But O how pale his lady look’d,
Frae off the castle wa’,
When down before the Scottish spear
She saw brave Percy fa’!
How pale and wan his lady look’d,
Frae off the castle hieght,
When she beheld her Percy yield
To doughty Douglas’ might.
Colonel Elliot asks, “Can any one believe that these stanzas are really ancient and have come down orally through many generations?” [70a]
Certainly not! But Colonel Elliot does not allow for the fact, insisted on by Professor Child, that traditional ballads, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, were often printed on broad-sheets as edited by the cheapest broadside-vendors’ hacks; that the hacks interpolated and messed their originals; and that, after the broadside was worn out, lost, or burned, oral memory kept it alive in tradition. For examples of this process we have only to look at William’s Ghost in Herd’s copy of 1776. This is a traditional ballad; it is included in Scott’s Clerk Saunders, but, as Hogg told him, is a quite distinct song. In Herd’s copy it ends thus—
“Oh, stay, my only true love, stay,”
The constant Marg’ret cry’d;
Wan grew her cheeks, she closed her eyes,
Stretched her soft limbs, and dy’d.
Let this get into tradition, and be taken down from recitation, and the ballad will be denounced as modern. But it is essentially ancient.
These two modern stanzas, in Hogg’s copy, are rather too bad for Hogg’s making; and I do not know whether they are his (he practically says they are not, we shall see), or whether they are remembered by reciters from a stall-copy of the period of Lady Wardlaw’s Hardyknute.
After that, Hogg’s copy becomes more natural. Douglas says to the discomfited Percy (x.)—
Had we twa been upon the green,
And never an eye to see,
I should hae had ye flesh and fell,
But your sword shall gae wi’ me.
That rings true! Moreover, had either Hogg or Scott tampered here (Scott excised), either would have made Douglas carry off—not Percy’s sword, but the historic captured pennon of Percy. Scott really could not have resisted the temptation had he been interpolating à son dévis.
But your pennon shall gae wi’ me!