Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 16

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 pa.s.sage 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 doc.u.mentary evidence to prove the AUTHENTICITY of his attempt at imitation. Without doc.u.mentary 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 doc.u.mentary 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 formulae 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. . . . "

{146a} 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. {147a} 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 ign.o.ble 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." {148a} Thirdly, Scott, it is suggested, knew only what I call "the Elliot version" of Jamie Telfer, perverted that by transposing the roles 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 roles 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 ma.n.u.script 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 pa.s.sages where they had most poetical appropriateness. My arguments to show that Satch.e.l.ls had memory of a Kinmont ballad will doubtless appeal with more or less success, or with none, to different students. That an indefinite quant.i.ty 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 a.s.sail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove," says Mr. Kittredge. {150a} Not much is to be taken by a.s.sailing 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 doc.u.mentary 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 p.a.w.n my saul for my gude mear, Jean, I wad p.a.w.n 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 saIl 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.