Andrew Lang

“ Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin, composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused among and altered by popular reciters. In England they soon won their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled and moralized by the hack editors.
No ballad has a stranger history than The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence. ”

“ On the whole, even the astute Shepherd, in his early days of authorship, could hardly have laid a plot so insidious, and the question of the authenticity and origin of the ballad (obvious interpolations apart) remains a mystery. Who could have forged it? It is, as an exercise in imitation, far beyond Hardyknute, and at least on a level with Sir Roland. ”

“ The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted, sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on Darnley’s murder and the youth of James VI.
In the romantic class, we may take Tamlane. Here the idea of fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by clinging to them through all transformations. ”

“ If there be historical foundation for the ballad, it is probably a blending of the voyage of Margaret, daughter of Alexander III., to wed Eric, King of Norway, in 1281 (some of her escort were drowned on their way home) , with the rather mysterious death, or disappearance, of Margaret’s daughter, “The Maid of Norway,” on her voyage to marry the son of Edward I., in 1290. A woman, who alleged that she was the Maid of Norway, was later burned at the stake. The great number and variety of versions sufficiently indicate the antiquity of this ballad, wherein exact history is not to be expected. ”

“ The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. [0a] Now, in literary forms and romance, as in Ogier le Danois, persons are carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole subject the curious may consult “The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns, and Fairies,” by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle, himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies. ”

“ Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our own, with European Märchen, or children’s tales, and with the popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses himself in song. ”

“ The extreme historic inaccuracy of Mary Hamilton is paralleled by that of all the ballads on real events. The mention of the Pottinger is a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian affair, and there is no room, says Professor Child, for the supposition that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist, p. xixto tally with the narrative in Knox’s History.
On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear in the variants of the ballad. ”

“ Courthope, that our traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary poetry. The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the same as those of p. xivsome literary mediæval romances. But these plots and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final literary form of märchen, myths and inventions originally popular, and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more polished and complex genres of literature. ”

“ From The Border Minstrelsy, Sir Walter Scott’s latest edition of 1833: the copy in the edition of 1802 is less complete. The gentle and joyous passage of arms here recorded, took place in August 1388. We have an admirable account of Otterburn fight from Froissart, who revels in a gallant encounter, fairly fought out hand to hand, with no intervention of archery or artillery, and for no wretched practical purpose. In such a combat the Scots, never renowned for success at long bowls, and led by a Douglas, were likely to prove victorious, even against long odds, and when taken by surprise. ”

“ It would be more correct to say that Beauty and the Beast is a late, courtly, French adaptation and amplification of the original popular “wild growth” which first appears (in literary form) as Cupid and Psyche, in Apuleius. Except for the metamorphosis, however, there is little analogy in this case. The friendly act of the Fairy Queen is without parallel in British Folklore, but Mr. Child points out that the Nereid Queen, in Greece, is still as kind as Thetis of old, not a sepulchral siren, the shadow of the pagan “Fairy Queen Proserpina,” as Campion calls her. ”

“ And also thro the Carlisle sands;
They brought him to Carlisle castell.
To be at my Lord Scroope’s commands.
“My hands are tied; but my tongue is free,
And whae will dare this deed avow?
Or answer by the border law?
Or answer to the bauld Buccleuch?”
“Now haud thy tongue, thou rank reiver!
There’s never a Scot shall set ye free:
Before ye cross my castle-yate,
I trow ye shall take farewell o me.”
p. 46“Fear na ye that, my lord,” quo Willie:
“By the faith o my body, Lord Scroope,” he said,
“I never yet lodged in a hostelrie—
But I paid my lawing before I gaed.” ”

“ Learning that, as they advanced by the Carlisle route, the English intended to invade Scotland by Berwick and the east coast, the Scots sent three or four hundred men-at-arms, with a few thousand mounted archers and pikemen, who should harry Northumberland to the walls of Newcastle. These were led by James, Earl of Douglas, March, and Murray. In a fight at Newcastle, Douglas took Harry Percy’s pennon, which Hotspur vowed to recover. The retreat began, but the Scots waited at Otterburn, partly to besiege the castle, partly to abide Hotspur’s challenge. ”

“ There is plentiful “learning” about Robin Hood, but no real knowledge. He is first mentioned in literature, as the subject of “rhymes,” in Piers Plowman (circ. 1377) . As a topic of ballads he must be much older than that date. In 1439 his name was a synonym for a bandit. Wyntoun, the Scots chronicler, dates the outlaw in the time of Edward I. Major, the Scots philosopher and master of John Knox, makes a guess (taken up by Scott in Ivanhoe) as the period of Richard I. Kuhn seeks to show that Hood is a survival of Woden, or of his Wooden, “wooden horse” or hobby horse. ”

“ Scott certainly got it from the mother of the Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd’s father had been a grown-up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The Shepherd himself (then a most unsophisticated person) said, in a letter of June 30, 1801, that he was “surprized to hear this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; the contrary will be best proved by most of the old people, here about, having a great part of it by heart.” ”

“ Mr. Child finds the first published version of “the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens,” as Coleridge calls it, in Bishop Percy’s Reliques. Here the name is “Spence,” and the middle rhyme—
“Haf owre, haf owre to Aberdour,”
is not of early date. The “Cork-heeled Shoon,” too, cannot be early, but ballads are subject, in oral tradition, to such modern interpolations. The verse about the ladies waiting vainly is anticipated in a popular song of the fourteenth century, on a defeat of the noblesse in Flanders—
“Their ladies them may abide in bower and hall well long!” ”

