Scott ended with Herd’s last stanza; in the English version the last but two.
Now the death, at Otterburn, of Sir Hugh, is recorded in an English ballad styled The Hunting of the Cheviot. By 1540–50 it was among the popular songs north of Tweed. The Complaynte of Scotland (1549) mentions among “The Songis of Natural Music of the Antiquitie” (volkslieder), The Hunttis of Chevet. Our copy of the English version is in the Bodleian (MS. Ashmole, 48). It ends: “Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale,” a minstrel who recited ballads and tales at Tamworth (circ. 1559). The text was part of his stock-in-trade.
The Cheviot ballad, in a Scots form popular in 1549, is later in many ways than the English Battle of Otterburne. It begins with a brag of Percy, a vow that, despite Douglas, he will hunt in the Cheviot hills. While Percy is hunting with a strong force, Douglas arrives with another. Douglas offers to decide the quarrel by single combat with Percy, who accepts. Richard Witherington refuses to look on quietly, and a general engagement ensues.
At last the Duglas and the Perse met,
Lyk to Captayns of myght and of mayne,
They swapte together tylle they both swat
With swordes that wear of fyn myllan.
We are back in stanza I. of the English Otterburne, in stanza xxxv. (substituting Hugh Montgomery for Douglas) of the Hogg MS. In The Hunting, Douglas is slain by an English arrow (xxxvi.–xxxviii.).
Sir Hugh Montgomery now charges and slays Percy (who, of course, was merely taken prisoner). An archer of Northumberland sends an arrow through good Sir Hugh Montgomery (xliii.–xlvi.). Stanza lxvi. has
At Otterburn begane this spurne,
Upon a Monnynday;
There was the doughte Douglas slean,
The Perse never went away.
This is a form of Herd’s stanza xiv. of the English Otterburn (lxviii.), made soon after the battle. We see that the original ballad has protean variants; in time all is mixed in tradition.
Now the curious and interesting point is that Hogg, when he collected the ballad from two reciters, himself noticed that the Cheviot ballad had merged, in some way, into the Otterburn ballad, and pointed this out to Scott. I now publish Hogg’s letter to Scott, in which, as usual, he does not give the year-date: I think it was 1805.
Ettrick House, Sept. 10, [?1805].
Dear Sir,—Though I have used all diligence in my power to recover the old song about which you seemed anxious, I am afraid it will arrive too late to be of any use. I cannot at this time have Grame and Bewick; the only person who hath it being absent at a harvest; and as for the scraps of Otterburn which you have got, they seem to have been some confused jumble made by some person who had learned both the songs you have, [79a] and in time had been straitened to make one out of them both. But you shall have it as I had it, saving that, as usual, I have sometimes helped the metre without altering one original word.