The Miscellaneous Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart, containing introductory remarks on popular poetry; and new introductions to Lay of the Last Minstrel; Marmion; Lady of the Lake; Rokeby; and Lord of the Isles; also, the tragedy of Macduff's Cross; Doom of Devorgoil; and the Ayrshire Tragedy

Front matter

THE MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OF .SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. sum WAiLf !___ §<3®tt mAWir Edinburgl Published by Cadell _ _° land. r h f. MISCELLANEOUS WORKS OB SIR WALTER SCOTT, Bart. CONTAINING INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON POPULAR POETRY; AND NEW INTRODUCTIONS TO LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL; MARMION; LADY OF THE LAKE; ROKEBY; AND LORD OF THE ISLES; ALSO, THE TRAGEDY OF MACDUFF'S CROSS; DOOM OF DEVORGOIL; AND THE AYRSHIRE TRAGEDY. PRINTED FOR CADELL AND COMPANY, EDINBURGH; AND SIMPKIN AND MARSHALL, LONDON. 1836. TO HIS GRACK WALTER FRANCIS MONTAGU SCOTT DOUGLAS, DUKE OK BUCCLEUCH AND QUEENSBERRY, <_c. &_ „c My Lord Duke, In inscribing these volumes to your Grace, I am fortunately emancipated from the necessity of intruding upon you the common-place sub jects of dedication. Most of these Poems have been long before the public, and were inscribed, at the time of their publication, to the various excellent persons most nearly connected with your Grace, whose names they retain.

I am, therefore, well aware, that from the respect you h~ a DEDICATION. bear to their memory, these compositions, of little intrinsic value in themselves, will, like other memorials of dear friends who have been removed from the world, possess some value in your Grace's estimation from the names of their former patrons. May your Grace live long to exercise the vir tues of your predecessors, whose rank and du ties you inherit along with their possessions. Such is the sincere wish of, My Lord Duke. Your Grace's early Friend, And much obliged humble Servant, Walter Scott. Abbotsfokd. April, 1*10.

Preface

. J. he first of these dramatic pieces was long since written, for the purpose of obliging the late Mr Terry, then Manager of the Adelphi Theatre, for whom the Author had a particular regard. The manner in which the mimic gob lins of Devorgoil are intermixed with the su pernatural machinery, was found to be objec tionable, and the production had other faults, which rendered it unfit for representation. I have called the piece a Melo-drama, for want of a better name ; but, as I learn from the un questionable authority of Mr Colman's Random Records, that one species of the drama is termed an extravaganza, I am sorry I was not sooner t

PREFACE.

. 11 aware of a more appropriate name than that which I had selected for Devorgoil. The Author's Publishers thought it desirable, that the scenes, long condemned to oblivion, should be united to similar attempts of the same kind ; and as he felt indifferent on the subject, they are printed in the same volume with MacDuff's Cross, and thrown off in a se parate form, for the convenience of those who possess former editions of the Author's Poetical Works. The general story of the Doom of Devorgoil is founded on an old Scottish tradition, the scene of which lies in Galloway. The crime suppo sed to have occasioned the misfortunes of this devoted house, is similar to that of a Lord Her ries of Hoddam Castle, who is the principal per sonage of Mr Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe's in teresting ballad, in the Minstrelsy of the Scot tish Border, vol. III. p. 352. In remorse for his crime, he built the singular monument called

PREFACE.

. ILL the Tower of Repentance. In many cases the Scottish superstitions allude to the fairies, or those who, for sins of a milder description, are permitted to wander with the " rout that never rest," as they were termed by Dr Leyden. They imitate human labour and human amusements, but their toil is useless, and without any ad vantageous result ; and their gaiety is unsub stantial and hollow. The phantom of Lord Erick is supposed to be a spectre of this cha racter. The story of the Ghostly Barber is told in many countries ; but the best narrative founded on the passage, is the tale called Stumme Liebe, among the legends of Musæus. I think it has been introduced upon the English stage in some pantomime, which was one objection to bringing it upon the scene a second time. Abbotsfokd, April, 1830. f INTRODUCTORY REMARKS ON POPULAR POETRY, AND ON THE VARIOUS COLLECTIONS OF BALLADS OF BRITAIN PARTICULARLY THOSE OF SCOTLAND.

