Mr. Child thinks the command to
“yield to the bracken-bush”
unmartial. This does not seem a strong objection, in Froissart’s time. It is explained in an oral fragment—
“For there lies aneth yon bracken-bush
Wha aft has conquered mair than thee.”
Mr. Child also thinks that the “dreamy dream” may be copied from Hume of Godscroft. It is at least as probable that Godscroft borrowed from the ballad which he cites. The embroidered gauntlet of the Percy is in the possession of Douglas of Cavers to this day.
Tam Lin, or Tamlane.—p. [10]
Burns’s version, in Johnson’s Museum (1792). Scott’s version is made up of this copy, Riddell’s, Herd’s, and oral recitations, and contains feeble literary interpolations, not, of course, by Sir Walter. The Complaint of Scotland (1549) mentions the “Tale of the Young Tamlene” as then popular. It is needless here to enter into the subject of Fairyland, and captures of mortals by Fairies: the Editor has said his say in his edition of Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth. The Nereids, in Modern Greece, practise fairy cantrips, and the same beliefs exist in Samoa and New Caledonia. The metamorphoses are found in the Odyssey, Book iv., in the winning of Thetis, the Nereid, or Fairy Bride, by Peleus, in a modern Cretan fairy tale, and so on. There is a similar incident in Penda Baloa, a Senegambian ballad (Contes Populaires de la Sénégambie, Berenger Ferand, Paris, 1885). The dipping of Tamlane has precedents in Old Deccan Days, in a Hottentot tale by Bleek, and in Les Deux Frères, the Egyptian story, translated by Maspero (the Editor has already given these parallels in a note to Border Ballads, by Graham R. Thomson). Mr. Child also cites Mannhardt, “Wald und Feldkulte,” ii. 64–70. Carterhaugh, the scene of the ballad, is at the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow, between Bowhill and Philiphaugh.
Thomas Rymer.—p. [16]
From The Border Minstrelsy; the original was derived from a lady living near Erceldoune (Earlston), and from Mrs. Brown’s MSS. That Thomas of Erceldoune had some popular fame as a rhymer and soothsayer as early as 1320–1350, seems to be established. As late as the Forty Five, nay, even as late as the expected Napoleonic invasion, sayings attributed to Thomas were repeated with some measure of belief. A real Thomas Rymer of Erceldoune witnessed an undated deed of Peter de Haga, early in the thirteenth century. The de Hagas, or Haigs of Bemersyde, were the subjects of the prophecy attributed to Thomas,
“Betide, betide, whate’er betide,
There will aye be a Haig in Bemersyde,”