Kitabı oku: «Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy», sayfa 3

OLD MAITLAND
A VERY ANTIENT SONG

 
There lived a king in southern land
   King Edward hecht his name
Unwordily he wore the crown
   Till fifty years was gane.
 
 
He had a sister’s son o’s ain
   Was large o’ blood and bane
And afterwards when he came up,
   Young Edward hecht his name.
 
 
One day he came before the king,
   And kneeld low on his knee
A boon a boon my good uncle,
   I crave to ask of thee
 
 
“At our lang wars i’ fair Scotland
   I lang hae lang’d to be
If fifteen hunder wale wight men
   You’ll grant to ride wi’ me.”
 
 
“Thou sal hae thae thou sal hae mae
   I say it sickerly;
And I mysel an auld grey man
   Arrayd your host sal see.” —
 
 
King Edward rade King Edward ran —
   I wish him dool and pain!
Till he had fifteen hundred men
   Assembled on the Tyne.
And twice as many at North Berwick
   Was a’ for battle bound
 
 
They lighted on the banks of Tweed
   And blew their coals sae het
And fired the Merce and Tevidale
   All in an evening late
 
 
As they far’d up o’er Lammermor
   They burn’d baith tower and town
Until they came to a derksome house,
   Some call it Leaders Town
 
 
Whae hauds this house young Edward crys,
   Or whae gae’st ower to me
A grey haired knight set up his head
   And cracked right crousely
 
 
Of Scotlands King I haud my house
   He pays me meat and fee
And I will keep my goud auld house
   While my house will keep me
 
 
They laid their sowies to the wall
   Wi’ mony heavy peal
But he threw ower to them again
   Baith piech and tar barille
 
 
With springs: wall stanes, and good of ern,
   Among them fast he threw
Till mony of the Englishmen
   About the wall he slew.
 
 
Full fifteen days that braid host lay
   Sieging old Maitlen keen
Then they hae left him safe and hale
   Within his strength o’ stane
 
 
Then fifteen barks, all gaily good,
   Met themen on a day,
Which they did lade with as much spoil
   As they could bear away.
 
 
“England’s our ain by heritage;
   And whae can us gainstand,
When we hae conquerd fair Scotland
   Wi’ bow, buckler, and brande” —
 
 
Then they are on to th’ land o’ france,
   Where auld King Edward lay,
Burning each town and castle strong
   That ance cam in his way.
 
 
Untill he cam unto that town
   Which some call Billop-Grace
There were old Maitlen’s sons a’ three
   Learning at School alas
 
 
The eldest to the others said,
   O see ye what I see
If a’ be true yon standard says,
   We’re fatherless a’ three
 
 
For Scotland’s conquerd up and down
   Landsmen we’ll never be:
Now will you go my brethren two,
   And try some jeopardy
 
 
Then they hae saddled two black horse,
   Two black horse and a grey
And they are on to Edwardes host
   Before the dawn of day
 
 
When they arriv’d before the host
   They hover’d on the ley
Will you lend me our King’s standard
   To carry a little way
 
 
Where was thou bred where was thou born
   Wherein in what country —
In the north of England I was born
   What needed him to lie.
 
 
A knight me got a lady bare
   I’m a squire of high renown
I well may bear’t to any king,
   That ever yet wore crown.
 
 
He ne’er came of an Englishman
   Had sic an ee or bree
But thou art likest auld Maitlen
   That ever I did see
 
 
But sic a gloom inon ae browhead
   Grant’s ne’er see again
For many of our men he slew
   And many put to pain
 
 
When Maitlan heard his father’s name,
   An angry man was he
Then lifting up a gilt dager
   Hung low down by his kee
 
 
He stab’d the knight the standard bore,
   He stabb’d him cruelly;
Then caught the standard by the neuk,
   And fast away rade he.
 