The Introduction originally prefixed to this collection, was rather of a historical than literary nature ; and the remarks which follow have been added, to afford the general reader some information upon the character of Ballad Poetry. It woidd be throwing away words to prove, what all must admit, the general taste and pro pensity of nations in their early state, to cul tivate some species of rude poetry. When the organs and faculties of a primitive race have A developed themselves, each for its proper and necessary use, there is a natural tendency to employ them in a more refined and regulated manner for purposes of amusement. The sa vage, after proving the activity of his limbs in the chase or the battle, trains them to more measured movements, to dance at the festivals of his tribe, or to perform obeisance before the altars of his deity.

From the same impulse, he is disposed to refine the ordinary speech which forms the vehicle of social communication be twixt him and his brethren, until, by a more ornate diction, modulated by certain rules of rhythm, cadence, assonance of termination, or recurrence of sound or letter, he obtains a dialect more solemn in expression, to record the laws or exploits of his tribe, or more sweet in sound, in which to plead his own cause to his mistress. This species of original poetry must have one general character in all nations, whether in its merits or imperfections. The earlier poets have the advantage, and it is not a small one, of ha ving the first choice out of the stock of materials which are proper to the art ; and thus they compel later authors, if they would avoid sla vishly imitating the fathers of verse, into vari ous devices, often more ingenious than elegant, that they may establish, if not an absolute claim to originality, at least a visible distinction be twixt themselves and their predecessors.

Thus it happens, that early poets almost uniformly display a bold, rude, original cast of genius and expression. They have walked at free-will, and with unconstrained steps, along the wilds of Parnassus, while their followers move with constrained gestures and forced attitudes, in order to avoid placing their feet where their pre decessors have stepped before them. The first bard who compared his hero to a lion, struck a bold and congenial note, though the simile, in a nation of hunters, be a very obvious one ; but every subsequent poet wdio shall use it, must either struggle hard to give his lion, as he ralds say, with a difference, or lie under the imputation of being a servile imitator. It is not probable that, by any researches of modern times, we shall ever reach back to an earlier model of poetry than Homer ; but as there lived heroes before Agamemnon, so, unques tionably, poets existed before the immortal Bard who gave the King of kings his fame ; and he whom all civilized nations now acknowledge as the Father of Poetry, must have himself looked back to an ancestry of poetical predecessors, and is only held original because we know not from whom he copied.

Indeed, though much must be ascribed to the riches of his own individual genius, the poetry of Homer argues a degree of perfection in an art which practice had already rendered regular, and concerning which, his frequent mention of the bards, or chanters of poetry, indicates plainly that it was studied by many, and known and admired by all. It is indeed easily discovered, that the qualities necessary for composing such poems are not the talent of every man in the tribe ; that the bard, to reach excellence in his art, must possess something more than a full command of words and phrases, and the knack of arranging them in such form as ancient examples have fixed upon as the recognised structure of national verse. The tribe speedily become sen sible, that besides this degree of mechanical facility, which (like making what are called at school nonsense verses) may be attained by dint of memory and practice, much higher qualifica tions are demanded.

A keen and active power of observation, capable of perceiving at a glance the leading circumstances from which the in cident described by the poet derives its cha racter ; quick and powerful feelings, to enable the bard to comprehend and describe those of the actors in his poem ; and a command of language, alternately soft and elevated, and suit ed to express the conceptions which he had formed in his mind, are all necessary to eminence in the poetical art. Above all, to attain the highest point of his profession, the poet must have that original power of embodying and detailing circum stances, which can place before the eyes of others a scene which only exists in his own imagination. This last high and creative faculty, namely, that of impressing the mind of the hearers with scenes and sentiments having no existence save through their art, has prociu-ed for the bards of Greece the term of IT_ .-m?, which, as it singularly happens, is literally translated by the Scottish epithet for the same class of persons, whom they termed the Makers.

