THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS

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:

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.

ADVERTISEMENT TO PART VII NUMBERS 189–225

I would acknowledge with particular gratitude the liberality of the Hon. Mrs Maxwell-Scott in allowing the examination and use of the rich store of ballads accumulated at Abbotsford by her immortal ancestor; and also that of Lord Rosebery in sending to Edinburgh for inspection the collection of rare Scottish broadsides formed by the late David Laing, and permitting me to print several articles.

The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has done me the great favor of furnishing me with copies of traditional ballads and songs taken down by him in the West of England.

I am much indebted to the Rev. W. Forbes-Leith for his good offices, and to Mr Macmath, as I have been all along, for help of every description.

ADVERTISEMENT TO PART VIII NUMBERS 226–265

A considerable portion of this eighth number is devoted to texts from Abbotsford. Many of these were used by Sir Walter Scott in the compilation of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; many, again, not less important than the others, did not find a place in that collection. They are now printed either absolutely for the first time, or for the first time without variation from the form in which they were written. All of them, and others which were obtained in season for the Seventh Part, were transcribed with the most conscientious and vigilant care by Mr Macmath, who has also identified the handwriting, has searched the numerous volumes of letters addressed to Sir Walter Scott for information relating to the contributors and for dates, and has examined the humbler editions of printed ballads in the Abbotsford library; this without remitting other help.

Very cordial thanks are offered, for texts or information, or for both, to the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, the Rev. W. Forbes-Leith, Mr Andrew Lang, Dr George Birkbeck Hill, Mr P. Z. Round, Dr F. J. Furnivall, Mr James Barclay Murdoch, Dr Giuseppe Pitrè, of Palermo, Mr William Walker, of Aberdeen, Mr David MacRitchie, of Edinburgh, Mr James Gibb, of Joppa, Mr James Raine, of York, Rev. William Leslie Christie, of London, Mrs Mary Thomson, of Fochabers, and Mr George M. Richardson, late of Harvard College; for notes on Slavic popular literature, to Mr John Karłowicz, of Warsaw, and Professor Wilhelm Wollner; and for miscellaneous notes, to my colleague, Professor G. L. Kittredge.

So far as can be foreseen, one part more will bring this book to a close; it is therefore timely to say again that I shall be glad of any kind of assistance that will make it less imperfect, whether in the way of supplying omissions or of correcting errors, great or small.

189 HOBIE NOBLE

Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 164, 1802, II, 90, 1833. The source is not mentioned, but was undoubtedly Caw’s Museum, though there are variations of text, attributable to the editor. A copy in the Campbell MSS, I, 230, is again from the Museum, with several corrections, two of which are also found in Scott. Caw received the ballad, says Sir Walter, from John Elliot of Reidheugh. b seems to have been sent Percy (with ‘Dick o the Cow’) by Roger Halt, in 1775.

Hobie Noble, though banished from Bewcastle for his irregularities, will always command the hearty liking of those who live too late to suffer from them, on account of his gallant bearing in the rescue of Jock o the Side. See especially No 187, A, of which Hobie is the hero. All that we know of him is so much as we are told in that ballad and in this. He attached himself, after his expulsion from England, to the laird of Mangerton, who gives him the praise ‘Thy coat is blue, thou has been true.’

Sim o the Mains, an Armstrong of the Whithaugh branch (the most important after that of Mangerton), undertakes to betray Hobie to the English land-sergeant. A tryst is set at Kershope-foot, the junction of that stream with the Liddel; and Hobie, who lives a little way up the Liddel, rides eagerly down the water to keep it. He meets five men, who ask him to join them in a raid into England. Hobie dares not go by day; the land-sergeant is at feud with him on account of a brother’s death, in which Hobie must have had a hand, and ‘the great earl of Whitfield’ has suffered from his depredations;[1] but he will be their guide if they will wait till night. He takes them to the Foulbogshiel, where they alight, and word is sent by Sim to the land-sergeant at Askerton, his adversary’s residence; the land-sergeant orders the men of the neighborhood to meet him at daybreak. Hobie has a bad dream, wakes his comrades in alarm, and sets out to guide them across the Waste; but the sergeant’s force come before him, and Sim behind; his sword breaks; he is bound with his own bow-string

and taken to Carlisle. As he goes up the quarter called the Rickergate, the wives say one to the other, That’s the man that loosed Jock o the Side! They offer him bread and beer, and urge him to confess stealing “my lord’s” horses; he swears a great oath that he never had beast of my lord’s. He is to die the next day, and says his farewell to Mangerton; he would rather be called ‘Hobie Noble’ and be hanged in Carlisle, than be called ‘Traitor Mains’ and eat and drink.

