C
Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 140.
1
Willie stands in his stable-door,
And clapping at his steed,
And looking oer his white fingers
His nose began to bleed.
2
‘Gie corn to my horse, mother,
And meat to my young man,
And I’ll awa to Maggie’s bower;
I’ll win ere she lie down.’
3
‘O bide this night wi me, Willie,
O bide this night wi me;
The best an cock o a’ the reest
At your supper shall be.’
4
‘A’ your cocks, and a’ your reests,
I value not a prin,
For I’ll awa to Meggie’s bower;
I’ll win ere she lie down.’
5
‘Stay this night wi me, Willie,
O stay this night wi me;
The best an sheep in a’ the flock
At your supper shall be.’
6
‘A’ your sheep, and a’ your flocks,
I value not a prin,
For I’ll awa’ to Meggie’s bower;
I’ll win ere she lie down.’
7
‘O an ye gang to Meggie’s bower,
Sae sair against my will,
The deepest pot in Clyde’s water,
My malison ye’s feel.’
8
‘The guid steed that I ride upon
Cost me thrice thretty pound;
And I’ll put trust in his swift feet
To hae me safe to land.’
9
As he rade ower yon high, high hill,
And down yon dowie den,
The noise that was in Clyde’s water
Woud feard five huner men.
10
‘O roaring Clyde, ye roar ower loud,
Your streams seem wondrous strang;
Make me your wreck as I come back,
But spare me as I gang!’
11
Then he is on to Maggie’s bower,
And tirled at the pin;
‘O sleep ye, wake ye, Meggie,’ he said,
‘Ye’ll open, lat me come in.’
12
‘O wha is this at my bower-door,
That calls me by my name?’
‘It is your first love, sweet Willie,
This night newly come hame.’
13
‘I hae few lovers thereout, thereout,
As few hae I therein;
The best an love that ever I had
Was here just late yestreen.’
14
‘The warstan stable in a’ your stables,
For my puir steed to stand!
The warstan bower in a’ your bowers,
For me to lie therein!
My boots are fu o Clyde’s water,
I’m shivering at the chin.’
15
‘My barns are fu o corn, Willie,
My stables are fu o hay;
My bowers are fu o gentlemen,
They’ll nae remove till day.’
16
‘O fare ye well, my fause Meggie,
O farewell, and adieu!
I’ve gotten my mither’s malison
This night coming to you.’
17
As he rode ower yon high, high hill,
And down yon dowie den,
The rushing that was in Clyde’s water
Took Willie’s cane frae him.
18
He leand him ower his saddle-bow,
To catch his cane again;
The rushing that was in Clyde’s water
Took Willie’s hat frae him.
19
He leand him ower his saddle-bow,
To catch his hat thro force;
The rushing that was in Clyde’s water
Took Willie frae his horse.
20
His brither stood upo the bank,
Says, Fye, man, will ye drown?
Ye’ll turn ye to your high horse head
And learn how to sowm.
21
‘How can I turn to my horse head
And learn how to sowm?
I’ve gotten my mither’s malison,
It’s here that I maun drown.’
22
The very hour this young man sank
Into the pot sae deep,
Up it wakend his love Meggie
Out o her drowsy sleep.
23
‘Come here, come here, my mither dear,
And read this dreary dream;
I dreamd my love was at our gates,
And nane wad let him in.’
24
‘Lye still, lye still now, my Meggie,
Lye still and tak your rest;
Sin your true-love was at your yates,
It’s but twa quarters past.’
25
Nimbly, nimbly raise she up,
And nimbly pat she on,
And the higher that the lady cried,
The louder blew the win.
26
The first an step that she steppd in,
She stepped to the queet;
‘Ohon, alas!’ said that lady,
‘This water’s wondrous deep.’
27
The next an step that she wade in,
She wadit to the knee;
Says she, ‘I coud wide farther in,
If I my love coud see.’
28
The next an step that she wade in,
She wadit to the chin;
The deepest pot in Clyde’s water
She got sweet Willie in.
29
‘You’ve had a cruel mither, Willie,
And I have had anither;
But we shall sleep in Clyde’s water
Like sister an like brither.’
A.
Not divided into stanzas in the MS.; sometimes not into verses.
153. For is written after call in the preceding line.
163. But ay is written after agen in the preceding line.
164. He is written after crayed in the preceding line.
182. Till is written after in in the preceding line.
19.
Ther was na mare seen of
that guid lord bat his hat
frae his head ther was na
mare seen of that lady bat
her comb an her sneed.
201. Doun stands at the beginning of the next line.
A 14–16 might perhaps be better put after the drowning, as in C.
B.
Readings inserted by Motherwell in a copy of his Minstrelsy.
43,4.
My malison and deidly curse
Shall bear ye companie.
After 7:
He swam high, and he swam low,
And he swam to and fro,
Until he gript a hazel-bush,
That brung him to the brow.
94. Var. But his mother answered him.
10.
O rise, O rise, May Marget, h[e says],
(cut away by the binder)
O rise and let me in,
For the very steed that I came on
Does tremble at every limb.
113. mither and father’s baith awauk.
12.
O hae ye neer a stable, he says,
Or hae ye neer a barn,
Or hae ye neer a wild-guse house,
Where I might rest till morn?
141. My barn is.
142. My stable is.
143. The house is fu o wild, wild gees.
144. They canna be moved.
154. Rides in my companie.
161. his milk-white.
162. And who could ride like him.
164. ’Twas far outowre the brim.
After 16:
He swam high, and he swam low,
And he swam to and fro,
But he neer could spy the hazel-bush
That would bring him to the brow.
