The English text is sometimes right where the Scots is wrong. Thus, Sir James Hamilton told Mary, as she entered Glasgow, that Lennox sent the Laird of Houstoun to tell him that he (Lennox) ‘wald never have belevit that he (Sir James) wald have persewit him, nor zit accompanyit him with the Hamiltounis.’ The English has what seems better, ‘he,’ Lennox, ‘wold not have thought that he would have followed and accompany himself with the Hamiltons.’ In the end of a paragraph (3), the Scots is gibberish: Scots, ‘nevertheless he speikis gude, at the leist his son’: English (Henderson), ‘and they so speakith well of them, at least his sonne,’ ‘and then he speaketh well of them’ (Bain). The English then omits (Scots) ‘I se na uthir Gentilman bot thay of my company.’
In the next line (Scots) ‘The King send for Joachim yesternicht,’ the English omits ‘yesternicht,’ probably by inadvertence. The word has a bearing on the chronology of the Letter, and its omission in the English text may be discounted. It is a peculiarity of that text to write ‘he’ for ‘I,’ and a feature of Mary’s hand accounts for the error. Where Darnley, in the Scots, says, ‘I had rather have passit with yow,’ the sentence follows ‘I trow he belevit that I wald have send him away Presoner.’ This is not in the English, but recurs in the end of Crawford’s Deposition, ‘I thought that she was carrying him away rather as a prisoner than as a husband.’ Probably the sentence, omitted in English, was in the French: whether derived from Crawford’s Deposition or not. Presently the English gives a kind of date, not found in the Scots. Scots, ‘I am in doing of ane work heir that I hait greitly.’ The English adds, ‘but I had begun it this morning.’ Now, to all appearance, she had ‘begun it’ the night before. How did ‘but I had begun it this morning’ get into the English? For the answer see [page 300]. Even in the first set of Memoranda there are differences: Scots, ‘The purpois of Schir James Hamilton.’ English, ‘The talk of Sir James Hamilton of the ambassador.’
There are other mistranslations, and English omissions: the English especially omits the mysterious second set of notes. What appears most distinctly, from this comparison, is the hasty and slovenly manner of the whole inquiry. The English translators had some excuse for their bad work; the Scots had none for their omissions and misrenderings.
Letter III. (or VIII.) and Letter IV. I have translated, in the body of this book, from the copies of the French originals.
In Letter V. the copy of the French original enables us to clear up the sense. It is a question about a maid or lady in waiting, whom Bothwell, or somebody else, wishes Mary to dismiss. The French is, ‘et si vous ne me mondes [mandez] ce soir ce que volles que j’en fasse, Je mendeferay [m’en deferay] au hazard de la fayre entreprandre ce qui pourroit nuire à ce à quoy nous tandons tous deus.’ The Scots has ‘I will red myself of it, and cause it to be interprysit and takin in hand, quhilk micht be hurtful to that quhair unto we baith do tend.’ The English is the Scots, Anglified.
The real sense, of course, is ‘if you do not let me know to-night what step you want me to take, I shall get rid of her, at the risk of making her attempt something which might harm our project.’ We have no other known contemporary English translations. Of the four known, two (I. II.) are made with a frequent glance at the Scots, two are merely the Scots done into English, without any reference to the French. Nothing but the hasty careless manner of the whole inquiry accounts for these circumstances.
The most curious point connected with the translations is Crawford’s deposition. It was handed in on December 9, 1568. Whoever did it out of Crawford’s Scots into English had obviously both the Scots and English versions of Letter II. before him. Where the deposition is practically identical with the corresponding passages of Letter II., the transcriber of it into English usually followed the Scots version of Letter II. But there is a corrected draft in the Lennox MSS. at Cambridge, which proves that the Angliciser of Crawford’s Scots occasionally altered it into harmony with the English version of Letter II. Thus, in the first paragraph, the original draft of Crawford in English has, like the Scots version of Letter II., ‘the rude words that I had spoken to Cunningham.’ But, in the official copy, in English, of Crawford, and in the Lennox draft of it, ‘rude’ is changed into ‘sharpe wordes,’ and so on. The part of Crawford which corresponds with Letter II. is free from obvious literal renderings of the French idiom, as Mr. Henderson remarks.[426] These abound in the English version of the corresponding part of Letter II., but are absent here in the Scots translation. It is, therefore, open to argument that Crawford did make notes of Darnley’s and Mary’s talk; that these were done into ‘the original French,’ and thence retranslated into the Scots (free from French idiom here) and into the English, where traces of French idiom in this passage are frequent.
THE CASKET LETTERS
I print the Scots Texts with one or two variations from C (the Cambridge MS.) and Y (the Yelverton MS.). The English Texts are given, where they are not merely taken direct from the Scots translations; these and Crawford’s Deposition are from MSS. in the Record Office and Hatfield Calendar.