Mr R. B. Armstrong informs me that he has found no notice of Hobie Noble except that Hobbe Noble, with eight others, “lived within the Nyxons, near to Bewcastle.”

1569. “Lancy Armistrang of Quhithauch obliged him ... for Sym Armistrang of the Mains and the rest of the Armistrangis of 2his gang. Syme of the Mains was lodged in Wester Wemys.” (Register of the Privy Council of Scotland.)

4. The Mains was a place a very little to the east of Castleton, on the opposite, or north, side of the Liddel. 13–17. Askerton is in the Waste of Bewcastle, “about seventeen miles” northeast of Carlisle. “Willeva and Spear-Edom [otherwise Spade-Adam] are small districts in Bewcastle dale, through which also the Hartlie-burn takes its course. Conscowthart-Green and Rodric-haugh and the Foulbogshiel are the names of places in the same wilds, through which the Scottish plunderers generally made their raids upon England.” (Scott.)

Sim o the Mains fled into England from the resentment of his chief, but was himself executed at Carlisle about two months after Hobie’s death. “Such is at least the tradition of Liddesdale,” says Scott. This is of course, notwithstanding the precision of the interval of two months, what Lord Bacon calls “an imagination as one would”; an appendage of a later generation, in the interest of poetical justice.

4a.

94. brother is dead: cf. b. (Dead is death.)

102. For twa drifts of his sheep I gat: corrected in Scott and in the Campbell MS.

154. lee, b lye: corrected to fee in Campbell MS. (ee==awe.)

162. shaft is corrected to sharp in Scott and the Campbell MS.

244. Jersawigham’s: cf. b.

b. There is a burden after the first, second, and fourth line, variously given; as, Fa (La, Ta) la didle, Ta la la didle, etc., after the first and second; Fala didle, lal didle, Tal didle, tal diddle, after the fourth.

21,2 wanting.

23,4. 15,6 in the MS.

23. flee.

24. he is.

31. Then for Now.

52. both with.

53. out a.

63. If they should all have bursen.

64. From.

74. here wanting.

81. Will.

82. we shall.

83. pound.

84. shall.

91. in.

94. brother’s dead (death).

102. For twa drifts of his sheep I gott.

103. not me.

104. me that he can keep.

113. worth other three.

114 wanting.

121,2 written as 114: The pick and tar was never so dark but I’le guide you over yon hillies high.

123,4 wanting.

151. he was that.

153. slooth.

154. little lye.

162. shaft.

163. Gar warn.

171. me the morn.

172. see that it be by the.

173. Corscowthart.

174. ow?

183. beneath.

191. cra: da.

193. not.

194. either tane.

211. But H.: gates they had been.

213. set.

214. Noble he.

231. lumps for heaps (heaps in 232).

243. Corscothart.

244. Jers a wighams.

251. They have tane now H. N.

252. bow-strings.

253. his heart was never so wae.

261. on for.

272. cuist.

273. Then every.

274. John of.

283. for fouchald.

293. brave wanting: for to.

301. wanting.

323. had nothing.

331. now for sweet.

334. Crisenty.

343. And keep.

351. cald now.

354. That eat and drank him a of.

190 JAMIE TELFER OF THE FAIR DODHEAD

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, I, 80, 1802; II, 3, 1833.

Scott, by whom this ballad was first published, and to whom alone it seems to be known, gives us no information how he came by it. He says, “There is another ballad, under the same title as the following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little difference except that the honor of rescuing the cattle is attributed to the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief, there called Martin Elliot of the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simon, is said to have fallen in the action. It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the Elliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honor of the victory.” Ed. 1833, II. 3.

Scott has suggested that an article in the list of attempts upon England, fouled by the commissioners at Berwick in the year 1587, may relate to the subject of the ballad.

Bewcastle, of which Thomas Musgrave at the above date was deputy and captain, was, says Percy, a great rendezvous of thieves and moss-troopers down to the last century. “It 5is handed down by report,” he remarks, “that@ there was formerly an Order of Council that no inhabitant of Bewcastle should be returned on a jury.” That the deputy of the warden, an officer of the peace, should be exhibited as making a raid, not in the way of retaliation, but simply for plunder, is too much out of rule even for Bewcastle, and does not speak favorably for the antiquity of the ballad.

