"It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the successors of Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a particle of positive evidence for their having existed before the eighteenth century. Overlooking the one given by Ramsay in his Tea-table Miscellany, we have neither print nor manuscript of them before the reign of George III. They are not in the style of old literature. They contain no references to old literature. As little does old literature contain any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collection of Scottish poetry in 1706-1711, wholly overlooks them. Ramsay, as we see, caught up only one."
Mr. Norval Clyne (Ballads from Scottish History, 1863, p. 217) gives a satisfactory answer to the above. He writes:—
"The want of any ancient manuscript can be no argument against the antiquity of a poem, versions of which have been obtained from oral recitation, otherwise the great mass of ballads of all kinds collected by Scott, and by others since his time, must lie under equal suspicion. Bannatyne, in the sixteenth century, and Allan Ramsay, in the early part of the eighteenth, were not collectors of popular poetry in the same sense as those who have since been so active in that field. The former contented himself, for the most part, with transcribing the compositions of Dunbar, Henrysone, and other "makers," well known by name, and Ramsay took the bulk of his Evergreen from Bannatyne's MS. That a great many poems of the ballad class, afterwards collected and printed, must have been current among the people when the Evergreen was published, no one that knows anything of the subject will deny." The old ballads lived on the tongues of the people, and a small percentage of them only were ever committed to writing, so that a fairer test of authenticity is the existence of various versions. Of known forgeries no varieties exist, but several versions of Sir Patrick Spence have been rescued from oblivion.
It is not probable that any fresh ballads will be obtained from recitation, but it is in some degree possible, as may be seen from an instance of a kindred nature in the field of language. We know that local dialects have almost passed away, and yet some of the glossaries of them lately issued contain words that explain otherwise dark passages in manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Chambers further affirms that the sentiment of these ballads is not congenial to that of the peasantry—"it may be allowably said, there is a tone of breeding throughout these ballads, such as is never found in the productions of rustic genius." This, however, is begging the question, for it does not follow that the songs of the peasantry were written by the peasantry. It is they who have remembered them, and held to them with greater tenacity than the educated classes.
We now come to the text that bears specially upon Sir Patrick Spence, and we will give it in Chambers's own words:—"The Scottish ladies sit bewailing the loss of Sir Patrick Spence's companions 'wi' the gowd kaims in their hair.' Sir Patrick tells his friends before starting on his voyage, 'Our ship must sail the faem;'[30] and in the description of the consequences of his shipwreck, we find 'Mony was the feather-bed that flattered on the faem.'[30] No old poet would use faem as an equivalent for the sea; but it was just such a phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would use in that sense." In the first place, we should be justified in saying that this test is not a fair one, because no one will contend that the ballads have not been altered in passing from hand to hand, and new words inserted; but Mr. Norval Clyne has a complete answer for this particular objection; he writes: "Bishop Gawin Douglas completed his translation of Virgil's Æneid on 22nd July, 1513, and in his Prologue to the twelfth book are these lines:—
'Some sang ring-sangs, dancis, ledis, roundis,
With vocis schil, quhil all the dale resounds,
Quhareto they walk into their karoling,
For amourous layis dois all the rochis ring:
Ane sang 'The schip salis over the salt fame,
Will bring thir merchandis and my lemane hame.'
Here we have the expression, to which attention is called, occurring in a popular song in common use before the battle of Flodden. I have seen it remarked, however, that it is the elliptical use of 'sail the faem' for 'sail over the faem,' which indicates an authorship not older than the day of Queen Anne. My answer to this objection shall also be an example from an 'old poet.' One of the Tales of the Three Priests of Peblis assigned to the early part of the sixteenth century, describes in homely verse the career of a thrifty burgess, and contains these lines (Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, 1802):—
'Then bocht he wool, and wyselie couth it wey;
And efter that sone saylit he the sey.'"[31]
These quotations completely set aside one portion of the charge, and the other, in which an attempt is made to show that a similar form of expression is constantly occurring in the several poems, is really of little weight, pressed as it is with some unfairness. We have already seen that the old minstrels used certain forms of expression as helps to memory, and these recur in ballads that have little or no connection with each other. Chambers, following David Laing, uses Percy's note at the end of Sir Patrick Spence[32] as an engine of attack against the authenticity of the ballad, but there is really no reason for the conclusion he comes to, "that the parity he remarked in the expressions was simply owing to the two ballads being the production of one mind," for a copyist well acquainted with ballad literature would naturally adopt the expressions found in them in his own composition.