wrack as I come back,

But spare me as I go,

are found in a broadside ‘Tragedy of Hero and Leander,’ Roxburghe Ballads, III, 152, etc., of the date, it is thought, of about 1650; Ebsworth’s Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 558, Collier’s Book of Roxburghe Ballads, 1847, p. 227. The conceit does not overwell suit a popular ballad. The original is Martial’s Parcite dum propero, mergite cum redeo, otherwise, Mergite me, fluctus, cum rediturus ero, Epigr. lib., 25 b, and lib. xiv, 181.

A very popular Italian ballad has some of the traits of ‘The Mother’s Malison,’ parts being exchanged and the girl drowned. A girl is asked in marriage; her mother objects, in most of the copies on the ground of her daughter’s youth; she goes off with her lover; the mother wishes that she may drown in the sea; arrived at the seashore her horse becomes restive, and the girl is drowned (or she goes down in mid-sea): ‘Maledizione della Madre,’ Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte, p. 151, No 23 A-F; ‘La Maledizione materna,’ Marcoaldi, p. 170, No 15; ‘La Maledetta,’ Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 35, No 27; ‘Buona-sera, vedovella,’ Ferraro, C. p. del Basso Monferrato, p. 16, No 7; ‘La Figlia disobbediente,’ Bolza, C. p. comasche, No 55; ‘Amor di Fratello,’ Bernoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata 9, No 4; Righi, C. p. veronesi, p. 30, No 93; Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 92 (a fragment). In ‘Marinai,’ Ferraro, C. p. di Ferrara, etc., p. 59, No 9, the suitor is a sailor, and the girl goes down in his ship, and so in ‘Il marinaro e la sua amorosa,’ No 94, Wolf, but in this last she is still told to stick to her horse. A fragment in Marie Aycard’s Bal-lades et ch. p. de la Provence, p. xix, repeated in Arbaud, II, 166, makes it probable that the Italian ballad was known in the south of France. (All the above are cited by Count Nigra.)

A mother’s curse upon her son, who is riding to fetch his bride, results in his breaking his neck, in a Bohemian ballad already spoken of under ‘Clerk Colvil,’ No 42; see I, 368 (where a translation by Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder, p. 47, might have been noted).

A mother refuses to give her daughter in marriage because the girl is under age; the daughter is forcibly carried off; the mother wishes that she may not live a year, which comes to pass: ‘Der Mutter Fluch,’ Meinert, p. 246.

B is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotshe Folkeviser, p. 64, No 10, and (with use of C), by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 26, Hausschatz, p. 203; Aytoun’s ballad (with use of C) by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 152, No 35; Allingham’s ballad by Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 123.