It was a hard battle and well fought, but such are the turns of fortune that, although the English were the greater number, and all bold men and practised in arms, and although they attacked the enemy valiantly, and at first drove them back a good distance, the Scots in the end won the day. The losses of the English were put by their antagonists at 1040 prisoners, 1860 killed in the fight and the pursuit, and more than 1000 wounded; those of the Scots were about 100 killed and 200 captured.[[160]] The Scots retired without molestation, taking the way to Melrose Abbey, where they caused the Earl of Douglas to be interred, and his obsequies to be reverently performed. Over his body a tomb of stone was built, and above this was raised the earl’s banner.
Such is the story of the battle of Otterburn, fought on Wednesday, the 19th day of August,[[161]] in the year of grace 1388, as related by Froissart (with animated tributes to the hardihood and generosity of both parties) upon the authority of knights and squires actually present, both English and Scots, and also French.
Wyntoun, ix, 840–54, 900f (Laing, III, 36f) says that the alarm was given the Scots by a young man that came right fast riding (cf. A 20, 21, B 4, C 17), and that many of the Scots were able to arm but imperfectly; among these Earl James, who was occupied with getting his men into order and was “reckless of his arming,” and the Earl of Murray, who forgot his basnet (cf. C 20). Earl James was slain no man knew in what way. Bower, Scotichronicon, II, 405, agrees with Wyntoun. English chroniclers, Knyghton, col. 2728, Walsingham (Riley, II, 176[[162]]), Malverne, the continuator of Higden (Polychronicon, Lumby, IX, 185), assert that Percy killed Douglas with his own hand, Knyghton adding that Percy also wounded the Earl of Murray to the point of death.
That a Scots ballad of Otterburn was popular in the sixteenth century appears from The Complaynte of Scotlande, 1549, where a line is cited, The Perssee and the Mongumrye met, p. 65, ed. Murray: cf. B 91, C 301.[[163]] In the following century Hume of Godscroft writes:[[164]] The Scots song made of Otterburn telleth the time, about Lammasse, and the occasion, to take preyes out of England; also the dividing of the armies betwixt the Earles of Fife and Douglas, and their severall journeys, almost as in the authentick history. It beginneth thus:
It fell about the Lammas tide,
When yeomen wonne their hay,
The doughtie Douglas gan to ride,
In England to take a prey.
Motherwell maintains that the ballad which passes as English is the Scots song altered to please the other party. His argument, however, is far from conclusive. “That The Battle of Otterbourne was thus dealt with by an English transcriber appears obvious, for it studiously omits dilating on Percy’s capture, while it accurately details his combat with Douglas;” that is to say, the ballad as we have it is just what a real English ballad would have been, both as to what it enlarges on and what it slights. “Whereas it would appear that in the genuine Scottish version the capture of Percy formed a prominent incident, seeing it is the one by which the author of The Complaynt refers to the ballad [The Perssee and the Mongumrye met]:” from which Motherwell was at liberty to deduce that B and C represent the genuine Scottish version, several stanzas being given to the capture of Percy in these; but this he would not care to do, on account of the great inferiority of these forms. A Scotsman could alter an English ballad “to suit political feeling and flatter national vanity,” as Motherwell says the Scots did with Chevy Chace. (See further on, p. 303.) There is no reason to doubt that a Scots ballad of Otterburn once existed, much better than the two inferior, and partly suspicious, things which were printed by Herd and Scott, and none to doubt that an English minstrel would deal freely with any Scots ballad which he could turn to his purpose; but then there is no evidence, positive or probable, that this particular ballad was “adapted” from the Scots song made of Otterburn; rather are we to infer that the few verses of B and C which repeat or resemble the text of A were borrowed from A, and, as likely as not, Hume’s first stanza too.[[165]]
A, in the shape in which it has come down to us, must have a date long subsequent to the battle, as the grammatical forms show; still, what interested the borderers a hundred years or more after the event must have interested people of the time still more, and it would be against the nature of things that there should not have been a ballad as early as 1400. The ballad we have is likely to have been modernized from such a predecessor, but I am not aware that there is anything in the text to confirm such a supposition, unless one be pleased to make much of the Wednesday of the eighteenth stanza. The concluding stanza implies that Percy is dead, and he was killed at Shrewsbury, in 1403.