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PERCY'S RELIQUES.

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Printed by the Riverside Press Limited, Edinburgh
Great Britain

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In undertaking the supervision of a new edition of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, I felt that no safer or better guidance could be followed than that of Bishop Percy himself; and as he always strove, in the several editions published by himself, to embody therein the sum of the knowledge of his times, so I, following at a distance, have endeavoured, by gathering from many quarters particulars published since his death, to make his book still more worthy of the great reputation it has acquired.

Each edition published during the lifetime of the author contained large additions and corrections; but since the publication of the fourth edition, in 1794, no changes worth mentioning have been made, with the exception of such as occur in a revision brought out by the Rev. R. A. Willmott in 1857. His object, however, was to form a handy volume, and he therefore[Pg x] cleared away all Percy's Essays and Prefaces, and added short notices of his own, founded on Percy's facts, and, in some instances, on recent information.

The desire for a new edition of the Reliques has more particularly grown since the publication of the original folio MS. in 1867, and I trust that the readers of the present edition may feel disposed to accept it as in some degree satisfying this desire.

In the preparation of the present edition, the whole of Percy's work has been reprinted from his fourth edition, which contains his last touches; and in order that no confusion should be occasioned to the reader, all my notes and additions have been placed between brackets. The chief of these are the additional prefaces to the various pieces, the glossarial notes at the foot of the page, and the collation of such pieces as are taken from the folio MS. The complete glossary, which will be appended to the third volume, might seem to render the glossarial notes unnecessary; but there may be some readers who will find them useful. With regard to the pieces taken from the folio MS., the originals have been printed after Percy's copies in those cases which had undergone considerable alterations. Readers have now, therefore, before them complete materials for forming an opinion as to the use the Bishop made of his manuscript.

After commencing my work, I found that to treat[Pg xi] the Essays interspersed throughout the book as the Prefaces had been treated, would necessitate so many notes and corrections as to cause confusion; and as the Essays on the English Stage, and the Metrical Romances, are necessarily out of date, the trouble expended would not have been repaid by the utility of the result. I have, therefore, thrown them to the end of their respective volumes, where they can be read exactly as Percy left them.

In concluding these explanations, I have much pleasure in expressing my thanks to those friends who have assisted me, and to those writers without whose previous labours mine could not have been performed, more particularly to Messrs. Furnivall and Hales, who most kindly gave me permission to use any part of their edition of the folio MS. To Mr. Hales I am also indebted for many valuable hints, of which I have gladly availed myself.

Henry B. Wheatley.

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[Pg xiii]

Several questions of general interest have arisen for discussion by the editor during the work of revision. Notes upon these have been brought together, so as to form an introduction, which it is hoped may be of some use to the readers of the Reliques, in the absence of an exhaustive compilation, which has yet to be made. Here there is no attempt at completeness of treatment, and the notes are roughly arranged under the following headings:—

When Percy wrote the opening sentence in his first sketch of that "Essay on the Ancient English[Pg xiv] Minstrels" (1765), which was the foundation of the literature of the subject, he little expected the severe handling he was to receive from the furious Ritson for his hasty utterance. His words were, "The minstrels seem to have been the genuine successors of the ancient bards, who united the arts of poetry and music, and sung verses to the harp of their own composing." The bishop was afterwards convinced, from Ritson's remarks, that the rule he had enunciated was too rigid, and in the later form of the Essay he somewhat modified his language. The last portion of the sentence then stood, "composed by themselves or others," and a note was added to the effect that he was "wedded to no hypothesis."

Sir Walter Scott criticised the controversy in his interesting article on Romance in the supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, where he wrote: "When so popular a department of poetry has attained this decided character, it becomes time to inquire who were the composers of these numerous, lengthened, and once-admired narratives which are called metrical romances, and from whence they drew their authority. Both these subjects of discussion have been the source of great controversy among antiquarians; a class of men who, be it said with their forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which, therefore, we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty." After some remarks upon the essays of Percy and Ritson, he added, "Yet there is so little room for this extreme loss of temper, that upon a recent perusal of both these ingenious essays, we were surprised to find that the reverend editor of the[Pg xv] Reliques and the accurate antiquary have differed so very little as in essential facts they appear to have done. Quotations are indeed made by both with no sparing hand; and hot arguments, and on one side, at least, hard words are unsparingly employed; while, as is said to happen in theological polemics, the contest grows warmer in proportion as the ground concerning which it is carried on is narrower and more insignificant. In reality their systems do not essentially differ." Ritson's great object was to set forth more clearly than Percy had done that the term minstrel was a comprehensive one, including the poet, the singer, and the musician, not to mention the fablier, conteur, jugleur, baladin, &c.

Ritson delighted in collecting instances of the degradation into which the minstrel gradually sank, and, with little of Percy's taste, he actually preferred the ballad-writer's songs to those of the minstrel. Percy, on the other hand, gathered together all the material he could to set the minstrel in a good light. There is abundant evidence that the latter was right in his view of the minstrel's position in feudal times, but there were grades in this profession as in others, and law-givers doubtless found it necessary to control such Bohemians as wandered about the country without licence. The minstrel of a noble house was distinguished by bearing the badge of his lord attached to a silver chain, and just as in later times the players who did not bear the name of some courtier were the subjects of parliamentary enactments, so the unattached minstrels were treated as vagrants. Besides the minstrels of great lords, there were others attached to important cities. On May 26, 1298, as appears by the Wardrobe accounts of Edward I., that king gave 6s. 8d. to Walter Lovel, the harper of Chichester, whom he found playing the[Pg xvi] harp before the tomb of St. Richard in the Cathedral of Chichester.