 
Now is’t na time brothers he cry’d
   Now, is’t na time to flee
Ay by my soothe they baith reply’d,
   We’ll bear you company
 
 
The youngest turn’d him in a path
   And drew a burnish’d brand
And fifteen o’ the foremost slew
   Till back the lave did stand
 
 
He spurr’d the grey unto the path
   Till baith her sides they bled
Grey! thou maun carry me away
   Or my life lies in wed
 
 
The captain lookit owr the wa’
   Before the break o day
There he beheld the three Scots lads
   Pursued alongst the way
 
 
Pull up portculzies down draw briggs
   My nephews are at hame
And they shall lodge wi’ me to-night,
   In spite of all England
 
 
Whene’er they came within the gate
   They thrust their horse them frae
And took three lang spears in their hands,
   Saying, here sal come nae mae
 
 
And they shott out and they shott in,
   Till it was fairly day
When many of the Englishmen
   About the draw brigg lay.
 
 
Then they hae yoked carts and wains
   To ca’ their dead away
And shot auld dykes aboon the lave
   In gutters where they lay
 
 
The king in his pavilion door
   Was heard aloud to say
Last night three o’ the lads o’ France
   My standard stole away
 
 
Wi’ a fause tale disguis’d they came
   And wi’ a fauser train
And to regain my gaye standard
   These men were a’ down slaine
 
 
It ill befits the youngest said
   A crowned king to lie
But or that I taste meat and drink,
   Reproved shall he be.
 
 
He went before King Edward straight
   And kneel’d low on his knee
I wad hae leave my liege he said,
   To speak a word wi’ thee
 
 
The king he turn’d him round about
   And wistna what to say
Quo’ he, Man, thou’s hae leave to speak
   Though thou should speak a day.
 
 
You said that three young lads o’ France,
   Your standard stole away
Wi’ a fause tale and fauser train,
   And mony men did slay
 
 
But we are nane the lads o’ France
   Nor e’er pretend to be
We are three lads o’ fair Scotland,
   Auld Maitlen’s sons a’ three
 
 
Nor is there men in a your host,
   Dare fight us three to three
Now by my sooth young Edward cry’d,
   Weel fitted sall ye be!
 
 
Piercy sall with the eldest fight
   And Ethert Lunn wi’ thee
William of Lancastar the third
   And bring your fourth to me
 
 
He clanked Piercy owr the head
   A deep wound and a sair
Till the best blood o’ his body
   Came rinnen owr his hair.
 
 
Now I’ve slain one slay ye the two;
   And that’s good company
And if the two should slay ye baith,
   Ye’se get na help frae me
 
 
But Ethert Lunn a baited bear
   Had many battles seen
He set the youngest wonder sair,
   Till the eldest he grew keen
 
 
I am nae king nor nae sic thing
   My word it sanna stand
For Ethert shall a buffet bide,
   Come he aneath my brand.
 
 
He clanked Ethert owr the head,
   A deep wound and a sair
Till a’ the blood of his body
   Came rinnen owr his hair
 
 
Now I’ve slayne two slay ye the one;
   Isna that gude company
And tho’ the one should slay ye both
   Ye’se get nae help o’ me.
 
 
The twasome they hae slayn the one
   They maul’d them cruelly
Then hang them owr the drawbridge,
   That a’ the host might see
 
 
They rade their horse they ran their horse,
   Then hover’d on the ley
We be three lads o’ fair Scotland,
   We fain wad fighting see
 
 
This boasting when young Edward heard,
   To’s uncle thus said he,
I’ll take yon lad I’ll bind yon lad,
   And bring him bound to thee
 
 
But God forbid King Edward said
   That ever thou should try
Three worthy leaders we hae lost,
   And you the fourth shall be.
 
 
If thou wert hung owr yon drawbrigg
   Blythe wad I never be
But wi’ the pole-axe in his hand,
   Outower the bridge sprang he
 
 
The first stroke that young Edward gae
   He struck wi might and main
He clove the Maitlen’s helmet stout,
   And near had pierced his brain.
 
