382. Breaklaw: changed in the MS. to Reaklaw.
185
DICK O THE COW
a. ‘An excelent old song cald Dick of the Cow.’ Percy Papers, 1775. b. Caw’s Poetical Museum, p. 22, 1784. c. Campbell, Albyn’s Anthology, II, 31, 1818.
a seems to have been communicated to Percy by Roger Halt in 1775. b was contributed to Caw’s Museum by John Elliot of Reidheugh, a gentleman, says Scott, well skilled in the antiquities of the western border. c was taken down “from the singing and recitation of a Liddesdale-man, namely, Robert Shortreed, sheriff-substitute of Roxburghshire, in the autumn of 1816;” but it differs from b in no important respect except the omission of thirteen stanzas, 17, 18, 24, 32, 35–38, 51, 52, 56–58.
Scott’s copy, I, 137, 1802, II, 63, 1833, is c with the deficient stanzas supplied from b. A copy in the Campbell MSS, I, 204, is b.
Ritson pointed out to Scott a passage in Nashe’s Have with you to Saffren Walden which shows that this ballad was popular before the end of the sixteenth century: “Dick of the Cow, that mad demi-lance northren borderer, who plaied his prizes with the lord Jockey so bravely,” 1596, in Grosart’s Nashe, III, 6.
An allusion to it likewise occurs in Parrot’s Laquei Ridiculosi, or Springes for Woodcocks, London, 1613, Epigr. 76.
Owenus wondreth, since he came to Wales,
What the description of this isle should be,
That nere had seen but mountains, hills, and dales;