Waits were formerly attached to most corporate towns, and were, in fact, the corporation minstrels. They wore a livery and a badge, and were formed into a sort of guild. No one, even were he an inhabitant of the town, was suffered to play in public who was not free of the guild. Besides singing out the hours of the night, and warning the town against dangers, they accompanied themselves with the harp, the pipe, the hautboy, and other instruments. They played in the town for the gratification of the inhabitants, and attended the mayor on all state occasions. At the mayor's feast they occupied the minstrels' gallery. From the merchants' guild book at Leicester, it appears that as early as 1314 "Hugh the Trumpeter" was made free of the guild, and in 1481 "Henry Howman, a harper," was also made free, while in 1499 "Thomas Wylkyns, Wayte," and in 1612 "Thomas Pollard, musician," were likewise admitted.[1]

Percy collected so many facts concerning the old minstrels, that it is not necessary to add much to his stock of information, especially as, though a very interesting subject in itself, it has really very little to do with the contents of the Reliques.

The knightly Troubadours and Trouvères, and such men as Taillefer, the Norman minstrel, who at the battle of Hastings advanced on horseback before the invading host, and gave the signal for attack by singing the Song of Roland, who died at Roncesvalles, had little in common with the authors of the ballads in this book.

[Pg xvii]

The wise son of Sirach enumerates among those famous men who are worthy to be praised "such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing;" but, according to Hector Boece, the early Scottish kings thought otherwise. In the Laws of Kenneth II., "bardis" are mentioned with vagabonds, fools, and idle persons, to be scourged and burnt on the cheek, unless they found some work by which to live; and the same laws against them were, according to Boece, still in force in the reign of Macbeth, nearly two centuries later. Better times, however, came, and Scotch bards and minstrels were highly favoured in the reign of James III.; but the sunshine did not last long. In 1574, "pipers, fiddlers, and minstrels" are again branded with the opprobrious term of vagabonds, and threatened with severe penalties; and the Regent Morton induced the Privy Council to issue an edict that "nane tak upon hand to emprent or sell whatsoever book, ballet, or other werk," without its being examined and licensed, under pain of death and confiscation of goods. In August, 1579, two poets of Edinburgh (William Turnbull, schoolmaster, and William Scot, notar, "baith weel belovit of the common people for their common offices"), were hanged for writing a satirical ballad against the Earl of Morton; and in October of the same year, the Estates passed an Act against beggars and "sic as make themselves fules and are bards ... minstrels, sangsters, and tale tellers, not avowed in special service by some of the lords of parliament or great burghs."

The minstrels had their several rounds, and, as a general rule, did not interfere with each other; but it is probable that they occasionally made a foray into other districts, in order to replenish their worn-out stock of songs.

One of the last of the true minstrels was Richard[Pg xviii] Sheale, who enjoys the credit of having preserved the old version of Chevy Chase. He was for a time in the service of Edward, Earl of Derby, and wrote an elegy on the Countess, who died in January, 1558. He afterwards followed the profession of a minstrel at Tamworth, and his wife was a "sylke woman," who sold shirts, head clothes, and laces, &c., at the fairs of Lichfield and other neighbouring towns. On one occasion, when he left Tamworth on horseback, with his harp in his hand, he had the misfortune to be robbed by four highwaymen, who lay in wait for him near Dunsmore Heath. He wrote a long account of his misfortune in verse,[2] in which he describes the grief of himself and his wife at their great loss, and laments over the coldness of worldly friends. He was robbed of threescore pounds—a large amount in those days—not obtained, however, from the exercise of his own skill, but by the sale of his wife's wares. This money was to be devoted to the payment of their debts, and in order that the carriage of it should not be a burden to him he changed it all for gold. He thought he might carry it safely, as no one would suspect a minstrel of possessing so much property, but he found to his cost that he had been foolishly bold. To add to his affliction, some of his acquaintances grieved him by saying that he was a lying knave, and had not been robbed, as it was not possible for a minstrel to have so much money. There was a little sweetness, however, in the poor minstrel's cup, for patrons were kind, and his loving neighbours at Tamworth exerted themselves to help him. They induced him to brew a bushel of malt, and sell the ale.

All this is related in a poem, which gives a vivid [Pg xix]picture of the life of the time, although the verse does not do much credit to the poet's skill.

When the minstrel class had fallen to utter decay in England, it flourished with vigour in Wales; and we learn that the harpers and fiddlers were prominent figures in the Cymmortha, or gatherings of the people for mutual aid. These assemblies were of a similar character to the "Bees," which are common among our brethren in the United States. They were often abused for political purposes, and they gave some trouble to Burghley as they had previously done to Henry IV. In the reign of that king a statute was passed forbidding rhymers, minstrels, &c. from making the Cymmortha. The following extract from a MS. in the Lansdowne Collection in the British Museum, on the state of Wales in Elizabeth's reign, shows the estimation in which the minstrels were then held:—

"Upon the Sundays and holidays the multitudes of all sorts of men, women, and children of every parish do use to meet in sundry places, either on some hill or on the side of some mountain, where their harpers and crowthers sing them songs of the doings of their ancestors."[3]

Ben Jonson introduces "Old Father Rosin," the chief minstrel of Highgate, as one of the principal characters in his Tale of a Tub; and the blind harpers continued for many years to keep up the remembrance of the fallen glories of the minstrel's profession. Tom D'Urfey relates how merrily blind Tom harped, and mention is made of "honest Jack Nichols, the harper," in Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living (Works, ii. 191). Sir Walter Scott, in the article on Romance referred to above, [Pg xx]tells us that "about fifty or sixty years since" (which would be about the year 1770) "a person acquired the nickname of 'Roswal and Lillian,' from singing that romance about the streets of Edinburgh, which is probably the very last instance of the proper minstrel craft." Scott himself, however, gives later instances in the introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He there writes: "It is certain that till a very late period the pipers, of whom there was one attached to each border town of note, and whose office was often hereditary, were the great depositaries of oral, and particularly of poetical tradition. About spring-time, and after harvest, it was the custom of these musicians to make a progress through a particular district of the country. The music and the tale repaid their lodging, and they were usually gratified, with a donation of seed corn. This order of minstrels is alluded to in the comic song of Maggy Lauder, who thus addresses a piper:

To this is added the following note:—"These town pipers, an institution of great antiquity upon the borders, were certainly the last remains of the minstrel race. Robin Hastie, town piper of Jedburgh, perhaps the last of the order, died nine or ten years ago; his family was supposed to have held the office for about three centuries. Old age had rendered Robin a wretched performer, but he knew several old songs and tunes, which have probably died along with him. The town-pipers received a livery and salary from the community to which they belonged; and in some burghs they had a small allotment of land, called the Pipers' Croft." Scott further adds:—"Other itinerants, not professed musicians, [Pg xxi]found their welcome to their night's quarters readily ensured by their knowledge in legendary lore. John Græme, of Sowport, in Cumberland, commonly called the Long Quaker, a person of this latter description, was very lately alive, and several of the songs now published have been taken down from his recitation." A note contains some further particulars of this worthy:—"This person, perhaps the last of our professed ballad reciters, died since the publication of the first edition of this work. He was by profession an itinerant cleaner of clocks and watches, but a stentorian voice and tenacious memory qualified him eminently for remembering accurately and reciting with energy the border gathering songs and tales of war. His memory was latterly much impaired, yet the number of verses which he could pour forth, and the animation of his tone and gestures, formed a most extraordinary contrast to his extreme feebleness of person and dotage of mind." Ritson, in mentioning some relics of the minstrel class, writes:—"It is not long since that the public papers announced the death of a person of this description somewhere in Derbyshire; and another from the county of Gloucester was within these few years to be seen in the streets of London; he played on an instrument of the rudest construction, which he properly enough called a humstrum, and chanted (amongst others) the old ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, which, by the way, has every appearance of being originally a minstrel song." He adds further in a note:—"He appeared again in January, 1790, and called upon the present writer in the April following. He was between sixty and seventy years of age, but had not been brought up to the profession of a minstrel, nor possessed any great store of songs, of which that mentioned in the text seemed the principal. Having,[Pg xxii] it would seem, survived his minstrel talents, and forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art, he has been of late frequently observed begging in the streets."[5]

These quotations relate to the end of the last or to the very early part of the present century, but we can add a notice of minstrels who lived well on towards the middle of this century. Mr. J. H. Dixon, in the preface to his Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, printed for the Percy Society in 1845, writes as follows:—"Although the harp has long been silent in the dales of the north of England and Scotland, it has been succeeded by the violin, and a class of men are still in existence and pursuing their calling, who are the regular descendants and representatives of the minstrels of old. In his rambles amongst the hills of the North, and especially in the wild and romantic dales of Yorkshire, the editor has met with several of these characters. They are not idle vagabonds who have no other calling, but in general are honest and industrious, though poor men, having a local habitation as well as a name, and engaged in some calling, pastoral or manual. It is only at certain periods, such as Christmas, or some other of the great festal seasons of the ancient church, that they take up the minstrel life, and levy contributions in the hall of the peer or squire, and in the cottage of the farmer or peasant. They are in general well-behaved, and often very witty fellows, and therefore their visits are always welcome. These minstrels do not sing modern songs, but, like their brethren of a bygone age, they keep to the ballads. The editor has in his possession some old poems, which he obtained from one of these minstrels, who is still living and fiddling in Yorkshire."

[Pg xxiii]

In his Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, 1846, Mr. Dixon notices one of these relics of the past, viz. Francis King, who was well known in the western dales of Yorkshire as "the Skipton Minstrel:"—"This poor minstrel, from whose recitation two of our ballads were obtained, met his death by drowning in December, 1844. He had been at a merry meeting at Gargrave in Craven, and it is supposed that owing to the darkness of the night he had mistaken his homeward road, and walked into the water. He was one in whose character were combined the mimic and the minstrel, and his old jokes and older ballads and songs ever insured him a hearty welcome. His appearance was peculiar, and owing to one leg being shorter than its companion, he walked in such a manner as once drew from a wag the remark, 'that few kings had had more ups and downs in the world!' As a musician his talents were creditable, and some of the dance tunes that he was in the habit of composing showed that he was not deficient in the organ of melody. In the quiet churchyard of Gargrave may be seen the minstrel's grave."

Percy wrote an interesting note upon the division of some of the long ballads into fits (see vol. ii. p. 182). The minstrel's payment for each of these fits was a groat; and so common was this remuneration, that a groat came to be generally spoken of as "fiddler's money."

Puttenham describes the blind harpers and tavern minstrels as giving a fit of mirth for a groat; and in Ben Jonson's masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies, 1621, Townshead, the clown, cries out, "I cannot hold now; there's my groat, let's have a fit for mirth sake."

The payment seems to have remained the same,[Pg xxiv] though the money became in time reduced in value, so that, as the minstrel fell in repute, his reward became less. In 1533, however, a Scotch eighteen-penny groat possessed a considerable buying power, as appears from the following extract:—

"Sir Walter Coupar, chaplaine in Edinburghe, gate a pynte of vyne, a laiffe of 36 vnce vaight, a peck of aite meill, a pynte of aill, a scheipe head, ane penny candell and a faire woman for ane xviii. penny grotte."[6]

After the Restoration, the sixpence took the place of the groat; and it is even now a current phrase to say, when several sixpences are given in change, "What a lot of fiddlers' money!"

One of the most important duties of the old minstrel was the chanting of the long romances of chivalry, and the question whether the ballads were detached portions of the romances, or the romances built up from ballads, has greatly agitated the minds of antiquaries. There seems reason to believe that in a large number of instances the most telling portions of the romance were turned into ballads, and this is certainly the case in regard to several of those belonging to the Arthurian cycle. On the other side, such poems as Barbour's Bruce and Blind Harry's Wallace have, according to Motherwell, swept out of existence the memory of the ballads from which they were formed. When Barbour wrote, ballads relative to Bruce and his times were common, "for the poet, [Pg xxv]in speaking of certain 'thre worthi poyntis of wer,' omits the particulars of the 'thrid which fell into Esdaill,' being a victory gained by 'Schyr Johne the Soullis,' over 'Schyr Andrew Hardclay,' for this reason:—

