Kitabı oku: «Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy», sayfa 8

In the conclusion, with differences, there are resemblances in the ballad and Satchells. Colonel Elliot goes into them very minutely. For example, he says that Kinmont is “made to ride off; not on horseback, but on Red Rowan’s back!”

The ballad says not a word to that effect. Kinmont’s speech about Red Rowan as “a rough beast” to ride, is made immediately after the stanza,

 
“Then shoulder high, with shout and cry,
We bore him down the ladder lang;
At every stride Red Rowan made,
I wot the Kinmont’s airns played clang.” ⁹²
 

After this verse Kinmont makes his speech (xl.–xli.). But if he did ride on Red Rowan’s back to Staneshaw bank, it was the best thing that a heavily ironed man could do. In the ballad (xxvii.) no horses of the party were waiting at the castle, all horses were left behind at Staneshaw bank (Satchells brings horses, or at least a horse for Willie, to the castle). On what could Willie “ride off,” except on Red Rowan? ⁹³

Stanzas xxxv., xxxvi. and xliv. are related, we have seen, to passages in Jock o’ the Side and Archie o’ Cafield, but ballads, like Homer, employ the same formulæ to describe the same circumstances: a note of archaism, as in Gaelic poetic passages in Märchen.

I do not pretend always to know how far Scott kept and emended old stanzas mangled by reciters: there are places in which I am quite at a loss to tell whether he is “making” or copying.

I incline to hold that Satchells was occasionally reminiscent of a ballad for the reasons and traces given, and I think that Scott when his and Satchells’ versions coincide, did not borrow direct from Satchells, but that both men had a ballad source.

That ballad was later than the popular belief, held by Satchells, that Gilbert Elliot was at the time (1596) laird of Stobs, which he did not acquire till after the Union (1603), and that he (the only man not a Scot, says Satchells, wrongly) rode with Buccleuch. Elliot is not accused of doing so in Scrope’s dispatches, but he may have come as far as Staneshaw bank, where half the company were left behind, says Satchells, with the horses, which were also left, says the ballad. In that case Elliot would not be observed in or near the Castle. Yet it may have been known in Scotland that he was of the party.

He was, as Satchells says, a cousin, he was also a friend of Buccleuch’s, and he may conceivably have taken a part in this glorious adventure, though he could not, at the moment, be called laird of Stobs. Were I an Elliot, this opinion would be welcome to me! Really, Salkeld was in a good position to know whether Elliot rode with Buccleuch or not.

The whole question is not one on which I can speak dogmatically. A person who suspects Scott intensely may believe that there were no ballad fragments of Kinmont in his possession. The person who, like myself, thinks Satchells, with his “It fell about the Martinmas,” knew a ballad vaguely, believes that Satchells had some ballad sources bemuddled in his old memory.

A person who cannot conceive that Scott wrote

 
Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, called
The laird of Stobs, I mean the same,
 

will hold that Scott knew some ballad fragments, disjecta membra. But I quite agree with Colonel Elliot, that the ballad, as it stands (with the exception, to my mind, of some thirty stanzas, themselves emended), “belongs to the early nineteenth century, not to the early seventeenth.” The time for supposing the poem, as it stands, to be “saturated with the folk-spirit” all through is past; the poem is far too much contaminated by the genius of Scott itself; like Burns’ transfiguration of “the folk-spirit” at its best.

Near the beginning of this paper I said, in answer to a question of Colonel Elliot’s, that I myself was the person who had suspected Scott of composing the whole of Kinmont Willie, and I have given my reasons for not remaining constant to my suspicions. But in a work which Colonel Elliot quotes, the abridged edition of Child’s great book by Mrs. Child-Sargent and Professor Kittredge (1905), the learned professor writes, “Kinmont Willie is under vehement suspicion of being the work of Sir Walter Scott.” Mr. Kittredge’s entire passage on the matter is worth quoting. He first says – “The traditional ballad appears to be inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,” “the efforts of poets and poetasters” end in “invariable failure.”

I do not think that they need end in failure except for one reason. The poet or poetaster cannot, now, except by flat lying and laborious forgery of old papers, produce any documentary evidence to prove the authenticity of his attempt at imitation. Without documentary evidence of antiquity, no critic can approach the imitation except in a spirit of determined scepticism. He knows, certainly, that the ballad is modern, and, knowing that, he easily finds proofs of modernism even where they do not really exist. I am convinced that to imitate a ballad that would, except for the lack of documentary evidence, beguile the expert, is perfectly feasible. I even venture to offer examples of my own manufacture at the close of this volume. I can find nothing suspicious in them, except the deliberate insertion of formulæ which occur in genuine ballads. Such wiederholungen are not reasons for rejection, in my opinion; but they are suspect with people who do not understand that they are a natural and necessary feature of archaic poetry, and this fact Mr. Kittredge does understand.