“ We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard Mary Hamilton as an old example of popular perversion p. xxof history in ballad, not as “one of the very latest,” and also “one of the very best” of Scottish popular ballads.
Rob Roy shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail) , and James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian spy once more) , who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. ”

“ It is needless here to enter into the subject of Fairyland, and captures of mortals by Fairies: the Editor has said his say in his edition of Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth. The Nereids, in Modern Greece, practise fairy cantrips, and the same beliefs exist in Samoa and New Caledonia. The metamorphoses are found in the Odyssey, Book iv., in the winning of Thetis, the Nereid, or Fairy Bride, by Peleus, in a modern Cretan fairy tale, and so on. There is a similar incident in Penda Baloa, a Senegambian ballad (Contes Populaires de la Sénégambie, Berenger Ferand, Paris, 1885) . ”

“ Many such poems survive in our ballad literature.
p. xvThe material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical. The former class is based on one of the primeval invented situations, one of the elements of the Märchen in prose. Such tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance, and may also inspire ballads. Popular superstitions, the witch, metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part. ”

“ This fight broke the Highland force in Scotland. The first version is, of course, literary, perhaps a composition of 1550, or even earlier. The second version is traditional, and was procured by Aytoun from Lady John Scott, herself the author of some beautiful songs. But the best ballad on the Red Harlaw is that placed by Scott in the mouth of Elspeth, in The Antiquary. This, indeed, is beyond all rivalry the most splendid modern imitation of the ancient popular Muse. ”

“ The analogies of this ballad with that of “Kinmont Willie” are very close. The reference to a punch-bowl sounds modern, and the tale is much less plausible than that of “Kinmont Willie,” which, however, bears a few obvious marks of Sir Walter’s own hand. A sceptical editor must choose between two theories: either Scott of Satchells founded his account of the affair of “Kinmont Willie” on a pre-existing ballad of that name, or the ballad printed by Scott is based on the prose narrative of Scott of Satchells. The former hypothesis, everything considered, is the more probable. ”

“ This curious poem is taken from the reprint of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s tiny Ballad Book, itself now almost introuvable. It does not, to the Editor’s knowledge, occur elsewhere, but is probably authentic. The view of the Faery Queen is more pleasing and sympathetic than usual. Why mortal women were desired as nurses (except to attend on stolen mortal children, kept to “pay the Kane to hell”) is not obvious. Irish beliefs are precisely similar; in England they are of frequent occurrence. ”

“ If we suspect Leyden, who alone had the necessary knowledge of antiquities, we are still met by the improbability of old Mrs. Hogg being engaged in the hoax. Moreover, Leyden was probably too keen an antiquary to take part in one of the deceptions which Ritson wished to punish so severely. Mr. Child expresses his strong and natural suspicions of the authenticity of the ballad, and Hogg is, certainly, a dubious source. ”

“ A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the people. In p. xiiieither case, this class of men developed more regular and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the laisse of the Chansons de Geste; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the mediæval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed into the artistic lyric. ”

“ No story is more widely diffused (see A Far Travelled Tale, in the Editor’s Custom and Myth) . The appearance of the “True Love,” just at her lover’s wedding, is common in the Märchen of the world, and occurs in a Romaic ballad, as well as in many from Northern Europe. The “local colour”—the Moor or Saracen—is derived from Crusading times, perhaps. Motherwell found the ballad recited with intervals of prose narrative, as in Aucassin and Nicolette. The notes to Cruikshank’s Loving Ballad are, obviously, by Thackeray. ”

“ Kincaid was the name of the Laird; according to Chambers, the more famous lairds of Covenanting times were Johnstons. Kincaid is said to have treated his wife cruelly, wherefore she, or her nurse, engaged one Robert Weir, an old servant of her father (Livingstone of Dunipace) , to strangle the unhappy man in his own bedroom (July 2, 1600) . The lady was beheaded, the nurse was burned, and, later, Weir was also executed. The line
“I wish that ye may sink for sin”
occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle—
“And that all for the black dinner
Earl Douglas got therein.” ”

“ Come yield thy selfe quicklye, or slaine thou must bee:”
Then smiled sweetlye brave Mary Ambree.
“Ye captaines couragious, of valour so bold,
Whom thinke you before you now you doe behold?”
“A knight, sir, of England, and captaine soe free,
Who shortlye with us a prisoner must bee.”
“No captaine of England; behold in your sight
Two brests in my bosome, and therefore no knight:
Noe knight, sirs, of England, nor captaine you see,
But a poor simple mayden called Mary Ambree.”
“But art thou a woman, as thou dost declare,
Whose valor hath proved so undaunted in warre? ”

“ The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local bride, but “orders another marriage,” and sends home his bride “in a coach and three.” This incident is stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic. [0b]
Now Lord Bateman is Young Bekie in the Scotch ballads, who becomes Young Beichan, Young Bichem, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. ”

“ Learmont is usually given as the Erceldoune family name; a branch of the family owned Dairsie in Fifeshire, and were a kind of hereditary provosts of St. Andrews. If Thomas did predict the death of Alexander III., or rather report it by dint of clairvoyance, he must have lived till 1285. The date of the poem on the Fairy Queen, attributed to Thomas, is uncertain, the story itself is a variant of “Ogier the Dane.” The scene is Huntly Bank, under Eildon Hill, and was part of the lands acquired, at fantastic prices, by Sir Walter Scott. ”