The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)

by Unknown

Fytt 2.

2¹. þou gose. Cambridge, ȝe gon.

FOOTNOTES:

[304] See the letter of Dr Anderson to Bishop Percy, December 29, 1800, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, VII, 178 f.

[305] Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, pp. 211-224. See, also, Scott's Minstrelsy, IV, 110-116, 129-151, ed. 1833. But, above all, Dr J. A. H. Murray's Introduction to The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, 1875.

[306] Hector Boece (1527) says the surname was Leirmont, but there is no evidence for this that is of value. See Murray, p. xiii.

[307] The five copies have been edited by Dr J. A. H. Murray, and printed by the Early English Text Society. A reconstructed text by Dr Alois Brandl makes the second volume of a Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben, Berlin, 1880.

[308] Murray, pp xxiv-xxvii. As might be expected, the Latin texts corrupt the names of persons and of places, and alter the results of battles. Dr Murray remarks: "The oldest text makes the Scots win Halidon Hill, with the slaughter of six thousand Englishmen, while the other texts, wise after the fact, makes the Scots lose, as they actually did." This, and the consideration that a question about the conflict between the families of Bruce and Baliol would not be put after 1400, when the Baliol line was extinct, disposes Dr Murray to think that verses 326-56 of the second fit, with perhaps the first fit, the conclusion of the poem, and an indefinite portion of fit third, may have been written on the eve of Halidon Hill, with a view to encourage the Scots.

[309] The poem, vv 675-80, says only that Thomas and the lady did not part for ever and aye, but that she was to visit him at Huntley banks.

[310] The relations of Thomas Rhymer and Ogier might, perhaps, be cleared up by the poem of The Visions of Ogier in Fairy Land. The book is thus described by Brunet, ed. 1863, IV, 173: Le premier (second et troisième) livre des visions d'Oger le Dannoys au royaulme de Fairie, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 48 ff. Brunet adds: A la suite de ce poëme, dans l'exemplaire de la Bibliothèque impériale, se trouve, Le liure des visions fantastiques, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 24 ff. The National Library is not now in possession of the volume; nor have all the inquiries I have been able to make, though most courteously aided in France, resulted, as I hoped, in the finding of a copy.