The French phrase of Trouveurs, or Troubadours, namely, the Finders, or Inventors, has the same reference to the quality of original conception and inven tion proper to the poetical art, and without which it can hardly be said to exist to any pleasing or useful purpose. The mere arrangement of words into poetical rhythm, or combining them according to a tech nical rule or measure, is so closely connected with the art of music, that an alliance between these two fine arts is very soon closely formed. It is fruitless to enquire which of them has been first invented, since doubtless the prece dence is accidental ; and it signifies little whether the musician adapts verses to a rude tune, or whether the primitive poet, in reciting his productions, falls naturally into a chant or song. With this additional accomplishment, the poet becomes __<J-<-, or the man of song, and his character is complete when the additional ac companiment of a lute or harp is added to his vocal performance.

Here, therefore, we have the history of early poetry in all nations. But it is evident that, though poetry seems a plant proper to almost all soils, yet not only is it of various kinds, according to the climate and country in which it has its origin, but the poetry of different nations differs still more widely in the degree of ex cellence which it attains. This must depend in some measure, no doubt, on the temper and manners of the people, on their proximity to those spirit-stirring events which are naturally selected as the subject of poetry, and on the more comprehensive or energetic character of the language spoken by the tribe. But the pro gress of the art is far more dependent upon the rise of some highly-gifted individual, possessing in a pre-eminent and uncommon degree the powers demanded, whose talents influence the taste of a whole nation, and entail on their posterity and language a character almost indelibly sacred.

In this respect Homer stands alone and unrivalled, as a light from whose lamp the ge nius of successive ages, and of distant nations, has caught fire and illumination ; and who, though the early poet of a rude age, has pur chased for the era he has celebrated, so much reverence, that, not daring to bestow on it the term of barbarous, we distinguish it as the he roic period. No other poet (sacred and inspired authors excepted) ever did, or ever will, possess the same influence over posterity, in so many distant lands, as has been acquired by the blind old man of Chios ; yet we are assured that his works, collected by the pious care of Pisistratus, who caused to be united into their present form those divine poems, would otherwise, if pre served at all, have appeared to succeeding ge nerations in the humble state of a collection POPULAR POETRY. of detached ballads, connected only as referring to the same age, the same general subject, and the same cycle of heroes, like the metrical poems of the Cid in Spain, or of Robin Hood in England.

In other countries, less favoured, either in language or in picturesque incident, it cannot be supposed that even the genius of Homer could have soared to such exclusive eminence, since he must at once have been deprived of the subjects and themes so well adapted for his muse, and of the lofty, melodious, and flexible language in which he recorded them. Other nations, during the formation of their ancient poetry, wanted the genius of Homer, as well as his picturesque scenery and lofty language. Yet the investiga tion of the early poetry of every nation, even the rudest, carries with it an object of curiosity and interest. It is a chapter in the history of the childhood of society, and its resemblance to, or dissimilarity from, the popular rhymes of other nations in the same stage, must needs illustrate the ancient history of states ; their slower or more rapid progress towards civilisa tion ; their' gradual or more rapid adoption of manners, sentiments, and religion.

The study, therefore, of lays rescued from the gulf of obli vion, must in every case possess considerable interest for the moral phflosopher and general historian. The historian of an individual nation is equally or more deeply interested in the re searches into popular poetry, since he must not disdain to gather from the tradition conveyed in ancient ditties and ballads, the information ne cessary to confirm or correct intelligence col lected from more certain sources. And although the poets were a fabling race from the very be ginning of time, and so much addicted to exag geration, that their accounts are seldom to be relied on without corroborative evidence, yet instances frequently occur where the statements of poetical tradition are unexpectedly con firmed. To the lovers and admirers of poetry as an art, it cannot be uninteresting to have a glimpse POPULAR POETRY. of the National Muse in her cradle, or to hear her babbling the earliest attempts at the formation of the tuneful sounds with which she was afterwards to charm posterity.

