THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY.
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, iii. 3.
This ballad, of which more than thirty versions have been published in the Northern languages, is preserved in English in several forms, all of them more or less unsatisfactory. Of these the present copy comes nearest to the pure original, as it is found in Danish. The next best is The Brave Earl Brand and The King of England's Daughter, recently printed for the first time in Bell's Ballads of the Peasantry, and given [at the end of this volume]. Erlinton (vol. iii. 220) is much mutilated, and has a perverted conclusion, but retains a faint trace of one characteristic trait of the ancient ballad, which really constitutes the turning point of the story, but which all the others lack. (See Erlinton.) A fragment exists in the Percy MS., of which we can only say that if it much resembled Percy's Child of Elle (which it cannot), it might without loss be left undisturbed forever. In the only remaining copy Robin Hood appears as the hero. (See vol. v. p. 334.) It is of slight value, but considerably less insipid than the Child of Elle. Motherwell (Minstrelsy, p. 180) has given a few variations to Scott's ballad, but they are of no importance.—Of the corresponding Danish ballad, Ribolt og Guldborg, Grundtvig has collected more than twenty versions, some of them ancient, many obtained from recitation, and eight of the
kindred Hildebrand og Hilde. There have also been printed of the latter, three versions in Swedish, and of the former, three in Icelandic, two in Norse, and seven in Swedish. (Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, ii. 308-403, 674-81.) Jamieson has translated an inferior copy of the Danish ballad in Illustrations of North. Antiq., p. 317.
"The ballad of The Douglas Tragedy," says Scott, "is one of the few (?) to which popular tradition has ascribed complete locality.
"The farm of Blackhouse, in Selkirkshire, is said to have been the scene of this melancholy event. There are the remains of a very ancient tower, adjacent to the farm-house, in a wild and solitary glen, upon a torrent named Douglas burn, which joins the Yarrow, after passing a craggy rock, called the Douglas craig.... From this ancient tower Lady Margaret is said to have been carried by her lover. Seven large stones, erected upon the neighboring heights of Blackhouse, are shown, as marking the spot where the seven brethren were slain; and the Douglas burn is averred to have been the stream at which the lovers stopped to drink: so minute is tradition in ascertaining the scene of a tragical tale, which, considering the rude state of former times, had probably foundation in some real event."
Were it not for Scott's concluding remark, and the obstinate credulity of most of the English and Scotch editors, we should hardly think it necessary to say that the locality of some of the incidents in Ribolt and Guldborg, is equally well ascertained (Grundtvig, 342, 343). "Popular tales and anecdotes of every kind," as Jamieson well remarks, "soon obtain locality wherever they are told; and the intelligent and attentive
traveller will not be surprised to find the same story which he had learnt when a child, with every appropriate circumstance of names, time, and place, in a Glen of Morven, Lochaber, or Rannoch, equally domesticated among the mountains of Norway, Caucasus, or Thibet." Ill. North. Ant. p. 317.
"Rise up, rise up, now, Lord Douglas," she says,
"And put on your armour so bright;
Let it never be said that a daughter of thine
Was married to a lord under night.