The Scottish Ballads

^-^Pf-. THE GLEN COLLECTION OF SCOTTISH MUSIC Presented by Lady Dorothea Ruggles- Brise to the National Library of Scotland, in memory of her brother. Major Lord George Stewart Murray, Black Watch, killed in action in France in 1914. 2Wi Januarii 1927. SCOTTISH BALLADS. BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The SCOTTISH SONGS ; collected and illustrated. In two volumes, unifoi-m with the Scottish Ballads. Price 12s. The PICTURE of SCOTLAND. A new Edition, in two volumes, with eight fine Plates, £l. Is. TRADITIONS of EDINBURGH. In two volumes, foolscap 8vo. 12s. HISTORY of the REBELLIONS in SCOTLAND, from 1638 till 1660, in 1689, 1716-16, and in 1745-6. 5 vols. Ss. 6d. each. The POPULAR RHYMES of SCOTLAND, with Illustrations, chiefly collected from oral sources. In one volume. 6s. : > QIqaa.- U Cj . THE SCOTTISH BALLADS; COLLECTED AND ILLUSTRATED BY ROBERT CHAMBERS, AUTHOR OF " TRADITIONS OF EDINBURGH," " TH] PICTURE OF SCOTLAND," &e. EDINBURGH ^tintcti l)g SSallantgne an"& Compjinj), fof WILLIAM TAIT, 78 PRINCES STREET. MDCCCXXIX. OF SCOTLAND ^ !) Digitized by tlie Internet Arciiive in 2010 witii funding from National Library of Scotland http://www.archive.org/details/scottishballads01cham PREFACE. Since the publication of a few Scottish Bal- lads by Percy, in 1755, but especially during the present century, the public have been put in possession of many various collections of popular narrative poetry ; among which the chief are—Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scot- tish Border, 1801 —Jamieson's Popular Ballads and Songs, 1806—Finlay's Historical and Ro- mantic Ballads, 1808—-Kinloch's Ancient Bal- lads, 1826—Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, 1827—and Buchan's Ancient Ballads of the North of Scotland, 1828. Each of these works contains a certain number of ballads, which the editors recovered from the mouths of the common people, and printed for the first time ; as also a considerable number, which can only be called various versions of similar compositions elsewhere published. One way and another, nearly two hundred distinct- ly different ballads have been thus laid before the public ; some of them in no fewer than six different forms. And a representation has been afforded of the condition in which such poetry exists in all the principal provinces of Scot- land. In the present age, when, like the precious volumes of the Sibyl, books may be said to in- crease in value in so far as they are abbreviated, objection will scarcely be taken to a work which proposes to condense the diffused merit of so many different and expensive books. The reader will here find, that I have not only made a care- ful selection of what appeared to me in every respect the best of the whole mass of published ballads ; which has been already done, to a certain extent, by recent compilers ; but that, by a more daring exertion of taste, I have, in a great many instances, associated what seemed to me the best stanzas, and the best lines, nay even the best words, of the various copies ex- tant ; thus producing something considerably different, it is true, from what is to be found in any particular part of the country, and there- fore not correctly a representation of the condition of Scottish ballad poetry any where ; but which, nevertheless, as it combines many other advantages, is unquestionably better, at least in a literary point of view, than any other single thing either oral or printed. I am per- fectly aware that this mode of editing ballads la Ill is deprecated by the antiquary, as being little better than the deliberate vitiation of these re- vered compositions, of which so many other editors have been guilty. Yet, after a thorough review of all the circumstances, I have arrived at the conclusion, that it is not only allowable, but is absolutely demanded by the public. These narratives, it must be remarked, have not reached us in the exact shape in which they were thrown off by their authors. They have come down from the far retreats of antiquity, altogether different in spirit, in language, and in form, from what they originally were. Many of them, especially those most recently published, are so completely translated into the modern phraseo- logy of the vulgar, that it is impossible to say that they are genuine old ballads at all. Had they been, like the most of the English ballads published by Percy, preserved in a manuscript of considerable antiquity, and had they still borne marks of the taste of ancient times, I at once allow, that, as there would have been no necessity, so would there been no excuse, for adopting my plan of publishing them. Seeing, however, that they are put into our hands in a corrupted shape, and have, in reality, no ascer- tainable value in a historical or antiquarian point