And I may venture to add, that among poetry, which, however rude, was a gift of Nature's first fruits, even a reader of refined taste will find his patience rewarded, by passages in which the rude minstrel rises into sublimity or melts into pathos. These were the merits which induced the classical Addison to write an elaborate commentary upon the ballad of Chevy Chase, and which roused, like the sound of a trumpet, the heroic blood of Sir Philip Sidney. It is true, that passages of this high character occur seldom ; for during the infancy of the art of poetry, the bards have been generally satis fied with a rude and careless expression of their sentiments ; and even when a more felicitous ex pression, or loftier numbers, have been dictated by the enthusiasm of the composition, the ad vantage came unsought for, and perhaps un noticed, either by the minstrel or the audience.

Another cause contributed to the tenuity of thought and poverty of expression, by which old ballads are too often distinguished. The apparent simplicity of the ballad stanza carried with it a strong temptation to loose and trivial composition. The collection of rhymes, accumulated by the earliest of the craft, have been formed into a joint stock for the common use of the profession ; and not mere rhymes only, but verses and stanzas, have been used as common property, so as to give an appearance of sameness and crudity to the whole series of popular poetry. Such, for instance, is the salu tation so often repeated, Now Heaven thee save, thou brave young knight, Now Heaven thee save and see. And such the usual expression for taking counsel with, Rede me, rede me, brother dear, My rede shall rise at thee.

Such also is the unvaried account of the rose and the briar, which are said to spring out of the grave of the hero and heroine of these metrical legends, with little effort at a variation of the expressions in which the incident is prescrip tively told. The least acquaintance with the sub ject will recall a great number of commonplace verses, which each ballad-maker has uncere moniously appropriated to himself; thereby greatly facilitating his own task, and at the same time degrading his art by his slovenly use of over-scutched phrases. From the same in dolence, the ballad-mongers of most nations have availed themselves of every opportunity of pro longing their pieces of the same kind, without the labour of actual composition. If a message is to be delivered, the poet seizes the opportunity of saving himself a little trouble, by using exactly the same words in which it was originally couched, to secure its being transmitted to the person for whose ear it was intended.

The bards of ruder climes, and less favoured lan guages, may indeed claim the countenance of Homer for such repetitions ; but whilst, in the Father of Poetry, they give the reader au opportunity to pause, and look back upon the en chanted ground over wdiich they have travelled, they afford nothing to the modern bard, save facilitating the power of stupifying the audience with stanzas of dull and tedious iteration. Another cause of the flatness and insipidity, which is the great imperfection of ballad poet ry, is to be ascribed less to the compositions in their original state, when rehearsed by their original authors, than to the ignorance and errors of the reciters or transcribers, by whom they have been transmitted to us. The more po pular the composition of an ancient poet, or Maker, became, the greater chance there was of its being corrupted ; for a poem transmitted through a number of reciters, like a book re printed in a multitude of editions, incurs the risk of impertinent interpolations from the conceit of one rehearser, unintelligible blunders from the stupidity of another, and omissions equally to be regretted, from the want of me mory in a third.

This sort of injury is felt very early, and the reader will find a curious instance in the Introduction to the Romance of Sir Tristrem.* Robert de Brunne there com plains, that though the Romance of Sir Tristrem was the best which had ever been made, if it could be recited as composed by the author, Tho mas of Erceldoune ; yet that it was written in such an ornate style of language, and such a difficult strain of versification, as to lose all value in the mouths of ordinary minstrels, who could scarcely repeat one stanza without omitting some part of it, and marring, consequently, both the sense and the rhythm of the passage. This deterioration could not be limited to one author alone ; others must have suffered from the same cause, in the same or a greater degree. Nay, we are authorized to conclude, that in proportion to the care bestowed by the author upon any poem, to attain what his age might suppose to be the highest graces of poetry, the greater was the damage which it sustained by the inac curacy of reciters, or their desire to humble both * See vol. iv.