 
When Matlen saw his ain blood fa,
   An angry man was he
He let his weapon frae him fa’
   And at his neck did flee
 
 
And thrice about he did him swing,
   Till on the ground he light
Where he has halden young Edward
   Tho’ he was great in might
 
 
Now let him up, King Edward cry’d,
   And let him come to me
And for the deed that ye hae done
   Ye shal hae earldoms three
 
 
It’s ne’er be said in France nor Ire
   In Scotland when I’m hame
That Edward once was under me,
   And yet wan up again
 
 
He stabb’d him thro and thro the hear
   He maul’d him cruelly
Then hung him ower the drawbridge
   Beside the other three
 
 
Now take from me that feather bed
   Make me a bed o’ strae
I wish I neer had seen this day
   To mak my heart fu’ wae
 
 
If I were once at London Tower,
   Where I was wont to be
I never mair should gang frae hame,
   Till borne on a bier-tree
 

At the end of his copy Hogg writes (probably of stanza vii.) – “You may insert the two following lines anywhere you think it needs them, or substitute two better —

 
And marching south with curst Dunbar
A ready welcome found.”
 

II
WHAT IS AULD MAITLAND?

Is Auld Maitland a sheer forgery by Hogg, or is it in any sense, and if so, in what sense, antique and traditional? That Hogg made the whole of it is to me incredible. He had told Laidlaw on 20th July 1801, that he would make no ballads on traditions without Scott’s permission, written in Scott’s hand. Moreover, how could he have any traditions about “Auld Maitland, his noble Sonnis three,” personages of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? Scott had read about them in poems of about 1580, but these poems then lay in crabbed manuscripts. Again, Hogg wrote in words (“springs, wall-stanes”) of whose meaning he had no idea; he took it as he heard it in recitation. Finally, the style is not that of Hogg when he attempts the ballad. Scott observed that “this ballad, notwithstanding its present appearance, has a claim to very high antiquity.” The language, except for a few technical terms, is modern, but what else could it be if handed down orally? The language of undoubted ballads is often more modern than that which was spoken in my boyhood in Ettrick Forest. As Sir Walter Scott remarked, a poem of 1570–1580, which he quotes from the Maitland MSS., “would run as smoothly, and appear as modern, as any verse in the ballad (with a few exceptions) if divested of its antique spelling.”

We now turn to the historical characters in the ballad.

Sir Richard Maitland of Lauder, or Thirlestane, says Scott, was already in his lands, and making donations to the Church in 1249. If, in 1296, forty-seven years later, he held his castle against Edward I., as in the ballad, he must have been a man of, say, seventy-five. By about 1574 his descendant, Sir Richard Maitland, was consoled for his family misfortunes (his famous son, Lethington, having died after the long siege of Edinburgh Castle, which he and Kirkcaldy of Grange held for Queen Mary), by a poet who reminded him that his ancestor, in the thirteenth century, lost all his sons – “peerless pearls” – save one, “Burdallane.” The Sir Richard of 1575 has also one son left (John, the minister of James VI.). ²³

From this evidence, in 1802 in MS. unpublished, and from other Maitland MSS., we learn that, in the sixteenth century, the Auld Maitland of the ballad was an eminent character in the legends of that period, and in the ballads of the people. ²⁴ His

 
   Nobill sonnis three,
Ar sung in monie far countrie,
Albeit in rural rhyme.
 

Pinkerton published, in 1786, none of the pieces to which Scott refers in his extracts from the Maitland MSS. How, then, did Hogg, if Hogg forged the ballad, know of Maitland and his “three noble sons”? Except Colonel Elliot, to whose explanation we return, I am not aware that any critic has tried to answer this question.

It seems to me that if the Ballad of Otterburne, extant in 1550 in England, survived in Scottish memory till Herd’s fragment appeared in 1776, a tradition of Maitland, who was popular in the ballads of 1575, and known to Gawain Douglas seventy years earlier, may also have persisted. There is no impossibility.

Looking next at Scott’s Auld Maitland the story is that King Edward I. reigned for fifty years. He had a nephew Edward (an apocryphal person: such figures are common in ballads), who wished to take part in the invasion of Scotland. The English are repulsed by old Maitland from his “darksome house” on the Leader. The English, however, (stanza xv.) conquer Scotland, and join Edward I. in France. They besiege that town,

 
Which some call Billop-Grace (xviii.).
 

