158. Hugh Spencer’s Feats in France.
III, 276, note †. I had remarked that this ballad was after the fashion of Russian bylinas. Professor Wollner indicates especially the bylina of Dobrynja and Vasilij Kazimirović, which in a general way is singularly like ‘Hugh Spencer.’ In this very fine ballad, Vladimir is in arrears with his tribute to a Saracen king, and appoints Vasilij his envoy, to make payment. Vasilij asks that he may have Dobrynja go with him, and Dobrynja asks for Ivanuka’s company. (Compare B.) Dobrynja beats the king at chess and at the bow (which corresponds to the justing in the English ballad); then follows a great fight, the result of which is that the Saracen king is fain to pay tribute himself. Wollner, Volksepik der Grossrussen, pp. 123–125.
Other examples of difficult feats done in foreign lands, commonly by comrades of the hero, in Karadić, II, 445, 465, Nos 75, 79; also II, 132, No 29; and the Bulgarian Sbornik, II, 130, 1, 132, 3. (W. W.)
161. The Battle of Otterburn.
Pp. 294, 520. St George Our Lady’s Knight. ‘Swete Sainct George, our ladies knyght,’ Skelton, ‘Against the Scottes,’ v. 141, Dyce, I, 186; ‘Thankyd be Saynte Gorge our ladyes knythe,’ in the ‘Ballade of the Scottysche Kynge,’ p. 95 of the fac-simile edition by J. Ashton, 1882 (where the passage is somewhat different). In his note, II, 220, to the poem ‘Against the Scottes,’ Dyce remarks that St George is called Our Lady’s Knight “in a song written about the same time as the present poem, Cott. MS. Domit. A. xviii. fol. 248.” This appears to be the song quoted from the same MS. by Sir H. Ellis, Original Letters, First Series, I, 79:
‘Swet Sent Jorge, our Ladyes knyte,
Save Kyng Hary bothe be day and nyȝth.’
In his Chorus de Dis, super triumphali victoria contra Gallos, etc., Skelton speaks of St George as Gloria Cappadocis divæ milesque Mariæ, v. 13; Dyce, I, 191. See also John Anstis, The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, London, 1724, I, 122; II, 27, 48 f. (G. L. K.)
299. C. First published in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 27. 13,4 there read The doughty earl of Douglas rode Into England, to catch a prey; 311, Yield thee, O yield thee, etc., and 313, Whom to shall I yield, said, etc.
For his later edition of ‘The Battle of Otterburn,’ Scott says he used “two copies ... obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest.” James Hogg sent Scott, in a letter dated September 10 (1802?), twenty-nine stanzas “collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind,” and subsequently recovered, by “pumping” his “old friends’ memory,” other lines and half lines out of which (using the necessary cement, and not a little) he built up eleven stanzas more, and these he seems to have forwarded in the same letter. These two communications are what is described by Scott as two copies. They will be combined here according to Hogg’s directions, and the second set of verses bracketed for distinction.