Mr. Kittredge speaks of Sir Walter’s unique success with Kinmont Willie; but is Sir Walter successful? Some of his stanzas I, for one, can hardly accept, even as emended traditional verses.

Mr. Kittredge writes – “Sir Walter’s success, however, in a special kind of balladry for which he was better adapted by nature and habit of mind than for any other, would only emphasise the universal failure. And it must not be forgotten that Kinmont Willie, if it be Scott’s work, is not made out of whole cloth; it is a working over of one of the best traditional ballads known (Jock o’ the Side), with the intention of fitting it to an historical exploit of Buccleuch. Further, the subject itself was of such a nature that it might well have been celebrated in a ballad, – indeed, one is tempted to say, it must have been so celebrated.”

Not a doubt of that!

“And, finally, Sir Walter Scott felt towards ‘the Kinmont’ and ‘the bold Buccleuch’ precisely as the moss-trooping author of such a ballad would have felt. For once, then, the miraculous happened… ” ⁹⁴ Or did not happen, for the exception is “solitary though doubtful,” and “under vehement suspicion.” But Mr. Kittredge must remember that no known Scottish ballad “is made out of whole cloth.” All have, in various degrees, the successive modifications wrought by centuries of oral tradition, itself, in some cases, modifying a much modified printed “stall-copy” or “broadside.”

Take Jock o’ the Side. The oldest version is in the Percy MS. ⁹⁵ As Mr. Henderson says, “it contains many evident corruptions,”

 
“Jock on his lively bay, Wat’s on his white horse behind.”
 

There is an example of what the original author could not have written!

We do not know how good Jock was when he left his poet’s hands; and Scott has not touched him up. We cannot estimate the original excellence of any traditional poem by the state in which we find it,

 
Corrupt by every beggar-man,
And soiled by all ignoble use.
 

CONCLUSIONS

We have now examined critically the four essentially Border ballads which Sir Walter is suspected of having “edited” in an unrighteous manner. Now he helps to forge, and issues Auld Maitland. Now he, or somebody, makes up Otterburne, “partly of stanzas from Percy’s Reliques, which have undergone emendations calculated to disguise the source from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern fabrication, and partly of a few stanzas and lines from Herd’s version.” ⁹⁶ Thirdly, Scott, it is suggested, knew only what I call “the Elliot version” of Jamie Telfer, perverted that by transposing the rôles of Buccleuch and Stobs, and added picturesque stanzas in glorification of his ancestor, Wat of Harden. Fourthly, he is suspected of “writing the whole ballad” of Kinmont Willie, “from beginning to end.”

Of these four charges the first, and most disastrous, we have absolutely disproved. Scott did not write one verse of the Auld Maitland; he edited it with unusual scrupulosity, for he had but one copy, and an almost identical recitation. He could not “eke and alter” by adding verses from other texts, as he did in Otterburne.

Secondly, Scott did not make up Otterburne in the way suggested by his critic. He took Hogg’s MS., and I have shown minutely what that MS. was, and he edited it in accordance with his professed principles. He made “a standard text.” It is only to be regretted that Hogg did not take down verbatim the words of his two reciters and narrators, and that Scott did not publish Hogg’s version, with his letter, in his notes; but that was not his method, nor the method of his contemporaries.

Thirdly, as to Jamie Telfer, long ago I wrote, opposite

 
“The lyart locks of Harden’s hair,”
 

aut Jacobus aut Diabolus, meaning that either James Hogg or the devil composed that stanza. I was wrong. Hogg had nothing to do with it; on internal evidence Scott was the maker. But that he transposed the Scott and Elliot rôles is incapable of proof; and I have shown that such perversions were made in very early times, where national, not clan prejudices were concerned. I have also shown that Scott’s version contains matter not in the Elliot version, matter injurious to the poem, as in one stanza, certainly not composed by himself, the stanza being an inappropriate stray formula from other ballads. But, in the absence of manuscript materials I can only produce presumptions, not proofs.

Lastly, Kinmont Willie, and Scott’s share in it, is matter of presumption, not of proof. He had been in quest of the ballad, as we know from his list of desiderata; he says that what he got was “mangled” by reciters, and that, in what he got, one river was mentioned where topography requires another. He also admits that, in the three ballads of rescues, he placed passages where they had most poetical appropriateness. My arguments to show that Satchells had memory of a Kinmont ballad will doubtless appeal with more or less success, or with none, to different students. That an indefinite quantity of the ballad, and improvements on the rest, are Scott’s, I cannot doubt, from evidence of style.

“Sir Walter Scott it is impossible to assail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove,” says Mr. Kittredge. ⁹⁷ Not much is to be taken by assailing him! “Business first, pleasure afterwards,” as, according to Sam Weller, Richard III. said, when he killed Henry VI. before smothering the princes in the Tower. I proceed to pleasure in the way of presenting imitations of “the traditional ballad” which “appears to be inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,” according to Mr. Kittredge.