Here Maitland’s three sons are learning at school, as Scots often were educated in France. They see that Edward’s standard quarters the arms of France, and infer that he has conquered their country. They “will try some jeopardy.” Persuading the English that they are themselves Englishmen, they ask leave to carry the royal flag. The eldest is told that he is singularly like Auld Maitland. In anger he stabs the standard-bearer, seizes the flag, and, with his brothers, spurs to Billop-Grace, where the French captain receives them. There is fighting at the gate. The King says that three disguised lads of France have stolen his flag. The Maitlands apparently heard of this; the youngest goes to Edward, and explains that they are Maitland’s sons, and Scots; they challenge any three Englishmen; a thing in the manner of the period. The three Scots are victorious. Young Edward then challenges one of the dauntless three, who slays him. Edward wishes himself home at London Tower.

Such is the story. It is out of the regular line of ballad narrative, but it does not follow that, in the sixteenth century, some such tale was not told “in rural rhyme” about Maitland’s “three noble sons.” That it is not historically true is nothing, of course, and that it is not in the Scots of the thirteenth century is nothing.

Colonel Elliot asks, What in the ballad raised suspicion of forgery (in 1802–03)? The historical inaccuracies are common to all historical ballads. (In an English ballad known to me of 1578, Henry Darnley is “hanged on a tree”!)

Next, “there are occasional lines, and even stanzas, which jar in style to such a degree that they must have been written by two separate hands.”

But this, also, is a common feature. In “Professor Child and the Ballad,” Mr. W. M. Hart gives a list of Professor Child’s notes on the multiplicity of hands, which he, and every critic, detect in some ballads with a genuinely antique substratum. ²⁵

Colonel Elliot quotes, as in his opinion the best, stanzas viii., ix., x., xi., while he thinks xv., xviii. the worst. I give these stanzas —

VIII

 
They lighted on the banks o’ Tweed,
   And blew their coals sae het,
And fired the Merse and Teviotdale,
   All in an evening late.
 

IX

 
As they fared up o’er Lammermoor,
   They burned baith up and doun,
Until they came to a darksome house,
   Some call it Leader Town.
 

X

 
“Wha hauds this house?” young Edward cried,
   “Or wha gi’est ower to me?”
A grey-hair’d knight set up his head,
   And crackit right crousely:
 

XI

 
“Of Scotland’s king I haud my house,
   He pays me meat and fee;
And I will keep my guid auld house,
   While my house will keep me.”
 

I cannot, I admit, find any fault with these stanzas: cannot see any reason why they should not be traditional.

Then Colonel Elliot cites, as the worst —

XV

 
Then fifteen barks, all gaily good,
   Met them upon a day,
Which they did lade with as much spoil
   As they could take away.
 

XVIII

 
Until we came unto that town
   Which some call Billop-Grace;
There were Auld Maitland’s sons, a’ three,
   Learning at school, alas!
 

Now, if I venture to differ from Colonel Elliot here, I may plead that I am practised in the art of ballad-faking, and can produce high testimonials of skill! To me stanzas xv., xviii. seem to differ much from viii.–xi., but not in such a way as Hogg would have differed, had he made them. Hogg’s error would have lain, as Scott’s did, in being, as Scott said of Mrs. Hemans, too poetical.

Neither Hogg nor Scott, I think, was crafty enough to imitate the prosaic drawl of the printed broadside ballad, or the feeble interpolations with which the “gangrel scrape-gut,” or bänkelsänger, supplied gaps in his memory. The modern complete ballad-faker would introduce such abject verses, but Scott and Hogg desired to decorate, not to debase, ballads with which they intermeddled, and we track them by their modern romantic touch when they interpolate. I take it, for this reason, that Hogg did not write stanzas xv., xviii. It was hardly in nature for Hogg, if he knew Ville de Grace in Normandy (a thing not very probable), to invent “Billop-Grace” as a popular corruption of the name – and a popular corruption it is, I think. Probably the original maker of this stanza wrote, in line 4, “alace,” an old spelling – not “alas” – to rhyme with “grace.”