Taking the story as it stands, the Captain of Bewcastle, who is looking for a prey, is taken by a guide to the Fair Dodhead, which he pillages of kye and everything valuable. Jamie Telfer, whose threat of revenge the Captain treats with derision, runs ten miles afoot to the Elliots of Stobs Hall, to whom he says he has paid mail, st. 11, and asks help. Gib Elliot denies the mail, and tells him to go to the Scotts at Branksome where he has paid it. Telfer keeps on to Coultart Cleugh, and there makes his case known to a brother-in-law, who gives him a mount “to take the fray” to Catslockhill. There William’s Wat, who had often eaten of the Dodhead basket, gives him his company and that of two sons, and they take the fray to Branksome. Buccleuch collects a body of men of his name, and sends them out under the command of Willie Scott, who overtakes the marauders, and asks the Captain if he will let Telfer’s kye go back. This he will not do for love or for fear. The Scotts set on them; Willie is killed, but two and thirty of the raiders’ saddles are emptied, and the

Captain is badly wounded and made prisoner. Nor is that all, for the Scotts ride to the Captain’s house and loose his cattle, and when they come to the Fair Dodhead, for ten milk kye Jamie Telfer has three and thirty.

Walter Scott of Harden and Walter Scott of Goldielands, and, according to Scott of Satchells, Scott of Commonside, st. 26, were engaged with Buccleuch in the rescue of Kinmont Willie. So was Will Elliot of Gorrombye, st. 274.

The ballad was retouched for the Border Minstrelsy, nobody can say how much. The 36th stanza is in Hardyknute style. St. 12 is not only found elsewhere (cf. ‘Young Beichan,’ E 6), but could not be more inappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not responsible for that.

Scott makes the following notes on the localities:

2. Hardhaughswire is the pass from Liddesdale to the head of Teviotdale. Borthwick water is a stream which falls into the Teviot three miles above Hawick. 3. The Dodhead was in Selkirkshire, near Singlee, where there are still the vestiges of an old tower. 7. Stobs Hall: upon Slitterick. 10. Branksome Ha, the ancient family-seat of the lairds of Buccleuch, near Hawick. 13. The Coultart Cleugh is nearly opposite to Carlinrig, on the road between Hawick and Mosspaul. 26. The estates mentioned in this verse belonged to families of the name of Scott residing upon the waters of Borthwick and Teviot, near the castle of their chief. 27. The pursuers seem to have taken the road through the hills of Liddesdale in order to collect forces and intercept the forayers at the passage of the Liddel on their return to Bewcastle. 29. The Frostylee is a brook which joins the Teviot near Mosspaul. 33, 38. The Ritterford and Kershopeford are noted fords on the river Liddel. 36. The Dinlay is a mountain in Liddesdale. 44. Stanegirthside: a house belonging to the Foresters,

situated on the English side of the Liddel.

281, 324, 384. Scots, Scot. In the last edition, Scotts, Scott.

294. drivand in the later edition.

314. cauf in the later edition.

371. gan in the later edition.

40. “The Editor has used some freedom with the original. The account of the Captain’s disaster (teste læva vulnerata) is rather too naive for literal publication.”

191 HUGHIE GRAME

A. ‘The Life and Death of Sir Hugh of the Grime.’ a. Roxburghe Ballads, II, 294. b. Douce Ballads, II, 204 b. c. Rawlinson Ballads, 566, fol. 9. d. Pills to purge Melancholy, VI, 289, 17. e. Roxburghe Ballads, III, 344.

B. ‘Hughie Graham,’ Johnson’s Museum, No 303, p. 312; Cromek, Reliques of Robert Burns, 4th ed., 1817, p. 287; Cromek, Select Scottish Songs, 1810, II, 151.

C. ‘Hughie the Græme,’ Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1803, III, 85; 1833, III, 107.

D. ‘Sir Hugh in the Grime’s Downfall,’ Roxburghe Ballads, III, 456, edited by J. F. Ebsworth for The Ballad Society, VI, 598.

