In the Genealogy of the family of Forbes drawn up by Matthew Lumsden in 1580, and continued to 1667 by William Forbes, p. 43 f., ed. 1819, we read: “John Forbes of Towie married —— Grant, daughter to John Grant of Bandallach, who did bear to him a son who was unmercifullie murdered in the castle of Corgaffe; and after the decease of Bandallach’s daughter, the said John Forbes married Margaret Campbell, daughter to Sir John Campbell of Calder, knight, who did bear him three sons, Alex. Forbes of Towie, John Forbes, thereafter of Towie, and William Forbes.... The said John Forbes of Towie, after the murder of Margaret Campbell, married —— Forbes, a daughter to the Reires,” by whom he had a son, who, as also a son of his own, died in Germany. Alexander and William, sons of Margaret Campbell, died without succession, and by the death of an only son of John, junior, the house of Towie became extinct. “The rest of the said Margaret Campbell’s bairns, with herself, were unmercifullie murdered in the castle of Corgaffe.”[[283]]
According to the Lumsden genealogy, then, Margaret Campbell, with her younger children, and also a son of her husband, John Forbes of Towie, by a former marriage, were murdered at the castle of Corgaffe. Corgarf is a place “exigui nominis,” some fifteen miles west of Towie, and, so far as is known, there is nothing to connect this place with the Forbes family.[[284]] Three sixteenth-century accounts, and a fourth by an historian who was born before the event, make Towie to be the scene of the “murder,” and Towie we know to have been in the possession of a member of the house of Forbes for several generations. Since Lumsden wrote only nine years after the event, and was more particularly concerned with the Forbes family than any of the other writers referred to, his statement cannot be peremptorily set aside. But we may owe Corgarf to the reviser of 1667, although he professes not to have altered the substance of his predecessor’s work.
Reverting now to the ballad, we observe that none of the seven versions, of which one is put towards the end of the sixteenth century, one is of the seventeenth century, two are of the eighteenth, and the remainder from tradition of the present century, lay the scene at Towie. E, which is of this century, has Cargarf. A, B, the oldest copies (both English), give no name to the castle. Crecrynbroghe in A, Bittonsborrow in B, are not the name of the castle that is burned, but of a castle suggested for a winter retirement by one of Car’s men, and rejected by the captain. The fragment C (English again) also names no place. D transfers the scene from the north to the house of Rodes, near Dunse, in Berwickshire, and F, G to Loudoun castle in Ayrshire; the name of Gordon probably helping to the localizing of the ballad in the former case, and that of Campbell, possibly, in the other.
Captain Car is the leader of the bloody band in A, B; he is lord of Eastertown A 6, 13, of Westertown B 5, 9; but ‘Adam’ is said to fire the house in B 14. Adam Gordon is the captain in C-G. The sufferers are in A Hamiltons,[[285]] in F, G, Campbells. The name Forbes is not preserved in any version.
A, B. Martinmas weather forces Captain Car to look for a hold. Crecrynbroghe, A, Bittonsborrow, B, is proposed, but he knows of a castle where there is a fair lady whose lord is away, and makes for that. The lady sees from the wall a host of men riding towards the castle, and thinks her lord is coming home, but it was the traitor Captain Car. By supper-time he and his men have lighted about the place. Car calls to the lady to give up the house; she shall lie in his arms that night, and the morrow heir his land. She will not give up the house, but fires on Car and his men. [Orders are given to burn the house.] The lady entreats Car to save her eldest son. Lap him in a sheet and let him down, says Car; and when this is done, cuts out tongue and heart, ties them in a handkerchief, and throws them over the wall. The youngest son begs his mother to surrender, for the smoke is smothering him. She would give all her gold and fee for a wind to blow the smoke away; but the fire falls about her head, and she and her children are burned to death. Captain Car rides away, A. The lord of the castle dreams, learns by a letter, at London, that his house has been fired, and hurries home. He finds the hall still burning, and breaks out into expressions of grief, A. In B, half of which has been torn from the manuscript, after reading the letter he says he will find Car wherever Car may be, and, long ere day, comes to Dractonsborrow, where the miscreant is. If nine or ten stanzas were not lost at this point, we should no doubt learn of the revenge that was taken.
In the short fragment C, upon surrender being demanded, reply is made by a shot which kills seven of the beleaguerers. An only daughter, smothered by the reek, asks her mother to give up the house. Rather would I see you burnt to ashes, says the mother. The boy on the nurse’s knee makes the same appeal; her mother would sooner see him burnt than give up her house to be Adam of Gordon’s whore.
D makes the lady try fair speeches with Gordon, and the lady does not reply with firearms to the proposal that she shall lie by his side. Nevertheless she has spirit enough to say, when her youngest son beseeches her to give up the house, Come weal, come woe, you must take share with me. The daughter, and not the eldest son, is wrapped in sheets and let down the wall; she gets a fall on the point of Gordon’s spear. Then follow deplorable interpolations, beginning with st. 19. Edom o Gordon, having turned the girl over with his spear, and wished her alive, turns her owr and owr again! He orders his men to busk and away, for he cannot look on the bonnie face. One of his men hopes he will not be daunted with a dame, and certainly three successive utterances in the way of sentiment show that the captain needs a little toning up. At this point the lord of the castle is coming over the lea, and sees that his castle is in flames. He and his men put on at their best rate; lady and babes are dead ere the foremost arrives; they go at the Gordons, and but five of fifty of these get away.
And round and round the wae’s he went,
Their ashes for to view:
At last into the flames he flew,