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Sir Tristrem fl^;t y^ ' ^^^ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ^ Although it is with tremendous thanks and deep gratitude I acknowledge the assistance of my advisors in this project, Dr. Ernest Sullivan II and Dr. James H. Morey, whose help has indeed been invaluable, my deepest debt is to my wife Patricia, of whose infinite patience and understanding it is better to say nothing at all than risk not saying enough. 11 . ^\^^r.y.^2i. I TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. WALTER SCOTT: SCHOLAR AND ANTIQUARY 3 III. THEAUCHINLECKMANUSCRIPT 8 IV. SIRTRISTREM 12 V. THE REDISCOVERY OF "SIR TRISTREM"AND THE BEGINNING OF THE EDITING PROCESS 19 VI. INTERNAL EVIDENCE OF AUTHORSHIP 23 VII. THE "INTRODUCTION"--?ART 1 28 VIII. THE "INTRODUCTION-PART II 55 IX. THE "APPENDIX TO THE INTRODUCTION" 64 X. "DESCRIPTION AND ABSTRACT OF TWO ANCIENT FRAGMENTS OF FRENCH METRICAL ROMANCES ON THE SUBJECT OF SIR TRISTREM" 62 XI. "NOTES ON SIR TRISTREM' 64 XII. SCOTT'S USE OF "SIR TRISTREM" AFTER HIS 1804 EDITION 66 WORKS CITED 74 ni .jKlsgcTTi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION When Walter Scott published his edition of the medieval romance "Sir Tristrem" in 1804, he was not yet tided nor a novelist, but had already achieved literary notoriety both for his poetic translations and for his monumental achievement, Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.^ Indeed, in many ways, Scott's edition of Sir Tristrem is the culmination of his work in the Border Minstrelsey, and originally Scott had intended his edition of Sir Tristrem, which was reputed to be the work of the medieval poet and seer Thomas of Erceldoune, known as The Rhymer, to be a continuing volume of the series.^ With his edition of Sir Tristrem, Scott graduated from the annotative type of scholarship found among the ballads in the Border Minstrelsey to an analytical form of scholarship that probed controversial issues and provided new and important insights into the problems found in a particular literary work, an approach which was in many ways imique to his time. Scott's edition oiSir Tristrem stands as the first modem edition of a single medieval romance, and while he was not the first scholar to use the format, his practice of including copious notes and a lengthy introduction is in many ways still the norm today. This thesis will attempt to provide the following: information concerning Scott's edition, both personal to Scott and general to the period of time in which Scott produced his edition; an account of the poem of "Sir Tristrem" itself;^ and information concerning ^Minstrelsey of the Scottish Border was first published in two volumes in 1802, and was printed with additional volumes and material throughout Scott's life and beyond. %hnston 185. ^Throughout this thesis, I will denote the original medieval poem by using the 1 u=.<^?!?'»"»:' the Auchinleck manuscript, the manuscript in which the romance is found. In addition, discussion of specific areas of the edition, such as appendices, notes, and the introduction, will be provided along with information concerning Scott's editorial practices and materials used to compile his edition. Information will be presented and discussed in the order in which the corresponding sections appear in Scott's edition of Sir Tristrem. form "Sir Tristrem." Any discussion of Scott's edition will use the form Sir Tristrem. 2 «',Sir'iB:i.i CHAPTER II WALTER SCOTT: SCHOLAR AND ANTIQUARY Although Scott was trained as an advocate, and was admitted to the bar to practice law, his avocation was that of a man of letters. It is as a translator, poet, essayist, and, above all, novelist that he made his mark in history, and it is his literary studies that made him quaUfied to edit and publish the Middle English romance of "Sir Tristrem." In establishing himself as an editor of medieval poetry, Scott's chief qualification to undertake such a task was his amazing capacity for knowledge and literature. That his genius lay in the direction of language and literature there can be no doubt: Scott was familiar with the major European languages of his day, such as French, German, Spanish, Italian,"* as well as Latin, and his devotion to reading and his ceaseless industry amazed his friends. It must be remembered that in addition to his duties as an advocate, public office holder, and business man, Scott the author published poems, essays, reviews, and above all the Waverly novels, his greatest literary achievement. This variety of experience quite naturally found its way into Scott's literary work, and it is indeed true that "there is every kind of interest and every variety of art in Scott" (Ker 11). As a child, he absorbed countiess volumes and tales of romance and chivalry, but his knowledge of Scottish literature and the ballads of the Lowlands and Border regions was second to none, as he demonstrated in his ground-breaking Minstrelsey of the Scottish Border of 1802-3, published in three volumes and revised and republished many times. To be sure, Scott had more than a passing familiarity with Shakespeare, Milton, "^Scott was familiar with Old Norse as well (Johnston 178). 