Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS

EDITED BY

FRANCIS JAMES CHILD

IN FIVE VOLUMES

VOLUME III

NEW YORK

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is an unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, as follows:

Vol. I—Part I, 1882; Part II, 1884

Vol. II—Part III, 1885; Part IV, 1886

Vol. III—Part V, 1888; Part VI, 1889

Vol. IV—Part VII, 1890; Part VIII, 1892

Vol. V—Part IX, 1894; Part X, 1898.

This edition also contains as an appendix to Part X an essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled “Professor Child and the Ballad,” reprinted in toto from Vol. XXI, No. 4, 1906 [New Series Vol. XIV, No. 4] of the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65–24347

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc.

180 Varick Street

New York, N.Y. 10014

ADVERTISEMENT TO PART V
NUMBERS 114–155

Rev. Professor Skeat has done me the great service of collating Wynken de Worde’s text of The Gest of Robin Hood, the manuscript of Robin Hood and the Monk and of Robin Hood and the Potter, and all the Robin Hood broadsides in the Pepys collection. Mr Macmath has collated the fragments of the earlier copy of The Gest which are preserved in the Advocates’ Library, and, as always, has been most ready to respond to every call for aid. I would also gratefully acknowledge assistance received from Mr W. Aldis Wright, of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Rev. Edmund Venables, Precentor of Lincoln; Dr Furnivall; and, in America, from Mr W. W. Newell, Miss Perine and Mrs Dulany.

F. J. C.

February, 1888.

ADVERTISEMENT TO PART VI
NUMBERS 156–188

Mr Macmath has helped me in many ways in the preparation of this Sixth Part, and, as before, has been prodigal of time and pains. I am under particular obligations to Mr Robert Bruce Armstrong, of Edinburgh, for his communications concerning the ballad-folk of the Scottish border, and to Dr Wilhelm Wollner, of the University of Leipsic, and Mr George Lyman Kittredge, my colleague in Harvard College, for contributions (indicated by the initials of their names) which will be found in the Additions and Corrections. Dr Wollner will continue his services. Mr John Karłowicz, of Warsaw, purposes to review in ‘Wisła’ all the English ballads which have Polish affinities, and Professor Alexander Vesselofsky has allowed me to hope for his assistance; so that there is a gratifying prospect that the points of contact between the English and the Slavic popular ballads will in the end be amply brought out. Thanks are due and are proffered, for favors of various kinds, to Lieutenant-Colonel Lumsden, of London, Lieutenant-Colonel Prideaux, of Calcutta, Professor Skeat, Miss Isabel Florence Hapgood, Professor Vinogradof, of Moscow, Professor George Stephens, Mr Axel Olrik, of Copenhagen (to whom the completion of Svend Grundtvig’s great work has been entrusted), Mr James Barclay Murdoch, of Glasgow, Dr F. J. Furnivall, Professor C. R. Lanman, Mr P. Z. Round, and Mr W. W. Newell.

F. J. C.

July, 1889.

CONTENTS OF VOLUME III

114
JOHNIE COCK

A. Percy Papers, Miss Fisher’s MS., No 5, 1780.

B. ‘Johnny Cock,’ Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, [John Fry], p. 53.

C. ‘Johnny Cock,’ Pieces of Ancient Poetry, etc., p. 51.

D. ‘Johnie of Cockerslee,’ Kinloch’s annotated copy of his Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 38 bis.

E. ‘Johnie o Cocklesmuir,’ Kinloch MSS, VII, 29; Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 36.

F. ‘Johnie of Breadislee,’ Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 59, 1802.

G. ‘Johnnie Brad,’ Harris MS., fol. 25.

H. ‘Johnnie o Cocklesmuir,’ Buchan’s MSS, I, 82; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 77, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

I. ‘Johnie of Braidisbank,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 23.

J. Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 181.