Another instance of the agglutinative process may be cited in the gradual growth of the Robin Hood ballads into a sort of epic, the first draught of which we may see in the Merrye Geste. The directness and dramatic cast of the minstrel ballad, however, form a strong argument in favour of the theory that they were largely taken from the older romances and chronicles, and the fragmentary appearance of some of them gives force to this view. Without preface, they go at once straight to the incident to be described. Frequently the ballad opens with a conversation, and some explanation of the position of the interlocutors was probably given by the minstrel as a prose introduction. Motherwell, in illustration of the opinion that the abrupt transitions of the ballads were filled up by the explanations of the minstrels, gives the following modern instance:—

"Traces of such a custom still remain in the lowlands of Scotland among those who have stores of these songs upon their memory. Reciters frequently, when any part of the narrative appears incomplete, supply the defect in prose.... I have heard the ancient ballad of Young Beichan and Susan Pye dilated by a story-teller into a tale of very remarkable dimensions—a paragraph of prose, and then a [Pg xxvi]screed of rhyme, alternately given. From this ballad I may give a short specimen, after the fashion of the venerable authority from whom I quote: 'Well ye must know that in the Moor's castle there was a massymore, which is a dark, deep dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was twenty feet below the ground, and into this hole they closed poor Beichan. There he stood, night and day, up to his waist in puddle water; but night or day, it was all one to him, for no ae styme of light ever got in. So he lay there a long and weary while, and thinking on his heavy weird, he made a mournfu' sang to pass the time, and this was the sang that he made, and grat when he sang it, for he never thought of ever escaping from the massymore, or of seeing his ain country again:

'Now the cruel Moor had a beautiful daughter, called Susan Pye, who was accustomed to take a walk every morning in her garden, and as she was walking ae day she heard the sough o' Beichan's sang, coming, as it were, from below the ground,'" &c.[8]

The contrast between the construction of minstrel ballads and those of the ballad-mongers who arose as a class in the reign of Elizabeth is very marked. The ballad-singers who succeeded the minstrels were sufficiently wise not to reject the treasures of their predecessors, and many of the old songs were rewritten [Pg xxvii]and lengthened to suit their purpose. Sir Patrick Spence would perhaps be the best of the minstrel ballads to oppose to one of the best of the later ballads, such as the Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green; but as its authenticity has been disputed, it will be well to choose another, and Captaine Carre, which Ritson allows to have been one of the few minstrel ballads he acknowledges, will do well for the purpose. As both these poems are before our readers, it will only be necessary to quote the first stanzas of each. The version in the folio MS. of Captain Carre commences abruptly thus:—

This is a remarkable contrast to the opening of the Beggar's Daughter:—

Some may think, however, that this ballad is an adaptation by the ballad-monger from an older original, so that perhaps a still better instance of the great change in form that the ballads underwent will be found in the Children in the Wood.[11] This favourite ballad is one of the best specimens of that didactic style which is so natural in the hands of the master, but degenerates into such tedious twaddle when copied by the pupil. The first stanza is:—

To put the matter simply, we may say that the writer of the old minstrel ballad expected an unhesitating belief for all his statements. "If fifteen stalwart foresters are slain by one stout knight, single-handed, he never steps out of his way to prove the truth of such an achievement by appealing to the exploits of some other notable manslayer."[12] On the other hand the professional ballad-writer gives a reason for everything he states, and in consequence fills his work with redundancies. Percy understood the characteristics of the older ballads, and explained the difference between the two classes of ballads in his Essay on the Ancient Minstrels,[13] but unfortunately he did not bear the distinction in mind when he altered some of the ballads in the folio MS. So that we find it to have been his invariable practice to graft the prettinesses and redundancies of the later writers upon the simplicity of the earlier. For instance, in his version of Sir Cauline he inserts such well-worn saws as the following:—

Ritson also remarks upon the distinctive styles of the ancient and modern writers, but, as observed above, he had the bad taste to prefer the work of [Pg xxix]the later ballad-writer. His opinion is given in the following passage:—"These songs [of the minstrels] from their wild and licentious metre were incapable of any certain melody or air; they were chanted in a monotonous stile to the harp or other instrument, and both themselves and the performers banished by the introduction of ballad-singers without instruments, who sung printed pieces to fine and simple melodies, possibly of their own invention, most of which are known and admired at this day. The latter, owing to the smoothness of their language, and accuracy of their measure and rime, were thought to be more poetical than the old harp or instrument songs; and though critics may judge otherwise, the people at large were to decide, and did decide: and in some respects, at least, not without justice, as will be evident from a comparison of the following specimens.

"The first is from the old Chevy Chase, a very popular minstrel ballad in the time of Queen Elizabeth:—

How was it possible that this barbarous language, miserably chanted 'by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude stile,' should maintain its ground against such lines as the following, sung to a beautiful melody, which we know belongs to them?—

The minstrels would seem to have gained little by such a contest. In short, they gave up the old Chevy [Pg xxx]Chase to the ballad-singers, who, desirous, no doubt, to avail themselves of so popular a subject, had it new written, and sung it to the favourite melody just mentioned. The original, of course, became utterly neglected, and but for its accidental discovery by Hearne, would never have been known to exist."[17]

Percy held the view, which was afterwards advocated by Scott, that the Borders were the true home of the romantic ballad, and that the chief minstrels originally belonged either to the north of England or the south of Scotland;[18] but later writers have found the relics of a ballad literature in the north of Scotland. The characteristics of the ballad doubtless varied to some extent in different parts of the country, but there is no reason to believe that the glory of being its home can be confined to any one place. Unfortunately this popular literature was earlier lost in the plains than among the hills, while the recollection of the fatal fields of Otterburn, Humbledon, Flodden, Halidon, Hedgeley, Hexham, &c., would naturally keep it alive longer among the families of the Border than elsewhere.

Before proceeding further, it may be as well to say a few words upon the word ballad. The strong line of demarcation that is now drawn between an ordinary song and a ballad is a late distinction, and even Dr. Johnson's only explanation of the word "ballad" in his Dictionary is "a song." One of his quotations is taken from Watts, to the effect that "ballad once signified a solemn and sacred song, as well as trivial, when Solomon's Song was called the ballad of ballads; but now it is applied to nothing but trifling verse." The "balade" as used by Chaucer and others was a song written in a particular rhythm, but later writers [Pg xxxi]usually meant by a ballad a song that was on the lips of the people.