Imitations of Ballads

The three following ballads are exhibited in connection with Mr. Kittredge’s opinion that neither poet nor poetaster can imitate, to-day, the traditional ballad. Of course, not one of my three could now take in an expert, for he would ask for documentary evidence of their antiquity. But I doubt if Mr. Kittredge can find any points in my three imitations which infallibly betray their modernity.

The first, Simmy o’ Whythaugh, is based on facts in the Border despatches. Historically the attempt to escape from York Castle failed; after the prisoners had got out they were recaptured.

The second ballad, The Young Ruthven, gives the traditional view of the slaying of the Ruthvens in their own house in Perth, on 5th August 1600.

The third, The Dead Man’s Dance, combines the horror of the ballads of Lizzy Wan and The Bonny Hind, with that of the Romaic ballad, in English, The Suffolk Miracle (Child, No. 272).

I – SIMMY O’ WHYTHAUGH

 
O, will ye hear o’ the Bishop o’ York,
   O, will ye hear o’ the Armstrongs true,
How they hae broken the Bishop’s castle,
   And carried himsel’ to the bauld Buccleuch?
 
 
They were but four o’ the Lariston kin,
   They were but four o’ the Armstrong name,
Wi’ stout Sim Armstrong to lead the band,
   The Laird o’ Whythaugh, I mean the same.
 
 
They had done nae man an injury,
   They had na robbed, they had na slain,
In pledge were they laid for the Border peace,
   In the Bishop’s castle to dree their pain.
 
 
The Bishop he was a crafty carle,
   He has ta’en their red and their white monie,
But the muddy water was a’ their drink,
   And dry was the bread their meat maun be.
 
 
“Wi’ a ged o’ airn,” did Simmy say,
   “And ilka man wi’ a horse to ride,
We aucht wad break the Bishop’s castle,
   And carry himsel’ to the Liddel side.
 
 
“The banks o’ Whythaugh I sall na see,
   I never sall look upon wife and bairn;
I wad pawn my saul for my gude mear, Jean,
   I wad pawn my saul for a ged o’ airn.”
 
 
There was ane that brocht them their water and bread;
   His gude sire, he was a kindly Scot,
Says “Your errand I’ll rin to the Laird o’ Cessford,
   If ye’ll swear to pay me the rescue shot.”
 
 
Then Simmy has gi’en him his seal and ring,
   To the Laird o’ Cessford has ridden he —
I trow when Sir Robert had heard his word
   The tear it stood in Sir Robert’s e’e.
 
 
“And sall they starve him, Simmy o’ Whythaugh,
   And sall his bed be the rotten strae?
I trow I’ll spare neither life nor gear,
   Or ever I live to see that day!
 
 
“Gar bring up my horses,” Sir Robert he said,
   “I bid ye bring them by three and three,
And ane by ane at St. George’s close,
   At York gate gather your companie.”
 
 
Oh, some rade like corn-cadger men,
   And some like merchants o’ linen and hose;
They slept by day and they rade by nicht,
   Till they a’ convened at St. George’s close.
 
 
Ilka mounted man led a bridded mear,
   I trow they had won on the English way;
Ilka belted man had a brace o’ swords,
   To help their friends to fend the fray.
 
 
Then Simmy he heard a hoolet cry
   In the chamber strang wi’ never a licht;
“That’s a hoolet, I ken,” did Simmy say,
   “And I trow that Teviotdale’s here the nicht!”
 
 
They hae grippit a bench was clamped wi’ steel,
   Wi’ micht and main hae they wrought, they four,
They hae burst it free, and rammed wi’ the bench,
   Till they brake a hole in the chamber door.
 
 
“Lift strae frae the beds,” did Simmy say;
   To the gallery window Simmy sped,
He has set his strength to a window bar,
   And bursten it out o’ the binding lead.
 
 
He has bursten the bolts o’ the Elliot men,
   Out ower the window the strae cast he,
For they bid to loup frae the window high,
   And licht on the strae their fa’ would be.
 
 
To the Bishop’s chamber Simmy ran;
   “Oh, sleep ye saft, my Lord!” says he;
“Fu’ weary am I o’ your bread and water,
   Ye’se hae wine and meat when ye dine wi’ me.”
 
 
He has lifted the loon across his shoulder;
   “We maun leave the hoose by the readiest way!”
He has cast him doon frae the window high,
   And a’ to hansel the new fa’n strae!
 
 
Then twa by twa the Elliots louped,
   The Armstrongs louped by twa and twa.
“I trow, if we licht on the auld fat Bishop,
   That nane the harder will be the fa’!”
 