K. Finlay’s Scottish Ballads, I, xxxi: one stanza.

L. Harris MS., fol. 25 b: one stanza.

M. Froude, Thomas Carlyle, II, 335, New York, 1882, supplemented by Mrs Aitken: one stanza.

The first notice in print of this precious specimen of the unspoiled traditional ballad is in Ritson’s Scotish Song, 1794, I, xxxvi, note 25: the Rev. Mr Boyd, the translator of Dante, had a faint recollection of three ballads, one of which was called ‘Johny Cox.’ Before this, 1780, a lady of Carlisle had sent a copy to Doctor Percy, A. Scott, 1802, was the first to publish the ballad, selecting “the stanzas of greatest merit” from several copies which were in his hands. John Fry gave two valuable fragments, C, B (which he did not separate), in his Pieces of Ancient Poetry, 1814, from a manuscript “appearing to be the text-book of some illiterate drummer.”[^[1]] I have been able to add only three versions to those which were already before the world, A, D, G; and of these D is in part the same as E, previously printed by Kinloch.

Pinkerton, Select Scotish Ballads, II, xxxix, 1783, has preserved a stanza, which he assigns to a supposititious ballad of ‘Bertram the Archer:’[^[2]]

‘My trusty bow of the tough yew,

That I in London bought,

And silken strings, if ye prove true,

That my true-love has wrought.’

This stanza agrees with J 6, and with A 18, H 19 in part, and is very likely to belong here; but it might be a movable passage, or commonplace.

All the versions are in accord as to the primary points of the story. A gallant young fellow, who pays no regard to the game-laws, goes out, despite his mother’s entreaties, to ding the dun deer down. He kills a deer, and feasts himself and his dogs so freely on it that they all fall asleep. An old palmer, a silly auld, stane-auld carl, observes him, and carries word to seven foresters [fifteen B, three (?) C]. They beset Johnie and wound him; he kills all but one, and leaves that one, badly hurt, to carry tidings of the rest. Johnie sends a bird to his mother to bid her fetch him away, F 19, 20, cf. B 13; a bird warns his mother that Johnie tarries long, H 21 (one of Buchan’s parrots). The boy in A 20, 21 is evidently a corruption of bird. Information is given the mother in a different way in L. B-G must be adjudged to be incomplete; I-M are mere fragments. H has a false and silly conclusion, 22–24, in imitation of Robin Hood and of Adam Bell. Mrs Harris had heard another version besides G (of which she gives only one stanza, L), in which “Johnie is slain and thrown owre a milk-white steed; news is sent to Johnie’s mother, who flies to her son.” It is the one forester who is not quite killed that is thrown over his steed to carry tidings home, F 18, G 11. D 19, E 17, and Mrs Harris’s second version are, as to this point, evidently corrupted.

The hero’s name is Johnny Cock, B 2, C 1; Johny Cox, Rev. Mr Boyd; John o Cockis (Johny Cockis?), H 17; Johny o Cockley’s Well, A 14; o Cockerslee, D 14; of Cockielaw, in one of the versions used by Scott for F; o Cocklesmuir, E 13, H 15. Again, Johnie Brad, G 1, L; Johnie o Breadislee, F 14; Braidislee, J 2.

The hunting-ground, or the place where Johnie is discovered, is up in Braidhouplee, down in Bradyslee, A 6, high up in Bradyslee, low down in Bradyslee, A 12; Braidscaur Hill, D 6, Braidisbanks, D 12, I 1; Bride’s Braidmuir, H 2, 5; Broadspear Hill, E 2, 5; Durrisdeer only in F 4. The seven foresters are of Pickeram Side, A 3, 19; of Hislinton, F 9. B 1¹ reads, Fifteen foresters in the braid alow; which seems to require emendation, perhaps simply to Braid alow, perhaps to Braidislee.

With regard to the localities in A, Percy notes that Pickeram Side is in Northumbria, and that there is a Cockley Tower in Erringside, near Brady’s Cragg, and a Brady’s Cragg near Chollerford Bridge. There is a Cockley, alias Cocklaw, in Erringside, near Chollerton, in the south division of Tynedale Ward, parish of St John Lee. The Erring is a small stream which enters the Tyne between Chollerton and Chollerford. Again, Cocklaw Walls appears in the map of the Ordnance Survey, a little to the north and east of Cockley in Erringside, and Cocklaw Walls may represent the Cockley’s Well of the ballad. (Percy notes that Cockley’s Well is said to be near Bewcastle, Cumberland.) I have not found Brady’s Cragg or Pickeram Side in the Ordnance Survey maps, nor indeed any of the compounds of Braidy or Braid anywhere.