It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the change of meaning that the word has undergone, nor to do more than mention the relation that it bears to the word ballet. As a ballad is now a story told in verse, so a ballet is now a story told in a dance. Originally the two were one, and the ballad was a song sung while the singers were dancing.

When Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun wrote, "I knew a very wise man, so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation," he referred to the popular songs of the people, but, in point of fact, a nation makes its own ballads, which do not become current coin until stamped with public approval. No song will change a people's purpose, but the national heart will be found written in a country's songs as a reflection of what has happened.

The successful ballad-writer requires a quick eye and ear to discern what is smouldering in the public mind, and then if his words fall in with the humour of the people his productions will have a powerful influence, and may set the country in a blaze. Ça ira and the Carmagnole had much influence on the progress of the great French Revolution, as Mourir pour la Patrie had upon that of 1848. Lilliburlero gave the finishing stroke to the English Revolution of 1688, and its author (Lord Wharton) boasted that he had rhymed King James out of his dominions.

The old ballad filled the place of the modern newspaper, and history can be read in ballads by those who try to understand them; but the type is often blurred, and in attempting to make out their meaning, we must be careful not to see too much,[Pg xxxii] for the mere fact of the existence of a ballad does not prove its popularity or its truth.

Literature is often presumed to assert a larger influence over a nation than it really does, and there is little doubt that literature is more a creation of the people than the people are a creation of literature. Where a healthy public opinion exists, people are less affected to action by what is written than is sometimes supposed, but still there is an important reflex action, and—

There are recorded instances of the powerful influence of ballads, and we know how much Dibdin's sea songs did for the British navy, when they placed before the sailor an ideal of his own feelings, and painted men he wished to be like.

The songs of a country are the truly natural part of its poetry, and really the only poetry of the great body of the people. Percy, in the dedication to his Reliques, calls ballads the "barbarous productions of unpolished ages." Nevertheless they are instinct with life, and live still, while much of the polished poetry of his age, which expelled nature from literature, is completely dead. Nature is the salt that keeps the ballad alive, and many have maintained a continuance of popularity for several centuries.

A good ballad is not an easy thing to write, and many poets who have tried their hand at composition in this branch of their art have signally failed, as may be seen by referring to some of the modern pieces in this book, which Percy hoped would "atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems."

The true ballad is essentially dramatic, and one that is to make itself felt should be all action, without[Pg xxxiii] any moralizing padding, for it is a narrative in verse meant for the common people. James Hogg, himself a successful ballad-writer, has something to say about a good song: "A man may be sair mista'en about many things, sic as yepics, an' tragedies, an' tales, an' even lang set elegies about the death o' great public characters, an' hymns, an' odes, an' the like, but he canna be mista'en about a sang. As sune as it's down on the sclate I ken whether it's gude, bad, or middlin'. If any of the two last I dight it out wi' my elbow; if the first, I copy it o'er into writ and then get it aff by heart, when it's as sure o' no' being lost as if it war engraven on a brass plate. For though I hae a treacherous memory about things in ordinar', a' my happy sangs will cleave to my heart to my dying day, an' I should na wonder gin I war to croon a verse or twa frae some o' them on my deathbed."

All ballads are songs, but all songs are not ballads, and the difference between a ballad and a song is something the same as that between a proverb and an apophthegm, for the ballad like the proverb should be upon many lips. A poet may write a poem and call it a ballad: but it requires the public approval before it becomes one in fact.

The objects of the minstrel and the ballad-singer were essentially different: thus the minstrel's stock of ballads usually lasted him his lifetime, and as his living depended upon them they were jealously guarded by him from others. Nothing he objected to more than to see them in print. The chief aim of the ballad-singer, on the other hand, was to sell his collection of printed broadsides, and to obtain continually a new stock, so as to excite the renewed attention of his customers.

Henry Chettle mentions in his Kind Hart's Dream, 1592, the sons of one Barnes, who boasted that they[Pg xxxiv] could earn twenty shillings a day by singing ballads at Bishop's Stortford and places in the neighbourhood. The one had a squeaking treble, the other "an ale-blown bass."

One of the most popular singers of the early time was a boy named Cheeke, and nicknamed "Outroaring Dick." He was originally a mechanic, but renounced that life for ballad-singing, by which occupation he earned ten shillings a day. He was well known in Essex, and was not missed for many years from the great fair at Braintree. He had a rival in Will Wimbars, who sung chiefly doleful tragedies. Mat Nash, a man from the "North Countrie," made the Border ballads his own by his manner of singing them, in which he accompanied his voice by dramatic action. Chevy Chase was his tour de force. Lord Burghley was so pleased with his singing that he enabled him to retire from his occupation. The gipsies have furnished many female singers, and one of them, named Alice Boyce, who came to London in Elizabeth's reign, paid the expenses of her journey up to London by singing the whole way. She had the honour of singing, "O, the broom" and "Lady Green Sleeves" before the queen. Gravelot, the portrait painter in the Strand, had several sittings from ballad-singers; and Hogarth drew the famous "Philip in the Tub" in his Wedding of the Industrious Apprentice.

Street singing still continues, and one of the songs of thirty years ago tells of "the luck of a cove wot sings," and how many friends he has. One of the verses is as follows:—

Mr. Chappell gives a large number of early quotations relating to ballad-singing, in his interesting History of Ballad Literature, and observes that "some idea of the number of ballads that were printed in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth may be formed from the fact that seven hundred and ninety-six ballads left for entry at Stationers' Hall remained in the cupboard of the Council Chamber of the Company at the end of the year 1560, to be transferred to the new Wardens, and only forty-four books."[19] Some of the old writers, like Shakspere's Mopsa, loved "a ballad in print;" but more of them disliked the new literature that was rising up like a mushroom, and took every opportunity of having a fling at it.

Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), refers to "the un-countable rabble of ryming ballet-makers and compylers of senseless sonnets;" and Chettle complains in Kind Hart's Dream (1592), that "now ballads are abusively chanted in every street; and from London, this evil has overspread Essex and the adjoining counties. There is many a tradesman of a worshipful trade, yet no stationer, who after a little bringing up apprentices to singing brokery, takes into his shop some fresh men, and trusts his servants of two months' standing with a dozen groats' worth of ballads, in which, if they prove thrifty, he makes them pretty chapmen, able to spread more pamphlets by the State forbidden than all the booksellers in London." Bishop Hall (1597) does not forget to satirize ballad-writing among other things more worthy of censure.

[Pg xxxvi]

That is, by the spinsters and milkmaids. Shakspere also refers to the love which women at work have for a ballad in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 4):

The larger number of ballads are anonymous, but we are told that in the reign of Henry VIII., "the most pregnant wits" were employed in writing them, and that the king himself set the example. The ballad, however, here referred to probably only meant an ordinary song. In course of time rhymesters succeeded poets, because, as the world becomes more educated, the poet confines himself to the refined, and the people have to content themselves with poor poetasters. Stirring times will, however, always give birth to some real poetry among the masses, because whatever is true and earnest must find an echo in many hearts. In Elizabeth's reign, as we have already seen, the ballad-writer had sunk very low in public esteem. In further illustration of this we find in Martin Mar-sixtus (1592) the following diatribe: "I lothe to speak it, every red-nosed rhymester is an auther, every drunken man's dream is a book; and he whose talent of little wit is hardly worth a farthing, yet layeth about him so outrageously as if all Helicon had run through his pen. In a word, scarce a cat can look out of a gutter, but out starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited." The producer and the product[Pg xxxvii] had not greatly changed in forty years, for we find the following character in the curious little book, entitled Whimzies, or a New Cast of Characters (1631):

"A ballad-monger is the ignominious nickname of a penurious poet, of whom he partakes in nothing but in povertie. He has a singular gift of imagination, for he can descant on a man's execution long before his confession. Nor comes his invention far short of his imagination. For want of truer relations, for a neede, he can finde you out a Sussex dragon, some sea or inland monster, drawne out by some Shoe-lane man in a Gorgon-like feature, to enforce more horror in the beholder."

The chief of the ballad-writers were William Elderton, Thomas Deloney, Richard Johnson, and Anthony Munday. Elderton was known as the prince of ballad-mongers; but, unfortunately, he was as notorious for his love of the bottle, and he is said to have drunk himself to death before the year 1592. Camden tells us that "he did arm himself with ale (as old Father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated," and two epitaphs made upon him are registered in the Remaines, the Latin one of which is also printed at p. 221 of vol. ii., with Oldys's translation, and the following:—

Nash asserts that "Elderton consumed his alecrammed nose to nothing in bear-bayting" an enemy "with whole bundells of ballets;"[20] and Gabriel Harvey attacks "Father Elderton and his son Greene as the ringleaders of the riming and scribbling crew."

[Pg xxxviii]

According to Stow, Elderton was an attorney in the Sheriffs' Courts of the City of London, and wrote some verses on the new porch and stone statues at Guildhall. Ritson does not think that his poetical powers are to be compared with those of Deloney and Johnson. Drayton also appears to have had a low opinion of him, for he writes:—

but Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing (act v. sc. 2) does him the honour of singing one of his songs:—

Thomas Deloney, the shoemaker's historiographer, was a voluminous writer of ballads, which he himself collected into Garlands, with different taking titles. Several of his pieces are printed in these volumes. Nash calls him "the balleting silk-weaver of Norwich;" and in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, he remarks on the ballad-maker's change of style: "He hath rhyme enough for all miracles, and wit to make a Garland of Good Will, &c., but whereas his muse, from the first peeping forth, hath stood at livery at an ale-house wisp, never exceeding a penny a quart, day or night—and this dear year, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that—he is constrained to betake himself to carded ale, whence it proceedeth that, since Candlemas, or his jigg of John for the King, not one merry ditty will come from him; nothing but The Thunderbolt against Swearers; Repent, England, Repent, and the Strange Judgments of God." Kemp, the comic actor and morris-dancer, was particularly angry with the ballad-makers in general, and[Pg xxxix] Deloney in particular, and addresses them in the following terms:—

"Kemp's humble request to the impudent generation of Ballad-makers and their coherents, that it would please their rascalities to pitty his paines in the great journey he pretends, and not fill the country with lyes of his never done actes as they did in his late Morrice to Norwich. I knowe the best of ye, by the lyes ye writ of me, got not the price of a good hat to cover your brainless heds. If any of ye had come to me, my bounty should have exceeded the best of your good masters the ballad-buiers. I wold have apparrelled your dry pates in party-coloured bonnets, and bestowed a leash of my cast belles to have crown'd ye with cox-combs.

"I was told it was the great ballet-maker, T. D., alias Tho. Deloney, chronicler of the memorable lives of the 6 yeamen of the West, Jack of Newbery, the Gentle-Craft, and such like honest men, omitted by Stow, Hollinshead, Grafton, Hal, Froysart, and the rest of those wel deserving writers."[21]

Richard Johnson, the author of the Seven Champions of Christendom, like Deloney, collected his own ballads into a book, and his Crown Garland of Golden Roses was once highly popular.

Anthony Munday, a draper in Cripplegate, and a member of the Drapers' Company, has the fame of being a voluminous writer of ballads, but none of his productions are known to exist. Kemp calls him "Elderton's immediate heir," but he does not seem to have walked in his predecessor's disreputable steps, but to have lived respected to the good age of eighty. He died Aug. 10, 1633, and was buried in St. Stephen's, Coleman-street, where a monument with an inscription in praise of his knowledge as an antiquary was [Pg xl]erected. He wrote many of the annual city pageants, besides plays, which caused Meres to call him "the best plotter" of his age.

Chettle disguised Munday as Anthony Now-Now, and Ben Jonson ridiculed him in The Case is Altered, as Antonio Balladino, the pageant poet. To the question, "You are not the pageant poet to the city of Milan, are you?" he is made to answer, "I supply the place, sir, when a worse cannot be had, sir." He had several enemies who ran him down, but he also had friends who stood up for him. William Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie, describes Munday as "an earnest traveller in this art," and says that he wrote "very excellent works, especially upon nymphs and shepherds, well worthy to be viewed and to be esteemed as rare poetry."

