[This story of Sir Cauline furnishes one of the most flagrant instances of Percy's manipulation of his authorities. In the following poem all the verses which are due to Percy's invention are placed between brackets, but the whole has been so much altered by him that it has been found necessary to reprint the original from the folio MS. at the end in order that readers may compare the two. Percy put into his version several new incidents and altered the ending, by which means he was able to dilute the 201 lines of the MS. copy into 392 of his own. There was no necessity for this perversion of the original, because the story is there complete, and moreover Percy did not sufficiently indicate the great changes he had made, for although nearly every verse is altered he only noted one trivial difference of reading, viz. aukeward for backward (v. 109).
Motherwell reprinted this ballad in his Minstrelsy, and in his prefatory note he made the following shrewd guess, which we now know to be a correct one:—"We suspect too that the ancient ballad had a less melancholy catastrophe, and that the brave Syr Cauline, after his combat with the 'hend Soldan' derived as much benefit from the leechcraft of fair Cristabelle as he did after winning the Eldridge sword." Professor Child has expressed the same view in his note to the ballad.
Buchan printed a ballad entitled King Malcolm and Sir Colvin, which is more like the original than Percy's version, but Mr. Hales is of opinion that this was one of that collector's fabrications.]
THE FIRST PART.
[In Ireland, ferr over the sea,
There dwelleth a bonnye kinge;
And with him a yong and comlye knighte,
Men call him syr Caulìne.
The kinge had a ladye to his daughter,5
In fashyon she hath no peere;
And princely wightes that ladye wooed
To be theyr wedded feere.[337]]
Syr Cauline loveth her best of all,
But nothing durst he saye;10
Ne descreeve[338] his counsayl to no man,
But deerlye he lovde this may.[339]