There is a Braid a little to the south of Edinburgh, Braid Hills and Braid Burn; and Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. 17, says that there is tradition for this region having been the hunting-ground.

Scott’s copy, F, lays the scene in Dumfriesshire, and there is other tradition to the same effect.[^[3]]

Percy was struck with the occurrence of the wolf in A 17, found also in B 10, C 5. He considered, no doubt, that the mention of the wolf was a token of the high antiquity of the ballad. “Wolues that wyryeth men, wommen and children” are spoken of in Piers Plowman, C, Passus, X, v. 226, Skeat, 1886, I, 240, and the C text is assigned to about 1393. Holinshed (1577), I, 378, says that though the island is void of wolves south of the Tweed, yet the Scots cannot boast the like, since they have grievous wolves.

F is translated by Schubart, p. 187; Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 41, Hausschatz, p. 224; Doenniges, p. 10; Gerhard, p. 51; R. von Bismarck, Deutsches Museum, 1858, I, 897; Cesare Cantù, Documenti alla Storia Universale, V, 806; in Le Magasin Pittoresque, 1838, p. 127 b; by Loève-Veimars, p. 296. Grundtvig, p. 269, No 41, translates a compound of F, I, E (Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 36), and B; Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 18, a mixture of F and others.

A

Communicated to Percy by Miss Fisher, of Carlisle, 1780, No 5 of MS.

1

Johny he has risen up i the morn,

Calls for water to wash his hands;

But little knew he that his bloody hounds

Were bound in iron bands. bands

Were bound in iron bands

2

Johny’s mother has gotten word o that,

And care-bed she has taen:

‘O Johny, for my benison,

I beg you’l stay at hame;

For the wine so red, and the well baken bread,

My Johny shall want nane.

3

‘There are seven forsters at Pickeram Side,

At Pickeram where they dwell,

And for a drop of thy heart’s bluid

They wad ride the fords of hell.’

4

Johny he’s gotten word of that,

And he’s turnd wondrous keen;

He’s put off the red scarlett,

And he’s put on the Lincolm green.

5

With a sheaf of arrows by his side,

And a bent bow in his hand,

He’s mounted on a prancing steed,

And he has ridden fast oer the strand.

6

He’s up i Braidhouplee, and down i Bradyslee,

And under a buss o broom,

And there he found a good dun deer,

Feeding in a buss of ling.

7

Johny shot, and the dun deer lap,

And she lap wondrous wide,

Until they came to the wan water,

And he stemd her of her pride.

8

He ’as taen out the little pen-knife,

’Twas full three quarters long,

And he has taen out of that dun deer

The liver bot and the tongue.

9

They eat of the flesh, and they drank of the blood,

And the blood it was so sweet,

Which caused Johny and his bloody hounds

To fall in a deep sleep.

10

By then came an old palmer,

And an ill death may he die!

For he’s away to Pickram Side,

As fast as he can drie.

11

‘What news, what news?’ says the Seven Forsters,

‘What news have ye brought to me?’

‘I have noe news,’ the palmer said,

‘But what I saw with my eye.

12

‘High up i Bradyslee, low down i Bradisslee,

And under a buss of scroggs,

O there I spied a well-wight man,

Sleeping among his dogs.

13

‘His coat it was of light Lincolm,

And his breeches of the same,

His shoes of the American leather,

And gold buckles tying them.’

14

Up bespake the Seven Forsters,

Up bespake they ane and a’:

O that is Johny o Cockleys Well,

And near him we will draw.

15

O the first y stroke that they gae him,

They struck him off by the knee;

Then up bespake his sister’s son:

‘O the next’ll gar him die!’

16

‘O some they count ye well-wight men,

But I do count ye nane;

For you might well ha wakend me,

And askd gin I wad be taen.

17

‘The wildest wolf in aw this wood

Wad not ha done so by me;

She’d ha wet her foot ith wan water,

And sprinkled it oer my brae,

And if that wad not ha wakend me,

She wad ha gone and let me be.