Thomas Middleton, the dramatic poet, who produced the Lord Mayor's pageant for the mayoralty of his namesake, Sir Thomas Middleton (The Triumphs of Truth), in 1613, attacks poor Munday most viciously. On the title-page he declares his pageant to have been "directed, written, and redeem'd into forme, from the ignorance of some former times and their common writer," and in his book he adds:—"The miserable want of both [art and knowledge] which in the impudent common writer hath often forced from me much pity and sorrow, and it would heartily grieve any understanding spirit to behold many times so glorious a fire in bounty and goodness offering to match itselfe with freezing art, sitting in darknesse with the candle out, looking like the picture of Blacke Monday."

When the civil war broke out, the majority of the poets were ready to range themselves on the side of the King. Alexander Brome was the most voluminous writer of royalist songs, but Martin Parker, the[Pg xli] writer of The King shall enjoy his own again, must take rank as the leading ballad-writer of his time. This was one of those songs that cheer the supporters of a losing cause, and help them to win success in the end. It is supposed to have formed a by no means unimportant item in the causes that brought about the Restoration. Parker is said to have been the leading spirit in a society of ballad-writers; he certainly was not the "Grub Street scribbler" that Ritson has called him. The Puritans hated this "ballad-maker laureat of London," and lost no opportunity of denouncing him and his works. Mr. Chappell has written an interesting notice of him in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, where he mentions some other royalist ballad writers, as John Wade, the author of The Royal Oak, Thomas Weaver, the author of a Collection of Songs, in which he ridiculed the Puritans so effectually that the book was denounced as a seditious libel against the Government, and John Cleveland, who, according to Anthony Wood, was the first to come forth as a champion of the royal cause. The last of these was one of the very few ballad writers whose names are enrolled in the list of British poets.

In December, 1648, Captain Betham was appointed Provost Marshal, with power to seize upon all ballad-singers, and five years from that date there were no more entries of ballads at Stationers' Hall, but when Cromwell became Protector he removed the ban against ballads and ballad-singers. After the Restoration, the courtier poets wrote for the streets, and therefore most of the ballads were ranged on the side of the Court. After a time, however, the Court fell into popular disfavour, and it was then discovered that ballad-singers and pamphleteers had too much liberty. Killigrew, the Master of the Revels to Charles II., licensed all[Pg xlii] singers and sellers of ballads, and John Clarke, a London bookseller, rented of Killigrew this privilege for a period, which expired in 1682. Besides licensers of the singers and sellers, there were licensers of the ballads themselves. These were Sir Roger L'Estrange, from 1663 to 1685, Richard Pocock, from 1685 to 1688, J. Fraser, from 1689 to 1691, and Edmund Bohun, who died in 1694, the year that the licensing system also expired.

When James, Duke of York, went to Scotland to seek for that popularity which he had lost in England, he is supposed to have taken with him an English ballad-maker to sing his praises, and this man is believed to have produced The Banishment of Poverty by H. R. H. James, Duke of Albany. Ballad-singing was very much out of favour among the authorities in the eighteenth century, and in 1716 the Middlesex grand jury denounced the singing of "scandalous" ballads about the streets as a common nuisance, tending to alienate the minds of the people. In July, 1763, we are told that "yesterday evening two women were sent to Bridewell by Lord Bute's order for singing political ballads before his lordship's door in South Audley Street."

Ballads were then pretty much the same kind of rubbish that they are now, and there was little to show that they once were excellent. The glorious days when—

had long ago departed. There are but few instances of true poets writing for the streets in later times, but we have one in Oliver Goldsmith. In his early life in Dublin, when he often felt the want of a meal, he wrote [Pg xliii]ballads, which found a ready customer at five shillings each at a little bookseller's shop in a by-street of the city. We are informed that he was as sensitive as to the reception of these children of his muse as in after years he was of his more ambitious efforts; and he used to stroll into the street to hear his ballads sung, and to mark the degrees of applause with which they were received. Most of the modern ballad-writers have been local in their fame, as Thomas Hoggart, the uncle of Hogarth the painter, whose satiric lash made him a power in his native district of Cumberland, dreaded alike by fools and knaves.

The chief heroes of the older ballads were King Arthur and his knights, Robin Hood, and Guy of Warwick. The ballads relating to the first of these appear to have been chiefly chipped off from the great cycle of Arthurian romances. The popularity of Robin Hood was at one time so great that Drayton prophesied in his Polyolbion:—

From a local hero he grew into national fame, and superseded Arthur in popular regard. He then sunk into a mere highwayman, to be again raised into fame by literary men, Ritson being the chief of these. Wakefield is still proud of its Pinder, who was one of Robin Hood's company—

and one of the thoroughfares of that place is now called Pinder Field Road. Robin Hood was a purely[Pg xliv] English hero, but Guy of Warwick was almost as popular in foreign countries as in his own land. The earliest of English political ballads was an outcome of the Barons' wars in the reign of Henry III.,[23] and each period of political excitement since then has been represented in ballads. The controversies between Protestant and Papist were carried on in verse, and Laud and his clergy were attacked by the ballad-writers of the Puritan party.

No attempt was made to produce false antique ballads until the true antiques had again risen in public esteem, and one of the first to deceive the connoisseurs was Lady Wardlaw, who was highly successful in her object when she gave Hardyknute to the world (see vol. ii. p. 105). She seems to have been quite contented with the success which attended the mystification, and does not appear to have taken any particular pains to keep her secret close. Suspicions were rife long before the publication of the Reliques, but when they appeared the whole truth came out. With regard to the other ballads, to which she had added verses, there does not appear to have been any attempt at concealment. The recent endeavour to attribute a large number of the romantic ballads of Scotland to her pen will be considered further on.

