[169]. I have not resorted to the MS. in this case, for the reason that I could not expect to get a transcript which would merit the confidence which must attach to one made by the hand of Professor Skeat.
[170]. British Bibliographer, IV, 99 f; Wright, Songs and Ballads, p. viii; etc.
[171]. The grammatical forms of the Hunting of the Cheviot are, however, older than those of the particular copy of Otterburn which has been preserved. The plural of the noun is very often in -ës or -ys, as lordës, 231; longës, 371; handdës, 601; sydis, 82; bowys, 132, 251, 291, etc., at least sixteen cases. We find, also, sydë at 62, and possibly should read fayllë at 93. The plural in -ës is rare in The Battle of Otterburn: starrës, 454; swordës, 542; Skottës, 591, 621. Probably we are to read swordës length in 553.
[172]. See the passage in the Memoirs of Carey, Earl of Monmouth, referred to in Percy’s Reliques, 1765, I, 235, and given at length in Hales and Furnivall, II, 3 f.
[173]. The minstrel was not too nice as to topography either: Otterburn is not in Cheviot.
[174]. Tytler, History of Scotland, III, 293, though citing only the Scotichronicon, says Sir Robert Ogle, and also Scott, I, 270; for reasons which do not appear.
[175]. An Apologie for Poetrie, p. 46 of Arber’s reprint of the first edition, 1595. For the date of the writing, 1581–85, see Arber, p. 7 f.
[176]. The courtly poet deserves much of ballad-lovers for avowing his barbarousness (one doubts whether he seriously believed that the gorgeous Pindar could have improved upon the ballad), but what would he not have deserved if he had written the blind crowder’s song down!
[177]. Popular Music, I, 198. Chevy Chase is entered in the Stationers’ Registers, among a large parcel of ballads, in 1624, and clearly was no novelty: Arber, IV, 131. “Had it been printed even so early as Queen Elizabeth’s reign,” says Percy, “I think I should have met with some copy wherein the first line would have been, God prosper long our noble queen.” “That it could not be much later than that time appears from the phrase doleful dumps, which in that age carried no ill sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request, and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of had it been in the least exceptionable; see above, Book ii, song v, ver. 2 [by Richard Edwards, 1596?]. Yet, in about half a century after, it was become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Pt. I, c. 3, v. 95.” Reliques, 1794, I, 268, note, 269.
The copy in the Percy MS., B a, though carelessly made, retains, where the broadsides do not, two of the readings of A: bade on the bent, 282; to the hard head haled he, 454.