of view, it seems but proper that the next best IV plan should be adopted—that of purifying them as much as possible, and giving them the ut- most literary value of which they may be sus- ceptible. By adopting what the antiquarians would call the more faithful plan, I should have produced the same matter in thrice its present extent, and so much decussated into fragments, and so frequently repeated, that it would have been almost unfit for the general reader. By adopting the plan which taste and various other considerations forced upon me, I am hopeful that the reader will find, within the compass of a single volume, and at a very moderate price, nearly all that he could wish to see. To allay, in some measure, the fervour of the antiquary, let me remind him, that the ballads still exist, in their original shape, in the publications where they first appeared. All that I have attempted, is to combine, as in the Ossianic poems, certain compositions formerly fugitive and various, and which seemed capable of a more extensive ap- plication in the reading world if so combined, but which, in their native condition, could ne- ver have been much regarded, except by men devoted to the study of that species of litera- ture. Hanover Street, Edinburgh. April 27,1829. — INTRODUCTORY. The Ballads forming this volume are divided into four different classes : I. Historical Ballads. II. Ballads supposed to refer to real circumstances IN Private Life. III. Romantic Ballads. IV. Imitations of the Ancient Ballads. The two first of these classes form properly one kind of ballad—namely, short metrical narratives of real incidents, which have happened in recent or remote times. They are here divided into two series, because it seemed somewhat awkward to mix up transactions of a public nature, and which are essentially connect- ed with history, with those which have taken place in the lives of particular and often obscure individuals. In this place, however, they may be considered as the same. The first thing to be considered in the character of this kind of ballad, is its antiquity. And here we are at once reduced to the necessity of presenting conjec- ture instead of fact. It is the belief of all previous en- quirers into this subject—and common-sense counte- nances the theory most expressly—that, in almost every case, the ballads referring to real incidents were composed immediately after the transactions which called them forth. It seems to have been a custom of the people from all time, to throw incidents which impress- ed their minds into this historical form. We see them, at the present day, do something of the same kind, in regard to notorious criminals, and to great battles. It is at least far more likely that they composed the ballads on the spur of the occasion, than with the deliberate retrospect of a historical novelist of the present day. Allovving this theory to be correct, we have here " Sir Patrick Spens," " The Gude Wallace," " The Battle of Otterbourne," " Young Bekie," " The Dou- glas Tragedy," '' Gil Morrice," &c. as compositions of the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries ; which must assuredly be considered a very re- spectable degree of antiquity for popular poems. Great changes, no doubt, must have taken place in the form and language of these productions, before they were arrested and fixed down in their present consistence by the types of the eighteenth century. We may even allow, that in some cases, as certain antiquaries sup- pose, they have degenerated from the lengthy and re- gular narratives which the minstrels formerly " carpit" to the noble of the land, and that, in all instances, they have become something decidedly inferior to what they were originally. Yet, after all, there is evidence to prove that this change cannot have been very great, during at least the last two centuries. ; ; Hume, of Godscroft, in his History of the House of Douglas, which was published in 164<6, thus quotes a verse from a ballad, which he says was composed on the death of the Knight of Liddisdale The Countess of Douglas, out of her bowre she came, And loudly then that she did call It is for the Lord of Liddisdale, That I let all these tears downe fall. In allusion to the assassination of William, sixth Earl of Douglas, by James II., in 1440, the same wri- ter quotes the following stanza, anathematory of the scene of the incident, from another old ballad : Edinburgh Castle, toune and towre, God grant thou sink for sinne, And that even for the black dinoure, Erl Douglas got therein ! These fragments, besides implying the antiquity of the custom of writing ballads on historical subjects, prove, from the style of their versification and language, that little change has taken place on this species of poetry since at least the reign of Charles I.

Load more