18

‘O bows of yew, if ye be true,

In London, where ye were bought,

Fingers five, get up belive,

Manhuid shall fail me nought.’

19

He has killd the Seven Forsters,

He has killd them all but ane,

And that wan scarce to Pickeram Side,

To carry the bode-words hame.

20

‘Is there never a boy in a’ this wood

That will tell what I can say;

That will go to Cockleys Well,

Tell my mither to fetch me away?’

21

There was a boy into that wood,

That carried the tidings away,

And many ae was the well-wight man

At the fetching o Johny away.

B

Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, p. 53.

1

Fifteen foresters in the Braid alow,

And they are wondrous fell;

To get a drop of Johnny’s heart-bluid,

They would sink a’ their souls to hell.

2

Johnny Cock has gotten word of this,

And he is wondrous keen;

Heś custan off the red scarlet,

And on the Linkum green.

3

And he is ridden oer muir and muss,

And over mountains high,

Till he came to yon wan water,

And there Johnny Cock did lie.

4

They have ridden oer muir and muss,

And over mountains high,

Till they met wi’ an old palmer,

Was walking along the way.

5

‘What news, what news, old palmer?

What news have you to me?’

‘Yonder is one of the proudest wed sons

That ever my eyes did see.’

*       *       *       *       *

6

He’s taen out a horn from his side,

And he blew both loud and shrill,

Till a’ the fifteen foresters

Heard Johnny Cock blaw his horn.

7

They have sworn a bluidy oath,

And they swore all in one,

That there was not a man among them a’

Would blaw such a blast as yon.

8

And they have ridden oer muir and muss,

And over mountains high,

Till they came to yon wan water,

Where Johnny Cock did lie.

9

They have shotten little Johnny Cock,

A little above the ee:

. . . . . . .

‘For doing the like to me.

10

‘There’s not a wolf in a’ the wood

Woud ’ ha’ done the like to me;

‘She’d ha’ dipped her foot in coll water,

And strinkled above my ee,

And if I would not have waked for that,

‘She’d ha’ gane and let me be.

11

‘But fingers five, come here, [come here,]

And faint heart fail me nought,

And silver strings, value me sma things,

Till I get all this vengeance rowght!’

12

He ha shot a’ the fifteen foresters,

Left never a one but one,

And he broke the ribs a that ane’s side,

And let him take tiding home.

13

‘... a bird in a’ the wood

Could sing as I could say,

It would go in to my mother’s bower,

And bid her kiss me, and take me away.’

C

Pieces of Ancient Poetry from Unpublished Manuscripts and Scarce Books, Bristol, 1814, p. 51.

1

Johnny Cock, in a May morning,

Sought water to wash his hands,

And he is awa to louse his dogs,

That’s tied wi iron bans.

That’s tied wi iron bans

2

His coat it is of the light Lincum green,

And his breiks are of the same;

His shoes are of the American leather,

Silver buckles tying them.

3

‘He’ hunted up, and so did ‘he’ down,

Till ‘he’ came to yon bush of scrogs,

And then to yon wan water,

Where he slept among his dogs.

*       *       *       *       *

4

Johnny Cock out-shot a’ the foresters,

And out-shot a the three;

Out shot a’ the foresters,

Wounded Johnny aboun the bree.

5

‘Woe be to you, foresters,

And an ill death may you die!

For there would not a wolf in a’ the wood

Have done the like to me.

6

‘For’ ’twould ha’ put its foot in the coll water

And ha strinkled it on my bree,

And gin that would not have done,

Would have gane and lett me be.

7

‘I often took to my mother

The dandoo and the roe,

But now I’l take to my mother

Much sorrow and much woe.

8

‘I often took to my mother

The dandoo and the hare,

But now I’l take to my mother

Much sorrow and much care.’

D

Kinloch’s annotated copy of his Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 38 bis: a West-Country version.

1

Up Johnie raise in a May morning,

Calld for water to wash his hands,

And he has calld for his gude gray hunds,

That lay bund in iron bands. bands

That lay bund in iron bands

2

‘Ye’ll busk, ye’ll busk my noble dogs,

Ye’ll busk and mak them boun,

For I’m going to the Braidscaur hill,

To ding the dun deer doun.’

3