2. The castle, says Scott, is supposed by the common people to have been the castle of Newark; but “this is highly improbable, because Newark was always a royal fortress.” The only important point, however, would seem to be who was the keeper of the castle. The Douglasses are spoken of as holding it from about 1326 to 1455; John de Moravia was Custos after 1462. The Outlaw’s five hundred men are shooting on Newark lee in A b 184, and Newark lee is twice mentioned elsewhere in that copy. Sheriff Plummer in his letter to Herd says: This I take to be the castle of New-wark, on the west end of which are the arms of Scotland supported by two unicorns. But in Scott’s preface we are told that Sheriff Plummer has assured the editor that he remembered the insignia of the unicorns, etc., so often mentioned in the ballad, in existence upon the old tower at Hangingshaw. Whether the etc. covers the picture of the knight and the lady bright, and Sheriff Plummer had therefore changed his opinion, does not appear.
153. “Birkendale brae, now commonly called Birkendailly [see C 21], is a steep descent at the south side of Minchmoor, which separates Tweed-dale from the Forest, at the top of which you come first in sight of New-wark Castle.” Plummer’s letter to Herd.
19. Mr MacRitchie, II, 141 ff., considers that the Lincoln green dresses of the Outlaw’s men, and perhaps the purple of the Outlaw and his wife, show that they were “gypsies,” not perhaps of a swarthy color, but still people “living a certain archaic ‘heathen’ life,” at any rate a “wild and lawless life,” and “refusing to follow the course of civilization.” This inference from the costume seems to be not quite necessary, unless, or even if, all outlaws are “gypsies.” Robin Hood, in ‘Robin Hood and Queen Katherine,’ is dressed in scarlet red, and his men in Lincoln green (III, 199, 201). But green is the regular attire for men who shoot with the bow, III, 76 f., 91. Johnie Cock, when going out to ding the dun deer down, puts on Lincoln green, III, 3 ff. Will Stewart, even, when only going to a ball-match, clothes his men in green, and himself in scarlet red, II, 434, 437.
51. “Penman’s core, generally called Perman’s core [Permanscore in Scott, ed. 1833], is a nick or hollow on the top of a high ridge of hills a little to the east of Minchmoor.” Plummer, as before. In B 50, poor man’s house; 52, poor man’s score.[116]
A
a. Herd’s MSS, II, fol. 76, I, 255, 1795. b. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, I, 1; principally from a copy found among the papers of the late Mrs Cockburn, of Edinburgh. c. Aytoun’s Ballads of Scotland, 1859, II, 131; “from an old manuscript in the Philiphaugh charter-chest,” now not accessible. d. A copy among the Philiphaugh papers, transcribed not earlier than 1848.
1
Etrick Forest is a fair foreste,
In it grows manie a semelie trie;
The hart, the hynd, the dae, the rae,