From the note, otherwise of no value, which accompanies the Philiphaugh MS., it is clear that the ballad was known before 1700; how much earlier it is to be put we can neither ascertain nor safely conjecture, but we may say that there is nothing in the language of the piece as it stands which obliges us to assign it a much higher antiquity.[108]
As to James Murray, laird of Traquair, whose lands the king had gifted lang syne, A 453, 481, Sheriff Plummer remarks in Herd’s MS.: “Willielmus de Moravia had forfeited the lands of ‘trakware’ ante annum 1464. As of that date I have a charter of these lands, proceeding upon his forfeiture, granted Willielmo Douglas de Cluny.” Thomas Boyd was created Earl of Arran after his marriage with the eldest sister of James III, 1467. The Earl of Hamilton is mentioned A 71, 501. Sheriff Plummer observes that there was an earl of that surname till 1503.
Scott, in his preface in the Border Minstrelsy, after professing himself unable to ascertain the foundation of the tale, goes on to state the following historical possibilities:
“This ballad ... commemorates a transaction supposed to have taken place betwixt a Scottish monarch and an ancestor of the ancient family of Murray of Philiphaugh in Selkirkshire.... It is certain that during the civil wars betwixt Bruce and Baliol the family of Philiphaugh existed and was powerful, for their ancestor, Archibald de Moravia, subscribes the oath of fealty to Edward I, A. D. 1296. It is therefore not unlikely that, residing in a wild and frontier country, they may have, at one period or other during these commotions, refused allegiance to the feeble monarch of the day, and thus extorted from him some grant of territory or jurisdiction. It is also certain that, by a charter from James IV, dated November 30, 1509, John Murray of Philiphaugh is vested with the dignity of heritable Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, an office held by his descendants till the final abolition of such jurisdictions by 28th George II, cap. 23. But it seems difficult to believe that the circumstances mentioned in the ballad could occur under the reign of so vigorous a monarch as James IV. It is true that the dramatis personæ introduced seem to refer to the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; but from this it can only be argued that the author himself lived soon after that period. It may therefore be supposed (unless further evidence can be produced tending to invalidate the conclusion) that the bard, willing to pay his court to the family, has connected his grant of the sheriffship by James IV with some former dispute betwixt the Murrays of Philiphaugh and their sovereign, occurring either while they were engaged upon the side of Baliol, or in the subsequent reigns of David II and Robert II and III, when the English possessed great part of the Scottish frontier, and the rest was in so lawless a state as hardly to acknowledge any superior.
“At the same time, this reasoning is not absolutely conclusive. James IV had particular reasons for desiring that Ettrick Forest, which actually formed part of the jointure-lands of Margaret, his queen, should be kept in a state of tranquillity: Rymer, vol. xiii, p. 66. In order to accomplish this object, it was natural for him, according to the policy of his predecessors, to invest one great family with the power of keeping order among the rest. It is even probable that the Philiphaugh family may have had claims upon part of the lordship of Ettrick Forest, which lay intermingled with their own extensive possessions, and in the course of arranging, not, indeed, the feudal superiority, but the property of these lands, a dispute may have arisen of sufficient importance to be the groundwork of a ballad.
“It is farther probable that the Murrays, like other Border clans, were in a very lawless state, and held their lands merely by occupancy, without any feudal right. Indeed, the lands of the various proprietors in Ettrick Forest (being a royal demesne) were held by the possessors, not in property, but as the kindly tenants, or rentallers, of the crown.... This state of possession naturally led to a confusion of rights and claims. The kings of Scotland were often reduced to the humiliating necessity of compromising such matters with their rebellious subjects, and James himself even entered into a sort of league with Johnnie Faa, the king of the gypsies. Perhaps, therefore, the tradition handed down in this way may have had more foundation than it would at present be proper positively to assert.”
