Lang Sir Walter Scott And The Border Minstrelsy

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-3-8496-0739-5
Verlag: Jazzybee Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 103 Seiten

Written to disprove the accusation against Sir Walter Scott-that he helped to compose, and issued as a genuine antique, a ballad, 'Auld Maitland.' The facts in the case exist in published works and certain manuscript letters, which are here studied. Contents: Preface Scott And The Ballads Auld Maitland The Ballad Of Otterburne Scott's Traditional Copy And How He Edited It The Mystery Of The Ballad Of Jamie Telfer Kinmont Willie Conclusions This book is annotated with a rare extensive biographical sketch of the author, Andrew Lang, written by Sir Edmund Gosse, CB, a contemporary poet and writer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lang, Andrew

Leseproben

I.

It fell and about the Lammas time,
   When hushandmen do win their hay;
Earl Douglas is to the English woods,
   And a' with him to fetch a prey.

II.

He has chosen the Lindsays light,
   With them the gallant Gordons gay;
And the Earl of Fyfe, withouten strife,
   And Hugh Montgomery upon a grey.
(THE LAST LINE IS OBVIOUSLY A RECITER'S STOPGAP.)

III.

They have taken Northumberland,
   And sae hae they THE NORTH SHIRE,
And the Otterdale they hae burned hale,
   And set it a' into fire.

IV.

Out then spak a bonny boy;

Manifestly these copies, so far, are not independent. But now Herd's copy begins to vary much from the English.

In both ballads a boy or "berne" speaks up. In the English he recommends to the Scots an attack on Newcastle; in the Scots he announces the approach of an English host. Douglas promises to reward the boy if his tale be true, to hang him if it be false. THE SCENE IS OTTERBURN. The boy stabs Douglas, in a stanza which is a common ballad formula of frequent occurrence -

The boy's taen out his little pen knife,
   That hanget low down by his gare,
And he gaed Earl Douglas a deadly wound,
   Alack! a deep wound and a sare.

Douglas then says to Sir Hugh Montgomery -

   Take THOU the vanguard of the three,
And bury me at yon bracken bush,
   That stands upon yon lilly lea. (Herd, 4-8.)

Hume of Godscroft (about 1610), author of the History of the Douglases, was fond of quoting ballads. He gives a form of the first verse in Otterburn which is common to Herd and the English copy. He says that, according to some, Douglas was treacherously slain by one of his own men whom he had offended. "But this narration is not so probable," and the fact is fairly meaningless in Herd's fragment (the boy has no motive for stabbing Douglas, for if his report is true, he will be rewarded). The deed is probably based on the tradition which Godscroft thought "less probable,"—the treacherous murder of the Earl.

In the English ballad, Douglas marches on Newcastle, where Percy, without fighting, makes a tryst to meet and combat him at Otterburn, on his way home from Newcastle to Scotland. Thither Douglas goes, and is warned by a Scottish knight of Percy's approach: as in Herd, he is sceptical, but is convinced by facts. (This warning of Douglas by a scout who gallops up is narrated by Froissart, from witnesses engaged in the battle.) After various incidents, Percy and Douglas encounter each other, and Douglas is slain. After a desperate fight, Sir Hugh Montgomery, a prisoner of the English,

Borrowed the Percy home again.

This is absurd. The Scots fought on, took Percy, and won the day.
Walsingham, the contemporary English chronicler (in Latin), says that
Percy slew Douglas, so do Knyghton and the continuator of Higden.

Meanwhile we observe that the English ballad says nothing of Douglas's chivalrous fortitude, and soldier-like desire to have his death concealed. Here every Scottish version follows Froissart. In Herd's fragment, Montgomery now attacks Percy, and bids him "yield thee to yon bracken bush," where the dead Douglas's body lies concealed. Percy does yield—to Sir Hugh Montgomery. The fragment has but fourteen stanzas.

In 1802, Scott, correcting by another MS., published Herd's copy. In 1806 he gave another version, for "fortunately two copies have since been obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest."

Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of recitations, so styled,  and gives his suggestions about the copy being made up from the Reliques. When Scott's copy of 1806 agrees with the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person, familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in WITH DIFFERENCES. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the actual words. When Scott's version touches on an incident known in history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or remaniements which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).

So Colonel Elliot says, "We are not told, either in The Minstrelsy or in any of Scott's works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the transcribers were."  We very seldom are told by Scott who the reciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic's information is here mournfully limited—by his own lack of study. Colonel Elliot goes on to criticise a very curious feature in Scott's version of 1806, and finds certain lines "beautiful" but "without a note of antiquity," that he can detect, while the sentiment "is hardly of the kind met with in old ballads."

To understand the position we must remember that, IN THE ENGLISH, Percy and Douglas fight each other thus (1.) -

The Percy and the Douglas met,
   That either of other was fain,
They swapped together while that they sweat,
   With swords of fine Collayne. (Cologne steel.)

Douglas bids Percy yield, but Percy slays Douglas (as in Walsingham's and other contemporary chronicles, stanzas li.-lvi.). The Scottish losses are then enumerated (only eighteen Scots were left alive!), and stanza lix. runs -

This fray began at Otterburn
   Between the night and the day.
There the Douglas lost his life,
   And the Percy was led away.

Herd ends -

This deed was done at Otterburn,
   About the breaking of the day,
Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush,
   And Percy led captive away.

Manifestly, either the maker of Herd's version knew the English, and altered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered at pleasure. The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably. But when Scott's original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in a part of the ballad missing in Herd's brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes that NOW the exchanges are by a modern ballad- forger, shall we say Sir Walter? By Sir Walter they certainly are NOT! One tiny hint of Scots originality is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men "win their hay" at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be NORTHUMBRIAN, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.

The Scots version (Herd's) insists on Douglas's burial "by the bracken bush," to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender. This is obviously done to hide his body and keep his death secret from both parties, AS IN FROISSART HE BIDS HIS FRIENDS DO. The verse of the English (l.) on the fight between Douglas and Percy, is borrowed by, or is borrowed from, the Scottish stanza (ix.) in Herd, where Sir Hugh Montgomery fights Percy.

Then Percy and Montgomery met,
   And weel a wot they warna fain;
They swaped swords, and they twa swat,
   And ay the blood ran down between.

The Persses and the Mongomry met,

as quoted, is already familiar in The Complaynte of Scotland (about 1549), and this line is not in the English ballad. So far it seems as if the English balladist borrowed the scene from a Scots version, and perverted it into a description of a fight, between Percy, who wins, and Douglas—in place of the Scots version, the victory over Percy of Sir Hugh Montgomery.

This transference of incidents in the English and Scottish ballads is a phenomenon which we are to meet again in the ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead. One "maker" or the other has, in old times, pirated and perverted the ballad of another...