The interesting point is that, while the Scottish ballads give either the English version of Percy’s death (in Minstrelsy, 1806) or another account mentioned by Hume of Godscroft (circ. 1610), that he was slain by one of his own men, the Scottish versions are all deeply affected in an important point by Froissart’s contemporary narrative, which has not affected the English versions. [54b] The point is that the death of Douglas was by his order concealed from both parties.
When both the English version in Percy’s Reliques (from a MS. of about 1550), and Scott’s version of 1806, mention a “challenge to battle” between Percy and Douglas, Colonel Elliot calls this incident “probably purely fanciful and imaginary,” and suspects Scott’s version of being made up and altered from the English text. But the challenge which resulted in the battle of Otterburn is not fanciful and imaginary!
It is mentioned by Froissart. Douglas, he says, took Percy’s pennon in an encounter under Newcastle. Percy vowed that Douglas would never carry the pennon out of Northumberland; Douglas challenged him to come and take it from his tent door that night; but Percy was constrained not to accept the challenge. The Scots then marched homewards, but Douglas insisted on besieging Otterburn Castle; here he passed some days on purpose to give Percy a chance of a fight; Percy’s force surprised the Scots; they were warned, as in the ballads, suddenly, by a man who galloped up; the fight began; and so on.
Now Herd’s version says nothing of Douglas at Newcastle; the whole scene is at Otterburn. On the other hand, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s MS. text did bring Douglas to Newcastle. Of this Colonel Elliot says nothing. The English version says nothing of Percy’s loss of his pennon to Douglas (nor does Sharpe’s), and gives the challenge and tryst. Scott’s version says nothing of Percy’s pennon, but Douglas takes Percy’s sword and vows to carry it home. Percy’s challenge, in the English version, is accompanied by a gross absurdity. He bids Douglas wait at Otterburn, where, pour tout potage to an army absurdly stated at 40,000 men, Percy suggests venison and pheasants! In the Scottish version Percy offers tryst at Otterburn. Douglas answers that, though Otterburn has no supplies—nothing but deer and wild birds—he will there tarry for Percy. This is chivalrous, and, in Scott’s version, Douglas understands war. In the English version Percy does not. (To these facts I return, giving more details.) Colonel Elliot supposes some one (Scott, I daresay) to have taken Percy’s,—the English version,—altered it to taste, concealed the alterations, as in this part of the challenge, by inverting the speeches and writing new stanzas of the fight at Otterburn, used a very little of Herd (which is true), and inserted modern stanzas.
Now, first, as regards pilfering from the English version, that version, and Herd’s undisputed version, have undeniably a common source. Neither, as it stands, is “original”; of an original contemporary Otterburn ballad we have no trace. By 1550, when such ballads were certainly current both in England and Scotland, they were late, confused by tradition, and, of what we possess, say Herd’s, and the English MS. of 1550, all were interblended.
The Scots ballad version, known to Hume of Godscroft (1610), may have been taken from the English, and altered, as Child thought, or the English, as Motherwell maintained, may have been borrowed from the Scots, and altered. One or the other process undeniably occurred; the second poet, who made the changes, introduced the events most favourable to his country, and left out the less favourable. By Scott’s time, or Herd’s, the versions were much degraded through decay of memory, bad penny broadsides (lost), and uneducated reciters. Herd’s version has forgotten the historic affair of the capture of Percy’s pennon (and of the whole movement on Newcastle, preserved in Sharpe’s and Scott’s); Scott’s remembers the encounter at Newcastle, forgets the pennon, and substitutes the capture by Douglas of Percy’s sword. The Englishman deliberately omits the capture of the pennon. The Scots version (here altered by Sir Walter) makes Percy wound Douglas at Otterburn—
Till backward he did flee.
Now Colonel Elliot has no right, I conceive, to argue that this Scots version, with the Newcastle incident, the captured sword, the challenge, the “backward flight” of Douglas, were introduced by a modern (Scott?) who was deliberately “faking” the English version. There is no reason why tradition should not have retained historical incidents in the Scottish form; it is a mere assumption that a modern borrowed and travestied these incidents from Percy’s Reliques. We possess Hogg’s unedited original of Scott’s version of 1806 (an original MS. never hinted at by Colonel Elliot), and it retains clear traces of being contaminated with a version of The Huntiss of Chevet, popular in 1459, as we read in The Complaynte of Scotland of that date. There is also an old English version of The Hunting of the Cheviot (1550 or later, Bodleian Library). The unedited text of Scott’s Otterburne then contained traces of The Huntiss of Chevet; the two were mixed in popular memory. In short, Scott’s text, manipulated slightly by him in a way which I shall describe, was a thing surviving in popular memory: how confusedly will be explained.
The differences between the English version of 1550 and the Scots (collected for Scott by Hogg), are of old standing. I am not sure that there was not, before 1550, a Scottish ballad, which the English ballad-monger of that date annexed and altered. The English version of 1550 is not “popular”; it is the work of a humble literary man.
The English is a very long ballad, in seventy quatrains; it greatly exaggerates the number of the Scots engaged (40,000), and it is the work of a professional author who uses the stereotyped prosaic stopgaps of the cheap hack—