August 1, 1586, there was allowed to Yarrat James as one of six ballads ‘A merrie jest of John Tomson and Jakaman his wife,’ Arber, Stationers’ Registers, II, 450. This ballad is preserved in the Roxburghe collection, I, 254, 255, Ballad Society’s edition, II, 136, and, so far as I have observed, there only. It is subscribed M. L., initials which Mr Chappell was unable to identify, and it was imprinted at London for Edward Wright. The Roxburghe copy was reprinted by R. H. Evans, Old Ballads, 1810, I, 187. The title is
‘A merry Iest of Iohn Tomson and Jakaman his wife,
Whose jealousie was justly the cause of all their strife.’
It is dated in the Museum catalogue 1635?. This is an extremely vapid piece, and has no manner of connection with ‘John Thomson and the Turk.’ In Halliwell’s Notices of Popular English Histories, p. 91, Percy Society, vol. xxiii, there is one, No 108, of ‘John Thompson’s Man, or a short survey of the difficulties and disturbances that may attend a married life,’ etc., 24 pp., 12°. There is a copy in the Abbotsford Library.
‘To be John Thomson’s man’[15] is a Scottish proverb signifying to be submissive to a wife, or, more generally, to be complaisant. “John Thomson’s men” are “still ruled by their wives:” Colville’s Whig’s Supplication, or, The Scotch Hudibras, cited by Motherwell. “Samson was the greatest fool that ever was born, for he revealed his secrets to a daft hussie. Samson, you may well call him Fool Thompson, for of all the John Thomson’s men that ever was he was the foolest:” The Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence, etc., London, 1692 (cited by Motherwell, from the edition of 1768, in a MS. note, Appendix, p. x, in a copy of the Minstrelsy which belonged to Mr R. A. Ramsay.) Some begging verses of Dunbar to the King have the refrain, ‘God gif ye war Johne Thomsoneis man.’ (Other quotations in Leyden, p. 370, Motherwell, Appendix, p. ix.)[16]
A
Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 159; Motherwell’s MS., p. 615; Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. ix.
1
John Thomson fought against the Turks
Three years into a far country,