Colonel Elliot then assigns xv., xviii. as most likely of all to be by Hogg. On that I have given my opinion, with my reasons.

These verses, with xviii., lead us to France, and whereas Scott here suspects that some verses have been lost (see his note to stanza xviii.), Colonel Elliot suspects that the stanzas relating to France have been interpolated. But the French scenes occupy the whole poem from xvi. to lxv., the end.

What, if Hogg were the forger, were his sources? He may have known Douglas’s Palice of Honour, which, of course, existed in print, with its mention of Maitland’s grey beard. But how did he know Maitland’s “three noble sons,” in 1801–1802, lying unsunned in the Maitland MSS.?

This is a point which critics of Auld Maitland studiously ignore, yet it is the essential point. How did the Shepherd know about the three young Maitlands, whose existence, in legend, is only revealed to us through a manuscript unpublished in 1802? Colonel Elliot does not evade the point. “We may be sure,” he says, that Leyden, before 1802, knew Hogg, and Hogg might have obtained from him sufficient information to enable him to compose the ballad. ²⁶ But it was from Laidlaw, not from Leyden, that Scott, after receiving his first copy at Blackhouse, in spring 1802, obtained Hogg’s address. ²⁷ There is no hint that before spring 1802 Leyden ever saw Hogg. Had he known him, and his ballad-lore, he would have brought him and Scott together. In 1801–02, Leyden was very busy in Edinburgh helping Scott to edit Sir Tristram, copying Arthour, seeking for an East India appointment, and going into society. Scott’s letters prove all this. ²⁸

That Hogg, in 1802, was very capable of writing a ballad, I admit; also that, through Blind Harry’s Wallace, he may have known all about “sowies,” and “portculize,” and springwalls, or springald’s, or springalls, mediæval balistas for throwing heavy stones and darts. But Hogg did not know or guess what a springwall was. In his stanza xiii. (in the MS. given to Laidlaw), Hogg wrote —

 
With springs; wall stanes, and good o’ern
Among them fast he threw.
 

Scott saw the real meaning of this nonsense, and read —

 
With springalds, stones, and gads o’ airn.
 

In his preface he says that many words in the ballad, “which the reciters have retained without understanding them, still preserve traces of their antiquity.” For instance, springalls, corruptedly pronounced springwalls. Hogg, hearing the pronunciation, and not understanding, wrote, “with springs: wall stanes.” A leader would not throw “wall stanes” till he had exhausted his ammunition. Hogg heard “with springwalls stones, he threw,” and wrote it, “with springs: wall stones he threw.”

Hogg could not know of Auld Maitland “and his three noble sons” except through an informant familiar with the Maitland MSS. in Edinburgh University Library. On the theory of a conspiracy to forge, Scott taught him, but that theory is crushed.

Hogg says, in Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott, that when his mother met Scott she told him that her brother and she learned the ballad from auld Andrew Muir, and he from “auld Babby Mettlin,” housekeeper of the first (“Anderson”) laird of Tushielaw. This first Anderson, laird of Tushielaw, reigned from 1688 to 1721 (?) or 1724. ²⁹ Hogg’s mother was born in 1730, and was only one remove – filled up by Andrew Muir – from Babby, who was “ither than a gude yin,” and knew many songs. Does any one think Hogg crafty enough to have invented Babby Maitland as the source of a song about the Maitlands, and to have introduced her into his narrative in 1834? I conjecture that this Maitland woman knew a Maitland song, modernised in time, and perhaps copied out and emended by one of the Maitland family, possibly one of the descendants of Lethington. We know that, under James I., about 1620, Lethington’s impoverished son, James, had several children; and that Lauderdale was still supporting them (or their children) during the Restoration. Only a century before, ballads on the Maitlands had certainly been popular, and there is nothing impossible in the suggestion that one such ballad survived in the Lauderdale or Lethington family, and came through Babby Maitland to Andrew Muir, then to Hogg’s mother, to Hogg, and to Scott.

