[411]. "The Golden Vanity."
This is a patchwork of stanzas from three versions of the old ballad. In one version the "Golden Vanity" is said to be the " Sweet Trinity," and to have been built by Sir Walter Raleigh in the Netherlands. According to yet another, the Cabin-boy, after threatening to sink the "Goulden Vanitie" as he had "sunk the French gallee," is taken on board and the Captain and merchant adventurers proved "far better than their word." But if stanza 12 is any witness, this seems unlikely. Can one not actually see the cold faces mocking down upon the water?
[412].
To an eye and ear new to them, these old Scottish ballads may seem a little difficult and forbidding. But read on, and their enchantment has no match—the very strangeness of the words, the rare music, the colour and light and clearness and vehemence, and, besides these, a wildness and ancientness like that of an old folk-tune which seems to carry with its burden as many lost memories as an old churchyard has gravestones. The stories they tell are world wide. How they came into that world (for of some of them there are as many as twenty to thirty different versions), how they have fared in their long journey, and even when and by whom they were made, are still questions on which even scholars are not yet agreed.
"Kevels" in line 5 of "Brown Robyn," means lots, and recalls a far older story:
"Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me. But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish, so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. But the Lord sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken. Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.... And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.... Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous. And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm upon you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.... So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea; and the sea ceased from her raging."
[415]. "A Seal My Father Was."
Notes of music for the enticement of seals, with other beautiful old Gaelic airs and poems and tales, will be found in Journals 23/5 of The Folk-Song Society, collected by Mr. Martin Freeman.
[418]. "Sir Patrick Spence."
The longer version of the ballad into which the genius of Sir Walter Scott wove a few new stanzas is the better known. But this, I think, is the best. Indeed, the secret art of this naked and lovely poetry seems nowadays to be lost: its marvel is how much it tells by means of the little it says.