3 f ;^l»jf?Jt5'V«, 1 and Pope, as well as the popular literature of his day, but the fire of his imagination and the impetus for his mind and pen lay in medieval literature, especially in Middle English romances. As Jerome Mitchell suggests, much of what Scott knew in the way of medieval literature is happily laid out for us by Scott himself (Mitchell 1).^ Reviews, introductions to both his own works and works he edited, his letters, essays, and explanatory annotations to poems and novels (again both his own poems and poems which he edited) all offer great insight into what Scott knew, and, importantly, what he did not know. When dealing with Scott's scholarship however, his letters offer us the most valuable insights as to what he is reading or has read. Indeed, it is largely through his correspondence that we can trace many of his literary and antiquarian theories, as well as the entire process of his editing of "Sir Tristrem." Due to Scott's love for ballads and romances and his keen interest in antiquarian studies, it seems, as Johnston says, "almost inevitable that he should have edited the Auchinleck 'Sir Tristrem'" (178). Scott had spent much of his childhood at his grandfather's house in Sandyknowe, in the heart of the border region very near Earlston^, and he died at Abbotsford in the same region.^ Just above the nearby tovm of Melrose, ^Mitchell points the reader to two very important works concerning Scott's reading, J. G. Cochrane's Catalogue of the Library at Abbotsford (Edinburgh 1838) and James C. Corson's article "Scott's Boyhood Collection of Chapbooks," Bibliotheck3 (1962): 202-18 (Mitchell 2). Both of these works at least offer us an idea as to what was available for Scott to read, if not proof that he read the works at hand. ^Earlston or Earlstoun is the modem version of ErJ)eldoun, ErJ)eldoun being the spelling in Sir Tristrem, which can also be found as Erceldoun, Ercheldun, Erceldoune, Ersyltoun, Ersseldoune etc. The variations on this name, as many other names that have come dovm to us in medieval literature, are legion, and must always be used with great care. ^For details of Scott's early life, which is surprisingly well documented, see Edgar Johnson's Sir Walter Scott: The Great Unknown. 2 vols. New York: Macmillan, 4 the peak of Eildon rises, which Johnston calls the traditional site of Thomas the Rhymer's (Thomas of Erceldoune) meeting with the Queen of Faerie (178).^ Eildon Tree Stone, which marks the spot where the tree once stood, is reputed to be the spot where Thomas the Rhymer delivered his famous prophecies. The ruins of the tower that Thomas was said to have inhabited were shown to visitorsas late as the 1800s.^ For Scott, "Sir Tristrem" was not merely an ancient romance, but a literary link to his childhood, and Thomas the Rhymer was a spiritual connection to Scott the writer and antiquary, who as a youth called himself "Rymour" {Letters 1: 7).'^ Throughout his life, Scott turned to the legend of Thomas of Erceldoune for material, and although his use of works attributed to The Rhymer culminated vdth the 1804 edition of Sir Tristrem, Scott first found an outlet for his study of the reputed work of Thomas in the Border Minstrelsey. Here, Scott published the somewhat lengthy traditional romance of Thomas the Rhymer, in two parts, along with a third part of his own composition, which was to "commemorate the Rhymer's poetical fdJonQ'\Border Minstrelsey 4: 27)." Scott gives a much more elaborate description of the ballad and of 1970. ^This tale is in the traditional ballad of "Thomas the Rhymer," which, of course, Scott edited in the Border Minstrelsey (4: 79-137). ^Border Minstrelsey (1806 ed.), 3: 166 f. (Johnston 179). The poem is 356 lines long, including the third part, which is Scott's own composition. '^Scott was sixteen years old at the time of this particular letter to a "Miss J." Perhaps even more interesting than Scott's nickname are the ft^agments of a few "good old ballads" which he reproduces, modified vAih Scott's own modernizations, the type of which are to be found throughout the Border Minstrelsey. Scott's passion for ballad collecting, which indeed culminated with the Border Minstrelsey, published when he was still a young man at the age of 29, can be easily seen to manifest itself even at the young age of sixteen.
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