Les Œuvres
Maistre Gvil
laume Coquil
lart en son vi
vant Official
de Reims. Nov
vellement Re
veves et Corri
gees.M. D. XXXV.
On les vend à Lyon en la
Maison de Françoys Juste,
Demourant devant nostre
Dame de Confort.
By bad (or good) luck this rare piece was imperfect—the back gaping and three sheets gone. But, in turning over the leaves, I saw something that brought my heart, as they say, into my mouth. So, beating down Bell from his upset price of fourpence to six bawbees, I pushed the treasure carelessly in my pocket, and never stopped till I was in a lonely place by Tyne-side and secure from observation. Then, with my knife, I very carefully uncased Maistre Guillaume, and extracted the sheet of parchment, printed in black letter with red capitals, that had been used to line the binding. A corner of it had crept out, through the injuries of time, and on that, in Bell’s “crame” (for it is more a crame than a shop), I had caught the mystic words Runjt macht Gunjt.
And now, I think, Monkbarns, you prick up your ears and wipe your spectacles. That is the motto, as every one of the learned family of antiquaries is well aware, and, as you have often told me, of your great forbear, the venerable and praiseworthy Aldobrand Oldenbuck the Typographer, who fled from the Low Countries during the tyrannical attempt of Philip II. to suppress at once civil and religious liberty. As all the world knows, he withdrew from Nuremberg to Scotland, and set up his Penates and (what you may not hitherto have been aware of) his Printing Press at Fairport, and under your ancestral roof of Monkbarns. But, what will surprise you yet more, the parchment sheet which bears Aldobrand’s motto in German contains printed matter in good Scots! This excellent and enterprising man must have set himself to ply his noble art in his new home, and in our unfamiliar tongue.
Yet, even now, we are not at the end of this most fortunate discovery. It would appear that there was little demand for works of learning and religion in Scotland, or at least at Fairport; for the parchment sheet contains fragments of a Ballad in the Scots tongue. None but a poor and struggling printer would then have lent his types to such work, and fortunate for us has been the poverty of your great ancestor. Here we have the very earliest printed ballad in the world, and, though fragmentary, it is the more precious as the style proves to demonstration, and against the frantic scepticism even of a Ritson, the antique and venerable character of those compositions. I send you a copy of the Ballad, with the gaps (where the tooth of time or of the worm, edax rerum, hath impaired it) filled up with conjectural restorations of my own. But how far do they fall short of the original simplicity! Non cuivis contingit. As the title is lacking, as well as the imprint, I have styled it
THE FRAGMENT OF THE FAUSE LOVER AND THE DEAD LEMAN.
O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the shore and sea,
And still it was his dead Lady
That kept him company.O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the [loch and heather],
And still it was his dead Lady
That [held his stirrup leather].“O Willie, tak’ me up by ye,
Sae far it is I gang;
O tak’ me on your saddle bow,
Or [your day shall not be lang].”“Gae back, gae back, ye fause ill wife,
To the grave wherein ye lie,
It never was seen that a dead leman
Kept lover’s company!“Gae back, gae back frae me,” he said,
“For this day maun I wed,
And how can I kiss a living lass,
When ye come frae the dead?“If ye maun haunt a living man,
Your brither haunt,” says he,
“For it was never my knife, but his
That [twined thy life and thee!]”* * * * *
We are to understand, I make no doubt, that Willie had been too fortunate a lover, and that in his absence—the frailty of his lady becoming conspicuous—her brother had avenged the family honour according to that old law of Scotland which the courteous Ariosto styles “l’ aspra legge di Scozia, empia e severa.”
Pray let me know, at your leisure, what you think of this trouvaille. It is, of course, entirely at your service, if you think it worthy of a place in a new edition of the “Minstrelsy.” I have no room to inflict more ballads or legends on you; and remain, most faithfully yours,
R. Surtees.
From Jonathan Oldbuck, Esq., of Monkbarns, to Robert Surtees, Esq., Mainsforth.
Monkbarns, June 1.