The Scottish ballads

Front matter

^a&L

IftN

W>-M

Preface

Since the publication of a few Scottish Ballads by Percy, in 1755, but especially during the present century, the public have been put in possession of many various collections of popular narrative poetry ; among which the chief are — Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1801 — Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs, 1806 — Finlay's Historical and Romantic Ballads, 1808 — Kinloch's Ancient Ballads, 1826 — Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, 1827 — and Buchan's Ancient Ballads of the North of Scotland, 1828. Each of these works contains a certain number of ballads, which the editors recovered from the mouths of the common people, and printed for the first time ; as also a considerable number, which can only be called various versions of similar compositions elsewhere published. One way and another, nearly two hundred distinctly different ballads have been thus laid before the public ; some of them in no fewer than six different forms. And a representation has been afforded of the condition in which such poetry exists in all the principal provinces of Scotland.

In the present age, when, like the precious volumes of the Sibyl, books may be said to increase in value in so far as they are abbreviated, objection will scarcely be taken to a work which proposes to condense the diffused merit of so many different and expensive books. The reader will here find, that I have not only made a careful selection of what appeared to me in every respect the best of the whole mass of published ballads ; which has been already done, to a certain extent, by recent compilers ; but that, by a more daring exertion of taste, I have, in a great many instances, associated what seemed to me the best stanzas, and the best lines, nay even the best words, of the various copies extant; thus producing something considerably different, it is true, from what is to be found in any particular part of the country, and therefore not correctly a representation of the condition of Scottish ballad poetry any where ; but which, nevertheless, as it combines many other advantages, is unquestionably better, at least in a literary point of view, than any other single thing either oral or printed. I am perfectly aware that this mode of editing ballads

Ill

is deprecated by the antiquary, as being little better than the deliberate vitiation of these revered compositions, of which so many other editors have been guilty. Yet, after a thorough review of all the circumstances, I have arrived at the conclusion, that it is not only allowable, but is absolutely demanded by the public. These narratives, it must be remarked, have not reached us in the exact shape in which they were thrown off by their authors. They have come down from the far retreats of antiquity, altogether different in spirit, in language, and in form, from what they originally were. Many of them, especially those most recently published, are so completely translated into the modern phraseology of the vulgar, that it is impossible to say that they are genuine old ballads at all. Had they been, like the most of the English ballads published by Percy, preserved in a manuscript of considerable antiquity, and had they still borne marks of the taste of ancient times, I at once allow, that, as there would have been no necessity, so would there been no excuse, for adopting my plan of publishing them. Seeing, however, that they are put into our hands in a corrupted shape, and have, in reality, no ascertainable value in a historical or antiquarian point of view, it seems but proper that the next best

IV plan should be adopted — that of purifying them as much as possible, and giving them the utmost literary value of which they may be susceptible. By adopting what the antiquarians would call the more faithful plan, I should have produced the same matter in thrice its present extent, and so much decussated into fragments, and so frequently repeated, that it would have been almost unfit for the general reader. By adopting the plan which taste and various other considerations forced upon me, I am hopeful that the reader will find, within the compass of a single volume, and at a very moderate price, nearly all that he could wish to see. To allay, in some measure, the fervour of the antiquary, let me remind him, that the ballads still exist, in their original shape, in the publications where they first appeared. All that I have attempted, is to combine, as in the Ossianic poems, certain compositions formerly fugitive and various, and which seemed capable of a more extensive application in the reading world if so combined, but which, in their native condition, could never have been much regarded, except by men devoted to the study of that species of literature.

Hanover Street, Edinburgh.

April 27, 1829.

INTRODUCTORY.

The Ballads forming this volume are divided into four different classes : —

I. Historical Ballads.

II. Ballads supposed to refer to real circumstances in Private Life.

III. Romantic Ballads.

IV. Imitations of the Ancient Ballads.

The two first of these classes form properly one

kind of ballad — namely, short metrical narratives of real incidents, which have happened in recent or remote times. They are here divided into two series, because it seemed somewhat awkward to mix up transactions of a public nature, and which are essentially connected with history, with those which have taken place in the lives of particular and often obscure individuals. In this place, however, they may be considered as the same.