If a manuscript copy ever existed, and was Babby’s ultimate source, it would be of the late seventeenth century. That is the ascertained date of the oldest known MS. of The Outlaw Murray, as is proved from an allusion in a note appended to a copy, referring to a Judge of Session, Lord Philiphaugh, as then alive. The copy was of 1689–1702. ³⁰

Granting a MS. of Auld Maitland existing in any branch of the Maitland family in 1680–1700, Babby Mettlin’s knowledge of the ballad, and its few modernisms, are explained.

As Lockhart truly says, Hogg “was the most extraordinary man that ever wore the maud of a shepherd.” He had none of Burns’ education. In 1802 he was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of research in the crabbed MSS. of the sixteenth century. Yet he gets at legendary persons known to us only through these MSS. He makes a ballad named Auld Maitland about them. Through him a farm-lass at Blackhouse acquires some stanzas which Laidlaw copies. In a fortnight Hogg sends Laidlaw the whole ballad, with the pedigree – his uncle, his mother, their father, and old Andrew Muir, servant to the famous Rev. Mr. Boston of Ettrick. The copy takes in Scott and Leyden. Later, Ritson makes no objection. Mrs. Hogg recites it to Scott, and, according to Hogg, gives a casual “auld Babby Maitland” as the original source.

Is the whole fraud conceivable? Hogg, we must believe, puts in two stanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or “gangrel scrape-gut” style, and the same with intent to deceive. He introduces “Billop-Grace” as a deceptive popular corruption of Ville de Grace. This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most artful modern “fakers.” One stanza (xlix.) —

 
But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear,
Had many battles seen —
 

seems to me very recent, whoever made it. Scott, in lxii., gives a variant of “some reciters,” for “That Edward once lay under me,” they read “That Englishman lay under me.” This, if a false story, was an example of an art more delicate than Scott elsewhere exhibits.

One does not know what Professor Child would have said to my arguments. He never gave a criticism in detail of the ballad and of the circumstances in which Scott acquired it. A man most reasonable, most open to conviction, he would, I think, have confessed his perplexity.

Scott did not interpolate a single stanza, even where, as Hogg wrote, he suspected a lacuna in the text. He neither cut out nor improved the cryingly modern stanzas. He kept them, as he kept several stanzas in Tamlane, which, so he told Laidlaw, were obviously recent, but were in a copy which he procured through Lady Dalkeith. ³¹

By neither adding to nor subtracting from his MS. copy of Auld Maitland, Scott proved, I think, his respect for a poem which, in its primal form, he believed to be very ancient. We know, at all events, that ballads on the Maitland heroes were current about 1580. So, late in the sixteenth century, were the ballads quoted by Hume of Godscroft, on the murder of the Knight of Liddesdale (1354), the murder of the young Earl of Douglas in Edinburgh Castle (1440), and the battle of Otterburn. Of these three, only Otterburne was recovered by Herd, published in 1776. The other two are lost; and there is no prima facie reason why a Maitland ballad, of the sort current in 1580, should not, in favourable circumstances, have survived till 1802.

As regards the Shepherd’s ideas of honesty in ballad-collecting at this early period, I have quoted his letter to Laidlaw of 20th July 1802.

Again, in the case of his text from recitation of the Ballad of Otterburne (published by Scott in The Minstrelsy of 1806), he gave the Sheriff a full account of his mode of handling his materials, and Scott could get more minute details by questioning him.

To this text of Otterburne, freely attacked by Colonel Elliot, in apparent ignorance, as before, of the published facts of the case, and of the manuscript, we next turn our attention. In the meantime, Scott no more conspired to forge Auld Maitland than he conspired to forge the Pentateuch. That Hogg did not forge Auld Maitland I think I have made as nearly certain as anything in this region can be. I think that the results are a lesson to professors of the Higher Criticism of Homer.