E. ‘Sir Hugh the Græme,’ Buchan’s MSS, I, 53; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 73, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

F. Macmath MS., p. 79, two stanzas.

G. ‘Hughie Grame,’ Harris MS., fol. 27 b, one stanza.

There is a copy of the broadside among the Pepys ballads, II, 148, No 130, printed, like a, b, c, for P. Brooksby, with the variation, “at the Golden Ball, near the Bear Tavern, in Pye Corner.” The ballad was given in Ritson’s Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 192, from A a, collated with another copy “in the hands of John Baynes, Esq.” In a note, p. 332, Ritson says: “In the editor’s collection is a somewhat different ballad upon the same subject, intitled ‘Sir Hugh in the Grimes downfall, or a new song made on Sir Hugh in the Grime, who was hangd for stealing the Bishop’s mare.’ It begins, ‘Good Lord John is a hunting gone.’” This last was evidently the late and corrupt copy D. Of C Scott 9says: “The present edition was procured for me by my friend Mr W. Laidlaw, in Blackhouse, and has been long current in Selkirkshire. Mr Ritson’s copy has occasionally been resorted to for better readings.” B is partially rewritten by Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, I, 327. The copy in R. H. Evans’s Old Ballads, 1810, I, 367, is A; that in The

Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, First Series, p. 47, is of course B; Aytoun, ed. of 1859, II, 128, reprints C; Maidment, 1868, II, 140, A, II, 145, C.[3]

“According to tradition,” says Stenhouse, “Robert Aldridge, Bishop of Carlisle, about the year 1560, seduced the wife of Hugh Graham, one of those bold and predatory chiefs who so long inhabited what was called the debateable land on the English and Scottish border. Graham, being unable to bring so powerful a prelate to justice, in revenge made an excursion into Cumberland, and carried off, inter alia, a fine mare belonging to the bishop; but being closely pursued by Sir John Scroope, warden of Carlisle, with a party on horseback, was apprehended near Solway Moss, and carried to Carlisle, where he was tried and convicted of felony. Great intercessions were made to save his life, but the bishop, it is said, being determined to remove the chief obstacle to his guilty passions, remained inexorable, and poor Graham fell a victim to his own indiscretion and his wife’s infidelity. Anthony Wood observes that there were many changes in this prelate’s time, both in church and state, but that he retained his office and preferments during them all.” Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 297.

The pretended tradition is plainly extracted from the ballad, the bishop’s name and the date being supplied from without. The inter alia is introduced, and the mare qualified as a fine one, to mitigate the ridiculousness of making Hugh Graham steal a mare to retaliate the wrong done him by the bishop. As Allan Cunningham remarks, “tradition, in all the varieties of her legends, never invented such an unnecessary and superfluous reason as this. By habit and by nature thieves, the Græmes never waited for anything like a pretence to steal.” In passing, it may be observed that Hugh is quite arbitrarily elevated to the rank of a predatory chief.

Scott suggested in 1803, Minstrelsy, I, 86 f., that Hugh Graham may have been one of more than four hundred borderers against whom complaints were exhibited to the lord bishop of Carlisle for incursions, murders, burnings, mutilations, and spoils committed by the English of Cumberland and Westmoreland upon Scots “presently after the queen’s departure;” that is, after Mary Stuart’s going to France, which was in 1548. Nearly a third of the names given in a partial list are Grames, but there is no Hugh among them.[4] The bishop of Carlisle at the time was Robert Aldridge, who held the see from 1537 till his death in 1555.[5] Lord Scroope (Screw) is the English warden of the West Marches in A, C, D. A Lord Scroope had that office in 1542, but Lord Wharton, Lord Dacre, and others during the last years of Bishop Aldridge’s life, say from 1548 to 1555. Henry Lord Scroope of Bolton was appointed to the place in 1563, retained it thirty years, and was succeeded by his son, Thomas.[6] Considering how long the Scroopes held the warden-ship, and that the ballad is not so old as the

middle of the sixteenth century, the fact that 10a Lord Scroope was not warden in the precise year when the complaints were addressed to the bishop of Carlisle would be of no consequence if Scott’s conjecture were well supported.

The story is the same in A-D, and in E also till we near the end, though there are variations in the names. The scene is at Carlisle in A, C, D; at Stirling in B, E. Lord Home, who appears as intercessor for Hugh Graham in C, exercises the authority of the Scottish warden and arrests Hugh in E. Lord Home was warden of the east marches of Scotland from 1550, and I know not how much earlier, to 1564. The Lord Boles of A may possibly represent Sir Robert Bowes, who was warden of the east marches of England in 1550 and earlier. The Whitefoords of B are adopted into the ballad from the region in which that version circulated, they being “an ancient family in Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire, and latterly in Ayrshire.”[7]

The high jump which Hugh makes in A 18, C 12, D 4 (fourteen, or even eighteen, feet, with his hands tied on his back), is presumably an effort at escape, though, for all that is said, it might be a leap in the air. In E 16–19, the prisoner jumps an eighteen-foot wall (tied as before), is defended by four brothers against ten pursuers, and sent over sea: which is certainly a modern perversion.