[109] Mr David MacRitchie, in his very interesting Ancient and Modern Britons, a book full of novel matter and views, accepts the ballad as “partly true,” apparently to the extent “that this ‘outlaw’ was as yet an actual, independent king, and that modern Selkirkshire was not a part of Scotland:” and this whether the king of Scotland was James IV or an earlier monarch, II, 136-139. This is pitting the ballad against history.
[110] Craig-Brown, II, 336-338.
[111] History of Selkirkshire, II, 355-357; see also p. 338.
[112] An account varying as to the place where the Outlaw was slain specifies Scott of Haining as the author of his death. John Murray, the Sheriff, was killed in 1510, and Andrew Ker and Thomas Scot were charged with the act, traditionally put to the account of Buccleuch and his clan, and, in particular, of Scott of Haining. (Craig-Brown, II, 338.)
[113] See Mr MacRitchie’s Ancient and Modern Britons, I, 156 ff., 136 ff., for these monsters, often described as black, in which sense, it is maintained, Murray (Morrow, Moor) is frequently to be understood.
[114] More of this Murray in Historical and Traditional Tales, Kirkcudbright, 1843, p. 112.
[115] “Sometimes it [the crest] represents some valiant act done by the bearer; thus McClelland of Bombie did, and now Lord Kirkcudbright does, bear a naked arm supporting on the point of a sword a More’s head, because, Bombie being forfeited, his son killed a More who came in with some Sarazens to infest Galloway, to the killer of whom the king had promised the forfeiture of Bombie, and thereupon he was restored to his father’s land.” Sir George Mackenzie, The Science of Herauldry, 1680, p. 90. (This reference and those to Mactaggart and the Kirkcudbright Tales were given me by Mr W. Macmath in 1883.)
[116] That it was not originally intended to insert ‘The Outlaw Murray’ in this collection will be apparent from the position which it occupies. I am convinced that it did not begin its existence as a popular ballad, and I am not convinced that (as Scott asserts) “it has been for ages a popular song in Selkirkshire.” But the “song” gained a place in oral tradition, as we see from B, C, and I prefer to err by including rather than by excluding.
FRAGMENTS
“Dispersed thro Shakspere’s plays are innumerable little fragments of ancient ballads, the entire copies of which could not be recovered,” says Bishop Percy in his preface to ‘The Friar of Orders Gray.’ What he says of Shakspere is equally true of Beaumont and Fletcher, but it is not true, in either case, that there are many fragments of popular traditional ballads. Portions of ballads of one kind or another, and still more of songs, are introduced into the plays of these authors, though not so frequently as one would suppose from Percy’s words. Ten of the twenty-eight stanzas of ‘The Friar of Orders Gray’ are taken, mostly in part only, from Shakspere and Fletcher,[117] but the original verses are from songs, not properly from ballads. It is not, however, always easy to say whether an isolated stanza belonged to a ballad or a song. Some snatches from familiar ballads, which occur in Beaumont and Fletcher, have already been given at the proper places. A few bits from unknown pieces, which occur in Shakspere, or Beaumont and Fletcher (strictly, perhaps, Fletcher), will be given here. It is surprising that other dramatists have not furnished something.