In the way of comment upon these surmises of Scott, which proceed mainly upon what we do not know, it may be alleged that we have a fairly good record of the relations of Selkirkshire to the Scottish crown during the fourteenth century, when this district was so often changing hands between the English and the Scotch, and that there is no indication of any Murray having been concerned in winning it from the Southron, as is pretended in the ballad, either then or at any time, so that this part of the story may be set down as pure invention.[109] Hardly less fictitious seems to be the dispute between the Scottish king and a Murray, in relation to the tenure. The Murrays first became connected with Selkirkshire in 1461. John de Moravia then acquired the lands of Philiphaugh, and was afterwards appointed Custos of Newark Castle, and came into possession of Hangingshaw and Lewinshope. All of these are attributed to the Outlaw in the ballad. This John Murray was a contemporary of Boyd, Earl of Arran, and of the forfeited Murray of Traquair, but, with all this, nobody has pitched upon him for the Outlaw; and it would not have been a happy idea, for he was on perfectly good terms, and even in great favor, with the court under James III. His grandson, John Murray, was in equal or greater favor with James IV, and was made hereditary Sheriff of Selkirk in 1509, and for this last reason has been proposed for the Outlaw, though “nothing could be more improbable than that this orderly, ‘circumspect,’ and law-enforcing officer of the crown should ever take up an attitude of rebellious defiance so diametrically opposed to all we really know of his character and conduct.”[110]
Scott thought that light might be thrown upon the history of the ballad by the Philiphaugh family papers. Mr Craig-Brown gave them the accurate examination which Scott suggested, and came to the same conclusion as Aytoun, that the story told in the ballad is, if not altogether fictitious, at least greatly exaggerated. He is inclined to think that “some clue to the date of the ballad lies in the minstrel’s animus against the house of Buccleuch” (shown only in A b). “James Murray, tenth laird,” he says, “is the last mentioned in the family MSS as possessor of Newark, which castle passed into the hands of Buccleuch either in his lifetime or that of his successor, Patrick Murray. After the death of James IV at Flodden, the Queen-Regent complained loudly of Buccleuch’s encroachment upon her dowry lands of Ettrick Forest, the Custos of which domain had Newark for a residence. Buccleuch continued to keep his hold, and, as he could only do so by displacing Murray, the ill-will of the latter family was a natural consequence. By way of showing the earlier and superior title of the Murrays, the ballad-writer has either invented the story in toto, or has amplified the tradition of an actual visit paid to a former Murray by the king. Both Sir Walter Scott and the compiler of the Family Records are of opinion that John Murray, eighth laird, is the presumptive Outlaw of the song; and, as he was undoubtedly in great favor with King James IV, nothing is more likely than that the young monarch may have ended one of his hunting-expeditions to the Forest by confirming John in his hereditary sheriffship, interrupted for a few years by the appointment of Lord Home. As a matter of fact, John Murray did in 1509 obtain a royal charter from his sovereign, of the sheriffship; but, as the office had been vacant since 1506, there is nothing improbable in the supposition that he had already claimed the family rights and taken possession of the castle. Indeed, in 1503, he acted as sheriff at the queen’s infeftment in her dowry-lands of Ettrick Forest. It would have been in thorough keeping with all that is known of James IV if his Majesty had taken the opportunity to give his favorite a half-jesting reproof for his presumption; but that Murray was ever seriously outlawed is out of the question. His king heaped honors on him; and only eighty years after his death his descendant obtained a feudal precept of his lands for gratuitous services rendered to the crown by his family, ‘without default at any time in their due obedience as became faithful subjects.’ So that, granted a royal progress to Newark, followed by Murray’s investiture with the sheriffship, the poet remains chargeable with considerable embellishment. A glorification of the family of Philiphaugh and a sneer at the rapacity of Buccleuch are the evident motives of his rhyme.”[111]
“The tradition of Ettrick Forest,” says Scott, Minstrelsy, 2d ed., 1803, I, 4, “bears that the Outlaw was a man of prodigious strength, possessing a batton or club with which he laid lee (i. e. waste) the country for many miles round, and that he was at length slain by Buccleuch or some of his clan.”[112] This account is not in keeping with the conception of the Outlaw given by the ballad, but indicates the ferocious robber and murderer, the Cacus of popular story, of whom no doubt the world was actually once very guilty, and of whom there are many specimens in British tradition as elsewhere.[113] As such he seems to turn up again in Galloway, where he haunts a forest of Kirkcudbrightshire, called the Black Morrow wood, from which he sallies out “in the neighboring country at night, committing horrible outrages.” Of this personage, Mactaggart, in his Gallovidian Encyclopedia, p. 73, says:
“Tradition has him a Blackimore, ... but my opinion is that he was no Blackimore; he never saw Africa; his name must have been Murray, and as he must have been, too, an outlaw and a bloody man, gloomy with foul crimes,[114] Black prefaced it, as it did Black Douglass, and that of others; so he became Black Murray.” And he adds that this pest was disposed of by the people pouring a barrel of spirits into a spring one night when he was out on his rambles, whereof drinking the next day, he was made drunk and fell asleep, in which condition his foes dirked him; or according to others, one of the McLellans of Kirkcudbright took to the wood single-handed, found the outlaw sleeping, and drove a dirk through his head, whence the head on the dagger in the McLellans’ coat of arms.[115]