In E, which is a mere fragment, there is no fine or collection: a bold baron says, such true lovers shall not be parted, and she gets her Geordie forthwith. In F, no contribution is required, because the lady, after scattering the red gold among the poor, is still in a condition to produce the five thousand pound from her own pocket. For this she receives a ‘remit,’ with which she hies to the gallows and stops the impending execution. In I b, which is defective, the money collected is to pay the jailer’s fee. After the discharge has been secured (in two or three copies earlier), Lord Corstorph, B a, the Laird o Logie, B b, an Irish lord, C, H, an English lord, D, the gleid Argyle, I, Lord Montague, J, expresses a wish that Geordie’s head were off, because he might have succeeded to the lady. The lady checks this aspiration, sometimes in very abusive language.
The pair now ride off together, and when she is set in her saddle, no bird in bush or on briar ever sang so sweet as she, B, C, E, F, H, I. If we were to trust some of those who recite her story, the lady who has shown so much spirit and devotion was not one of those who blush to find good deeds fame. ‘Gar print me ballants that I am a worthy lady,’ B 30 makes her say; ‘Hae me to some writer’s house, that I may write down Gight’s lament and how I borrowed Geordie,’ I a 25; ‘Call for one of the best clerks, that he may write all this I’ve done for Geordie,’ J 36. What she really did say is perhaps faithfully given in D 18: ‘Where is there a writer’s house, that I may write to the north that I have won the life of Geordie?’
I and J are probably from stall-prints, and it has not been thought necessary to notice some things which may have been put into these to eke them out to a convenient length. J has an entirely spurious supplement. When the pair are riding away, and even as the wife is protesting her affection, Geordie turns round and says, A finger of Bignet’s lady’s hand is worth a’ your fair body. A dispute ensues, and Geordie pulls out a dagger and stabs his lady; he then takes to flight, and never is found. Another set, mentioned by Motherwell, makes Geordie drown his deliverer in the sea, in a fit of jealousy (Minstrelsy, p. lxxvi, 46).
There is an English broadside ballad, on the death of “George Stoole” which seemed to Motherwell “evidently imitated from the Scottish song.” This was printed by H. Gosson, whose time is put at 1607–41.[[91]] This ballad was to be sung “to a delicate Scottish tune;” Georgy comes in as a rhyme at the end of stanzas not seldom; Georgy writes to his lady, bewailing his folly; he never stole no oxe nor cow, nor ever murdered any, but fifty horse he did receive of a merchant’s man of Gory, for which he was condemned to die, and did die. These are the data for determining the question of imitation.
There is a later ‘Georgy’ ballad, of the same general cast, on the life and death of “George of Oxford,” a professed and confessed highwayman, a broadside printed in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. In this, Lady Gray hastens to Newcastle to beg Georgy’s life of the judge, and offers gold and land to save him, after the fashion of Lady Ward in ‘Hughie Graham;’ to no purpose, as in ‘Hughie Graham.’ This Georgy owns and boasts himself a thief, but with limitations much the same as those which are made a point of by the other; he never stole horse, mare, or cloven-foot, with one exception—the king’s white steeds, which he sold to Bohemia.
Both of these ballads are given in an appendix.
Whether the writers of these English ballads knew of the Scottish ‘Geordie,’ I would not undertake to affirm or deny; it is clear that some far-back reciter of the Scottish ballad had knowledge of the later English broadside. The English ballads, however, are mere “goodnights.” The Scottish ballads have a proper story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and (save one late copy), a good end, and they are most certainly original and substantially independent of the English. The Scottish Geordie is no thief, nor even a Johnie Armstrong. There are certain passages in certain versions which give that impression, it is true, but these are incongruous with the story, and have been adopted from some copy of the broadside, the later rather than the earlier. These are, the first two stanzas of F, utterly out of place, where we have the king’s horses stolen and sold in Bohemia, almost exactly as in the ballad of ‘George of Oxford,’ 15; G 7, where the Earl of Cassilis is made to steal geldings and sell them in Balleny; and J 23, in which the Laird of Gight steals one of the king’s steeds (precisely as in ‘George of Oxford’) and sells it in Bevany. That is to say, we have the very familiar case of the introduction (generally accidental and often infelicitous) of a portion of one ballad into another; which, if accidental in the present instance, would easily be accounted for by a George being the hero in each. Further; the burden of E, embodied in the ballad in two versions, I 27, J 35, has a general resemblance to that of ‘George Stoole,’ and could hardly have been original with the Scottish ballad. There was probably a ‘Geordie Luklie,’ a Scottish variety of one of the English broadsides.
G is translated by Gerhard, p. 56; A, in part, by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 101.