"To drive the deer with hound and horn
Earl Douglas had the bent."
v. 109.
One may also observe a generous impartiality in the old original bard, when in the conclusion of his tale he represents both nations as quitting the field without any reproachful reflection on either: though he gives to his own countrymen the credit of being the smaller number.
"Of fifteen hundred archers of England
Went away but fifty and three;
Of twenty hundred spearmen of Scotland,
But even five and fifty."
p. [32].
He attributes Flight to neither party, as hath been done in the modern copies of this ballad, as well Scotch as English. For, to be even with our latter bard, who makes the Scots to flee, some reviser of North Britain has turned his own arms against him, and printed an edition at Glasgow, in which the lines are thus transposed:
"Of fifteen hundred Scottish speirs
Went hame but fifty-three:
Of twenty hundred Englishmen
Scarce fifty-five did flee."
And to countenance this change he has suppressed the two stanzas between ver. 240 and ver. 249.—From that Edition I have here reformed the Scottish names, which in the modern English ballad appeared to be corrupted.
When I call the present admired ballad modern, I only mean that it is comparatively so; for that it could not be writ much later than the time of Q. Elizabeth, I think may be made appear; nor yet does it seem to be older than the beginning of the last century.[894] Sir Philip Sidney, when he complains of the antiquated phrase of Chevy Chase, could never have seen this improved copy, the language of which is not more ancient than that he himself used. It is probable that the encomiums of so admired a writer excited some bard to revise the ballad, and to free it from those faults he had objected to it. That it could not be much later than that time, appears from the phrase doleful dumps: which in that age carried no ill sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request, and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of, had it been in the least exceptionable: see above, book ii. song v. ver. 2. Yet, in about half a century after, it was become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Part I. c. 3, v. 95.