Introduction, p. the sense and diction of the poem to their own powers of recollection, and the comprehension of a vulgar audience. It cannot be expected that compositions subjected in this way to mutilation and corruption, should continue to present their original sense or diction ; aud the accuracy of our editions of popular poetry, unless in the rare event of recovering original or early copies, is lessened in proportion. But the chance of these corruptions is incal culably increased, when we consider that the ballads have been, not in one, but innumerable instances of transmission, liable to similar al terations, through a long course of centuries, during which they have been transmitted through the medium of one ignorant reciter to another, each discarding whatever original words or expressions time or fashion had, in his opinion, rendered obsolete, and substituting anachronisms by expressions taken from the customs of his own time.

And here it may be remarked, that the desire of the reciter to be intelligible, however natural and laudable, has been one of the greatest causes of the deterio ration of ancient poetry. The minstrel who endeavoured to recite with fidelity the words of the author, might indeed fall into errors of sound and sense, and substitute corruptions for words he did not understand. But the exercise of a slight degree of ingenuity on the part of a skilful critic could often, in that case, revive and restore the original meaning ; while the corrupted words became, in such cases, a wrarrant for the authenticity of the whole poem* In general, however, the more modern reciters appear to have been far less desirous to speak the author's words, than to introduce amend ments and new readings of their own, which have always produced the effect of modernizing, and * An instance occurs in the valuable old ballad, called Auld Maitland.

The reciter repeated a verse, descriptive of the defence of a castle, thus : With spring-wall, stanes, and goads of aim Among them fast he threw. Spring-wall, a corruption of springald, a military engine for casting darts or stones ; the restoration of which reading gives a precise and clear sense to the lines. R usually that of degrading and vulgarizing, the rugged sense and spirit of the original minstrel. Thus, undergoing from age to age a gradual process of alteration and recomposition, our po pular and oral minstrelsy has lost, in a great measure, its original appearance, and the strong touches by which it had been formerly charac terized, have been generally smoothed down and destroyed by a process similar to that by which a coin, passing from hand to hand, loses in circulation all the finer marks of the original impress.

The very fine ballad of Chevy Chase is an example of this degrading species of alchemy, by which the ore of antiquity is deteriorated and adulterated. While Addison, in an age which had never attended to popular poetry, wrote his classical criticism on that ballad, he naturally took for his text the ordinary stall-copy, al though he might, and ought to have sUaSpected, that a ditty couched in the language nearly of his own time, could not be the same with that which Sir Philip Sidney, more than one hundred years before, had spoken of, as being " evil ap parelled in the dust and cobwebs of an uncivi lized age." The venerable Bishop Percy was the first to correct this mistake, by producing a copy of the song, as old at least as the reign of Henry VII., bearing the name of the author, or transcriber, Richard Sheale.

But even the reverend Editor himself fell under the mistake of supposing the modern and common copy of Chevy Chase to be a new copy of the original ballad, expressly modernized by a later bard. On the contrary, the current version is now universally allowed to have been produced by the gradual alterations of numerous reciters, during two centuries, in the course of which the modern version has been gradually mould ed into a composition bearing only a general resemblance to the original poem, expressing the same events and sentiments in much smoother language, and more flowing and easy versification ; but losing in poetical fire and energy, and in the vigour and pithiness of the expression, a great deal more than it has gained in suavity of diction. From this, and other ex amples of the same kind, of which several might be quoted, we must often expect to find the remains of Minstrel poetry, composed originally for the courts of princes and halls of nobles, disguised in the more modern and vulgar dialect in which they have been of late sung to the fre quenters of the rustic ale-bench.

It is unneces sary to mention more than one other remark able and humbling instance, printed in the cu rious collection entitled, a Ballad Book, where we find, in the words of the ingenious Editor, a stupid ballad printed as it was sung in An nandale, founded on the wTell-knowrn story of the Prince of Salerno's daughter, but with the uncouth change of Dysmal for Ghismonda, and Guiscard transformed into a greasy kitchen boy. " To what base uses may we not return !" Sometimes a still more material and sys tematic difference appears between the poems of antiquity, as they were originally composed, and as they now exist. This occurs in cases where the longer metrical romances, which were in fashion during the middle ages, were reduced to shorter compositions, in "order that they might be chanted before an inferior audience.