Comment: The mother was a witch; made responses for Margaret; met him in a green habit on his return home. He inquired for the ford; she directed him to the deepest linn. When he got into the water, two hounds seized on his horse, and left him to struggle with the current.
Willie’s mother had transferred herself to Margaret’s house according to the variation in 94; so she is the witch.
All this is very paltry. The mother’s curse was enough to drown Willie without her bestirring herself further.
217
THE BROOM OF COWDENKNOWS
A. ‘The Laird of Knotington,’ Percy papers, 1768.
B. ‘Bonny May.’ a. Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 308; 1776, I, 98. b. Johnson’s Museum, No 110, p. 113.
C. ‘Laird o Ochiltree,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 143; Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 160.
D. ‘The Laird o Ochiltree Wa’s,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 517.
E. Motherwell’s MS., p. 175.
F. ‘Bonny May,’ Gibb MS., p. 9.
G. ‘The Broom of Cowdenknows,’ Scott’s Minstrelsy, III, 280, 1803; III, 37, 1833.
H. ‘The Maid o the Cowdenknows,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 137.
I. ‘Laird o Lochnie,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 153; Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 167.
J. Kinloch MSS, VI, 11.
K. ‘Maiden o the Cowdenknowes,’ Dr Joseph Robertson’s Journal of Excursions, No 6.
L. ‘The Broom of the Cowden Knowes,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 178.
M. ‘Broom o the Cowdenknowes,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 172.
N. ‘The Laird of Lochinvar,’ Kinloch MSS, I, 145.
This ballad was widely diffused in Scotland. “It would be useless,” says Motherwell, “to enumerate the titles of the different versions which are common among reciters.” “Each district has its own version,” says Kinloch. So it must have done no little mischief in its day. The earliest known copies, A, B, are of the second half of the last century.
There is an English “ditty” (not a traditional ballad) of a northern lass who got harm while milking her father’s ewes, which was printed in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is here given in an appendix. This ditty is “to a pleasant Scotch tune called The broom of Cowden Knowes,” and the burden is:
With, O the broome, the bonny broome,
The broome of Cowden Knowes!
Fain would I be in the North Countrey,
To milk my dadyes ewes.
The tune was remarkably popular, and the burden is found, variously modified, in connection with several songs: see Chappell’s Popular Music, pp. 458–461, 613, 783. ‘The Broom of Cowdenknows,’ a “new” song, in the Tea-Table Miscellany, p. 22, Dublin, 1729, has the burden not greatly changed; also G, L, M, of this ballad.
There is very little story to the English ditty. A maid is beguiled by a shepherd-boy while milking her father’s ewes; the consequences are what might be expected; her mother puts her out of doors, and she ranges the world; a young man who hears her complaint offers to marry her, and go to the North Country with her to milk her father’s ewes. The Scottish ballad could not have been developed from a story of this description. On the other hand, it is scarcely to be believed that the author of the English ditty, if he had known the Scottish ballad, would have dropped all the interesting particulars. It is possible that he may have just heard about it, but much more likely that he knew only the burden and built his very slight tale on that. It may be observed that his maid, though she haunts Liddesdale, and should have belonged to Cowdenknowes, was born in Danby Forest, Yorkshire.
Two passages which do not occur in A may have been later additions: D 9, 10, F 5, 6, G 13, 14, M 19, 20, in which the laird, returning to his men, is told that he has tarried long, and answers that, east or west, he has never seen so bonny a lass as was in the ewe-buchts; and H 12–15, J 2–5, L 5–8, where the laird tries to pass himself off for one of his men, and the maid for one of her mother’s servants (found in part, also, in G 9, 10, I 5, M 12–14). “The maid of a place, such as the maid of the Cowdenknows,” as Dr Joseph Robertson remarks, “means the eldest daughter of the tenant or proprietor, who is generally called by the name of his farm.”[[115]]
It is obvious that the maid would keep her counsel when she came back to her father. She puts him off with a riddle, C 9, D 13, E 11, F 9, G 18, H 20, J 6, L 14, M 23, N 7, which it is the height of absurdity to make her explain, as is done in A 11, B 4, C 10, D 14, E 12; and so of the exclamation against the shepherd if uttered in the father’s presence, as in F 8, H 19, I 11, L 13, N 8.
H 10, 11 (cf. D 6), where the maid asks the man’s name, is a familiar commonplace: see No 39, I, 340 a; No 50, I, 444, 446; No 110, II, 458 ff. (especially p. 473, H 3, 4); No 111, II, 478 f.
M has many spurious stanzas of its own; as 3–5, 25, 30–32, 35. N is quite perverted from 9 to 28. It is impossible that 9–14 should follow upon 8, and stanzas 15–27 have not a genuine word in them.
Cunningham has rewritten the ballad, Songs of Scotland, II, 113. He says that through Dumfriesshire and Galloway the hero is always Lord Lochinvar, and cites this stanza, which he had heard sung:
For I do guess, by your golden-rimmed hat,
And by the silken string,
That ye are the lord of the Lochinvar,
Who beguiles all our young women.
‘Malfred og Sadelmand,’ Kristensen, I, 258, No 99, is an independent ballad, but has some of the traits of this: the maid, who is treated with great violence, asks the knight’s name, as in H, D; he comes back to marry her, after she has borne twins.
Cowdenknowes is on the east bank of Leader, near Earlston, and some four or five miles from Melrose. Auchentrone, in B b 11, Stenhouse conjectures to be a corruption of Auchentroich, an estate in the county of Stirling, and Oakland Hills, in G, to be Ochil Hills, in the same county: Musical Museum, IV, 112.
B is translated by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 92, No 29.