[37]
THOMAS RYMER
[A]. 'Thomas Rymer and Queen of Elfland,' Alexander Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., No 1.
[B]. 'Thomas the Rhymer,' Campbell MSS, II, 83.
[C]. 'Thomas the Rhymer,' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 251, 1802, "from a copy obtained from a lady residing not far from Erceldoune, corrected and enlarged by one in Mrs Brown's MS."
A is one of the nine ballads transmitted to Alexander Fraser Tytler by Mrs Brown in April, 1800, as written down from her recollection.[304] This copy was printed by Jamieson, II, 7, in his preface to 'True Thomas and the Queen of Elfland.' B, never published as yet, has been corrupted here and there, but only by tradition. C being compounded of A and another version, that portion which is found in A is put in smaller type.
Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise Thomas the Rhymer, and in the popular style True Thomas, has had a fame as a seer, which, though progressively narrowed, is, after the lapse of nearly or quite six centuries, far from being extinguished. The common people throughout the whole of Scotland, according to Mr Robert Chambers (1870), continue to regard him with veneration, and to preserve a great number of his prophetic sayings, which they habitually seek to connect with "dear years" and other notable public events.[305] A prediction of Thomas of Erceldoune's is recorded in a manuscript which is put at a date before 1320, and he is referred to with other soothsayers in the Scalacronica, a French chronicle of English history begun in 1355. Erceldoune is spoken of as a poet in Robert Mannyng's translation of Langtoft's chronicle, finished in 1338; and in the Auchinleck copy of 'Sir Tristrem,' said to have been made about 1350, a Thomas is said to have been consulted at Erþeldoun touching the history of Tristrem. So that we seem safe in holding that Thomas of Erceldoune had a reputation both as prophet and poet in the earlier part of the fourteenth century. The vaticinations of Thomas are cited by various later chroniclers, and had as much credit in England as in Scotland. "During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries," says Chambers, "to fabricate a prophecy in the name of Thomas the Rhymer appears to have been found a good stroke of policy on many occasions. Thus was his authority employed to countenance the views of Edward III against Scottish independence, to favor the ambitious views of the Duke of Albany in the minority of James V, and to sustain the spirits of the nation under the harassing invasions of Henry VIII." During the Jacobite rising of 1745 the accomplishment of Thomas's as then unfulfilled predictions was looked for by many. His prophecies, and those of other Scotch soothsayers, were consulted, says Lord Hailes, "with a weak if not criminal curiosity." Even as late as the French revolutionary war a rhyme of Thomas's caused much distress and consternation in the border counties of Scotland, where people were fearing an invasion. The 'Whole Prophecie' of Merlin, Thomas Rymour, and others, collected and issued as early as 1603, continued to be printed as a chap-book down to the beginning of this century, when, says Dr Murray, few farm-houses in Scotland were without a copy of it.
All this might have been if Thomas of Erceldoune had been not more historical than Merlin. But the name is known to have belonged to a real person. Thomas Rymor de Ercildune is witness to a deed whereby one Petrus de Haga obliges himself to make a certain payment to the Abbey of Melrose. Petrus de Haga is, in turn, witness to a charter made by Richard de Moreville. Unluckily, neither of these deeds is dated. But Moreville was constable of Scotland from 1162 to 1189. If we suppose Moreville's charter to have been given towards 1189, and Haga to have been then about twenty years old, and so born about 1170, and further suppose Haga to have made his grant to Melrose towards the end of a life of threescore, or three score and ten, the time of Thomas Rymer's signature would be about 1230 or 1240. If Thomas Rymer was then twenty years of age, his birth would have been at 1210 or 1220. In the year 1294 Thomas de Ercildoun, son and heir of Thomas Rymour de Ercildoun, conveyed to a religious house his inheritance of lands in Ercildoun. With Thomas Rhymer in mind, one naturally interprets Thomas Rymour as the prophet and Thomas de Ercildoun as his son. If Rymour was the surname of this family,[306] it would have been better, for us at least, if the surname had been subjoined to the first Thomas also. As the language stands, we are left to choose among several possibilities. Thomas the Rhymer may have been dead in 1294; Thomas Rymour, meaning the same person, may have made this cession of lands in 1294, and have survived still some years. Thomas, the father, may, as Dr Murray suggests, have retired from the world, but still be living, and it may be his son who resigns the lands. Blind Harry's Life of Wallace makes Thomas Rimour to be alive down to 1296 or 1297. A story reported by Bower in his continuation of Fordun, c. 1430, makes Thomas to have predicted the death of Alexander III in 1286, when, according to the previous (necessarily very loose) calculation, the seer would have been between sixty-six and seventy-six. Neither of these last dates is established by the strongest evidence, but there is no reason for refusing to admit, at least, that Thomas of Erceldoune may have been alive at the latter epoch.
Thomas of Erceldoune's prophetic power was a gift of the queen of the elves; the modern elves, equally those of northern Europe and of Greece, resembling in respect to this attribute the nymphs of the ancient Hellenic mythology. How Thomas attained this grace is set forth in the first of three fits of a poem which bears his name. This poem has come down in four somewhat defective copies: the earliest written a little before the middle of the fifteenth century, two others about 1450, the fourth later. There is a still later manuscript copy of the second and third fits.[307] All the manuscripts are English, but it is manifest from the nature of the topics that the original poem was the work of a Scotsman. All four of the complete versions speak of an older story: 'gyff it be als the storye sayes,' v. 83, 'als the storye tellis full ryghte,' v. 123. The older story, if any, must be the work of Thomas. The circumstance that the poem, as we have it, begins in the first person, and after a long passage returns for a moment to the first person, though most of the tale is told in the third, is of no importance; nor would it have been important if the whole narrative had been put into Thomas's mouth, since that is the simplest of literary artifices.