The first thing to be considered in the character of this kind of ballad, is its antiquity. And here we are at once reduced to the necessity of presenting conjecture instead of fact. It is the belief of all previous enquirers into this subject — and common-sense countenances the theory most expressly — that, in almost every case, the ballads referring to real incidents were composed immediately after the transactions which called them forth. It seems to have been a custom of the people from all time, to throw incidents which impressed their minds into this historical form. We see them, at the present day, do something of the same kind, in regard to notorious criminals, and to great battles. It is at least far more likely that they composed the ballads on the spur of the occasion, than with the deliberate retrospect of a historical novelist of the present day.

Allowing this theory to be correct, we have here « Sir Patrick Spens," " The Gude Wallace," « The Battle of Otterbourne," " Young Bekie," " The Douglas Tragedy," iC Gil Morrice," &c. as compositions of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries ; which must assuredly be considered a very respectable degree of antiquity for popular poems. Great changes, no doubt, must have taken place in the form and language of these productions, before they were arrested and fixed down in their present consistence by the types of the eighteenth century. We may even allow, that in some cases, as certain antiquaries suppose, they have degenerated from the lengthy and regular narratives which the minstrels formerly " carpit" to the noble of the land, and that, in all instances, they have become something decidedly inferior to what they were originally. Yet, after all, there is evidence to prove that this change cannot have been very great, during at least the last two centuries.

Hume, of Godscroft, in his History of the House of Douglas, which was published in 1646, thus quotes a verse from a ballad, which he says was composed on the death of the Knight of Liddisdale :

The Countess of Douglas, out of her bowre she came,

And loudly then that she did call ; It is for the Lord of Liddisdale,

That I let all these tears downe fall.

In allusion to the assassination of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, by James II., in 1440, the same writer quotes the following stanza, anathematory of the scene of the incident, from another old ballad :

Edinburgh Castle, toune and towre,

God grant thou sink for sinne, And that even for the black dinoure,

Erl Douglas got therein !

These fragments, besides implying the antiquity of the custom of writing ballads on historical subjects, prove, from the style of their versification and language, that little change has taken place on this species of poetry since at least the reign of Charles I. In all probability, had Hume had occasion to quote a stanza of " Sir Patrick Spens," or " Jock o' the Syde," we should have found it the same, word for word, with the corresponding passage in either of these two ballads, as now printed.

All that can be said, therefore, regarding the two first classes of ballads in the present collection, is, that they are the proper traditionary records of certain incidents in history and private life, which made an impression on the minds of the populace at the time they happened ; and that they may be thus accepted, with slight reservations, as in general forming authentic specimens of the popular poetry of their respective ages.

The Romantic Ballads, which form the third class in this Collection, are different from the two first classes in every respect, except that they are the productions, and form the entertainment, of the same people. In strict chronology, perhaps, they ought to have been placed in the first rank ; for, while the ballads of the two first classes refer, in general, to incidents, of which there is some collateral and authentic record, these productions seem to have taken their rise in the infancy of society, before any other mode of historical commemoration had yet been discovered. The Romantic Ballads, indeed, bear all the appearance of having been conceived in the very cradle of human nature ; they seem to have had their oiigin while as yet mankind was little more than a single family. Their stories are, in general, only^ such simple and familiar incidents as take place in a rude state of society : what is more, they are almost all common to every nation in the world.

It would be absurd to contend, that these compositions have existed in their present shape for a great length of time. All that can be said in favour of their antiquity, is, that they are the last shape or form into which the stories which amused our earliest ancestors have been resolved. Some of them, moreover, are evidently of a less remote extraction than others — are, indeed, only referable to the earlier ages of our own history. But this, nevertheless, is the proper general account of their origin.

As one instance, for all, of the universality of these stories, both as to place and time, it may be mentioned, that the beautiful love tale of " Burd Helen" is the same with one called the Lai le Frene, preserved in English in the Auchinleck Manuscript, and in Norman in the Lais of Marie, which were written about the year 1250. " Tamlane" may also be referred to the story of Thomas the Rhymer, who flourished in the thirteenth century. The tale of " Fair Annie" is found, with many others, in the great Danish collection called the Ksempe Viser, which was published in 1593.

Contents

The following List exhibits the Titles of the Ballads, alphabetically arranged. An Index of the First Lines of the Ballads is placed at the end of the Volume.

PAGE

Andrew Lammie, 137