A ballad, for example, of Thomas of Ercel doune, and his intrigues with the Queen of Faery-Land, is, or has been, long current in Teviotdale, and other parts of Scotland. Two ancient copies of a poem, or romance, on the same subject, and containing very often the same wrords and turns of expression, are pre served in the libraries of the Cathedral of Lin coln and Peterborough.* We are left to conjec ture whether the originals of such ballads have been gradually contracted into their modern shape by the impatience of later audiences, com bined with the lack of memory displayed by more modern reciters, or whether, in particular cases, some ballad-maker may have actually set himself to work to retrench the old details of the minstrels, and regularly and systemati cally to modernize, and, if the phrase be permit- * Volume iii. of the Minstrelsy, pp. 174, 180. ted, to balladize, a metrical romance.

We are assured, however, that Roswal and Lilian was sung through the streets of Edinburgh two ge nerations since ; and we know that the Romance of Sir Eger, Sir Grime, and Sir Greysteil, had also its own particular chant, or tune. The stall-copies of both these romances, as they now exist, are very much abbreviated, and pro bably exhibit them when they were undergoing, or had nearly undergone, the process of being cut down into ballads. Taking into consideration the various indirect channels by which the popular poetry of our ancestors has been transmitted to their poste rity, it is nothing surprising that it should reach us in a mutilated and degraded state, and that it should little correspond with the ideas we are apt to form of the first productions of national genius ; nay, it is more to be wandered at that we possess so many ballads of considerable merit, than that the much greater number of them which must have once existed, should have perished before our time.

Having given this brief account of ballad poetry in general, the purpose of the present prefatory remarks will be accomplished, by shortly noticing the popular poetry of Scotland, and some of the efforts which have been made to collect and illustrate it. It is now generallyadmitted that the Scots and Picts, however differing otherwise, were each by descent a Celtic race ; that they advanced in a course of victory somewhat farther than the present frontier between England and Scot land, and about the end of the eleventh century subdued and rendered tributary the Britons of Strathcluyd, who were also a Celtic race like themselves. Excepting, therefore, the provinces of Berwickshire and the Lothians, which were chiefly inhabited by an Anglo-Saxon popula tion, the whole of Scotland was peopled by different tribes of the same aboriginal race, — a race passionately addicted to music, as appears from the kindred Celtic nations of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish, preserving each to this day a style and character of music peculiar to their own country, though all three bear marks of general resemblance to each other.

That of Scotland, in particular, is early noticed and extolled by an cient authors, and its remains, to which the na tives are passionately attached, are still found to afford pleasure even to those who cultivate the art upon a more refined and varied system. This skill in music did not, of course, exist without a corresponding degree of talent for a species of poetry, adapted to the habits of the country, celebrating the victories of triumphant clans, pouring forth lamentations over fallen heroes, and recording such marvellous adventures as were calculated to amuse individual families around their household fires, or the whole tribe when regaling in the hall of the chief. It happened, however, singularly enough, that while the music continued to be Celtic in its general measure, the language of Scotland, most commonly spoken, began to be that of their neighbours the English, introduced by the multitude of Saxons who thronged to the court of Malcolm Canmore and his successors ; by the crowds of prisoners of war, whom the repeated ravages of the Scots in Northumberland carried off as slaves to their country ; by the influence of the inhabitants of the richest and most populous provinces in Scotland, Berwick shire, namely, and the Lothians, over the more mountainous ; lastly, by the superiority which a language like the Anglo-Saxon, considerably refined, long since reduced to writing, and ca pable of expressing the wants, wishes, and sen timents of the speakers, must have possessed over the jargon of various tribes of Irish and British origin, limited and contracted in every varying dialect, and differing, at the same time, from each other.