 
They rade by nicht and they slept by day;
   I wot they rade by an unkenned track;
“The Bishop was licht as a flea,” said Sim,
   “Or ever we cam’ to the Liddel rack.”
 
 
Then “Welcome, my Lord,” did Simmy say,
   “We’ll win to Whythaugh afore we dine,
We hae drunk o’ your cauld and ate o’ your dry,
   But ye’ll taste o’ our Liddesdale beef and wine.”
 

II – THE YOUNG RUTHVEN

 
The King has gi’en the Queen a gift,
   For her May-day’s propine,
He’s gi’en her a band o’ the diamond-stane,
   Set in the siller fine.
 
 
The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird,
   Beside the hollans green,
And there she saw the bonniest man
   That ever her eyes had seen.
 
 
His coat was the Ruthven white and red,
   Sae sound asleep was he
The Queen she cried on May Beatrix,
   That bonny lad to see.
 
 
“Oh! wha sleeps here, May Beatnix,
   Without the leave o’ me?”
“Oh! wha suld it be but my young brother
   Frae Padua ower the sea!
 
 
“My father was the Earl Gowrie,
   An Earl o’ high degree,
But they hae slain him by fause treason,
   And gar’d my brothers flee.
 
 
“At Padua hae they learned their leir
   In the fields o’ Italie;
And they hae crossed the saut sea-faem.
   And a’ for love o’ me!”
 

* * * *

 
The Queen has cuist her siller band
   About his craig o’ snaw;
But still he slept and naething kenned,
   Aneth the hollans shaw.
 
 
The King was walking thro’ the yaird,
   He saw the siller shine;
“And wha,” quo’ he, “is this galliard
   That wears yon gift o’ mine?”
 
 
The King has gane till the Queen’s ain bower,
   An angry man that day;
But bye there cam’ May Beatrix
   And stole the band away.
 
 
And she’s run in by the little black yett,
   Straight till the Queen ran she:
“Oh! tak ye back your siller band,
   On it gar my brother dee!”
 
 
The Queen has linked her siller band
   About her middle sma’;
And then she heard her ain gudeman
   Come sounding through the ha’.
 
 
“Oh! whare,” he cried, “is the siller band
   I gied ye late yestreen?
The knops was a’ o’ the diamond-stane,
   Set in the siller sheen.”
 
 
“Ye hae camped birling at the wine,
   A’ nicht till the day did daw;
Or ye wad ken your siller band
   About my middle sma’!”
 
 
The King he stude, the King he glowered,
   Sae hard as a man micht stare:
“Deil hae me!  Like is a richt ill mark, —
   Or I saw it itherwhere!
 
 
“I saw it round young Ruthven’s neck
   As he lay sleeping still;
And, faith, but the wine was wondrous guid,
   Or my wife is wondrous ill!”
 
 
There was na gane a week, a week,
   A week but barely three;
The King has hounded John Ramsay out,
   To gar young Ruthven dee!
 
 
They took him in his brother’s house,
   Nae sword was in his hand,
And they hae slain him, young Ruthven,
   The bonniest in the land!
 
 
And they hae slain his fair brother,
   And laid him on the green,
And a’ for a band o’ the siller fine
   And a blink o’ the eye o’ the Queen!
 
 
Oh! had they set him man to man,
   Or even ae man to three,
There was na a knight o’ the Ramsay bluid
   Had gar’d Earl Gowrie dee!
 

III – THE DEAD MAN’S DANCE

 
“The dance is in the castle ha’,
   And wha will dance wi’ me?”
“There’s never a man o’ living men,
   Will dance the nicht wi’ thee!”
 
 
Then Margaret’s gane within her bower,
   Put ashes on her hair,
And ashes on her bonny breast
   And on hen shoulders bare.
 
 
There cam’ a knock to her bower-door,
   And blythe she let him in;
It was her brother frae the wars,
   She lo’ed abune her kin.
 
 
“Oh, Willie, is the battle won?
   Or are you fled?” said she,
“This nicht the field was won and lost,
   A’ in a far countrie.
 
 
“This nicht the field was lost and won,
   A’ in a far countrie,
And here am I within your bower,
   For nane will dance with thee.”
 
 
“Put gold upon your head, Margaret,
   Put gold upon your hair,
And gold upon your girdle-band,
   And on your breast so fair!”
 
 
“Nay, nae gold for my breast, Willie,
   Nay, nae gold for my hair,
It’s ashes o’ oak and dust o’ earth,
   That you and I maun wear!
 
 
“I canna dance, I mauna dance,
   I daurna dance with thee.
To dance atween the quick and the deid,
   Is nae good companie.”
 

* * *

 
The fire it took upon her cheek,
   It took upon her chin,
Nae Mass was sung, nor bells was rung,
   For they twa died in deidly sin.