A large number of poets have imitated the old ballad, but very few have been successful in the attempt to give their efforts the genuine ring of the original. Tickell and Goldsmith entered into the spirit of their models, but Scott succeeded best in [Pg xlv]old Elspeth's fragment of a chant (the Battle of Harlaw) in the Antiquary. W. J. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, contributed several imitations to Evans's Collection of Old Ballads, but although these are beautiful poems in themselves, their claim to antiquity was made to rest chiefly upon a distorted spelling. One of the most remarkably successful imitations of modern times is the ballad of Trelawny, which the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow, wrote to suit the old burden of "And shall Trelawny die." This spirited ballad deceived Scott, Macaulay, and Dickens, who all believed it to be genuine, and quoted it as such. In 1846 it was actually printed by J. H. Dixon in his "Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, taken down from oral tradition, and transcribed from private manuscripts, rare broadsides, and scarce publications," published by the Percy Society. Mr. Dixon was probably deceived by Davies Gilbert, who sent the ballad to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1827, and said that it formerly "resounded in every house, in every highway, and in every street." In 1832 Hawker had, however, himself acknowledged the authorship. He wrote in his Records of the Western Shore (p. 56), "With the exception of the chorus contained in the last two lines, this song was written by me in the year 1825. It was soon after inserted in a Plymouth paper. It happened to fall into the hands of Davies Gilbert, Esq., who did me the honour to reprint it at his private press at East Bourne, under the impression, I believe, that it is an early composition of my own. The two lines above-mentioned formed, I believe, the burthen of the old song, and are all that I can recover."[24] Hawker was fond of these mystifications, and although he did not care to lose the [Pg xlvi]credit of his productions, he was amused to see another of his ballads, Sir Beville, find its way into a collection of old ballads.

A far more beautiful ballad than Hardyknute is Auld Robin Gray, in which a lady of rank caught the spirit of the tender songs of peasant life with excellent effect. Lady Anne Barnard kept her secret for fifty years, and did not acknowledge herself the author of it until 1823, when she disclosed the fact in a letter to Sir Walter Scott.

These were harmless attempts to deceive, such as will always be common among those who take a pleasure in reducing the pride of the experts; and when they were discovered no one was found to have been injured by the deceit. It is far different, however, when a forgery is foisted in among genuine works, because when a discovery is made of its untrustworthiness, the reputation of the true work is injured by this association with the false. Pinkerton inserted a large number of his own poems in his edition of Select Scottish Ballads (1783), which poems he alleged to be ancient. He was taken severely to task by Ritson on account of these fabrications, and he afterwards acknowledged his deceit.[25]

One of the most barefaced of literary deceptions was the work published in 1810 by R. H. Cromek, under the title of Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song. Although the ballads contained in these volumes are very varied in their subject, they were almost entirely composed by Allan Cunningham, who produced whatever was required of him by his employer.

Poets are often the worst of editors, as they find the temptation to "improve" their originals too strong to resist. Allan Cunningham published in [Pg xlvii]1826 a collection of the Songs of Scotland, in which he availed himself so largely of this license that Motherwell felt called upon to reprobate the work in the strongest terms. He observes: "While thus violating ancient song, he seems to have been well aware of the heinousness of his offending. He might shudder and sicken at his revolting task indeed! To soothe his own alarmed conscience, and, if possible, to reconcile the mind of his readers to his wholesale mode of hacking and hewing and breaking the joints of ancient and traditionary song; and to induce them to receive with favour the conjectural emendations it likes him to make, he, in the course of his progress, not unfrequently chooses to sneer at those, and to underrate their labours, who have used their best endeavours to preserve ancient song in its primitive and uncontaminated form."[26] These are by no means the hardest words used by Motherwell in respect to the Songs of Scotland.

The worst among the forgers, however, was a man who ought to have been above such dishonourable work, viz., Robert Surtees, the author of the History of the County Palatine of Durham, in whose honour the Surtees Society was founded. In Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border will be found three ballads—The Death of Featherstonhaugh, Lord Ewrie, and Bartram's Dirge, which are treated by Sir Walter as true antiques, and of the genuine character of which he never had a doubt. They are all three, however, mere figments of Surtees's imagination. Each of the ballads was accompanied by fictitious historical incidents, to give it an extra appearance of authenticity. Featherstonhaugh was said to be "taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years of age, mother of one of the miners in Alston Moor;" [Pg xlviii]Lord Ewrie was obtained from "Rose Smith, of Bishop Middleham, a woman aged upwards of ninety-one;" and Bartram's Dirge from "Anne Douglas, an old woman who weeded in his (Surtees's) garden." On other occasions Sir Walter Scott was deluded by his friend with false information. Mr. George Taylor makes the following excuse in his Life of Surtees (p. 25): "Mr. Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject, and the result must have been gratifying to him. But at a later period of their intimacy, when personal regard was added to high admiration for his correspondent, he probably would not have subjected him to the mortification of finding that he could be imposed on in a matter where he had a right to consider himself as almost infallible. And it was most likely from this feeling that Mr. Surtees never acknowledged the imposition: for so late as the year 1830, in which Scott dates his introduction to the edition of the Minstrelsy, published in 1831, the ballad of the Death of Featherstonhaugh retains its place (vol. i. p. 240) with the same expressions of obligation to Mr. Surtees for the communication of it, and the same commendation of his learned proofs of its authenticity." In spite of this attempted justification, we cannot fail to stigmatize Surtees's forgery as a crime against letters which fouls the very wells of truth.

As was to be expected, the existence of the forgeries just referred to caused several persons to doubt the genuineness of many of the true ballads. Finlay wrote, in 1808, "the mention of hats and cork-heeled shoon (in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spence) would lead[Pg xlix] us to infer that some stanzas are interpolated, or that its composition is of a comparatively modern date;"[27] and, in 1839, the veteran ballad-collector, Mr. David Laing, wrote as follows: "Notwithstanding the great antiquity that has been claimed for Sir Patrick Spence, one of the finest ballads in our language, very little evidence would be required to persuade me but that we were also indebted for it to Lady Wardlaw (Stenhouse's Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland, with additional notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, p. 320[27])." At p. 457[27] of the same book, Mr. Laing, after quoting from Finlay, made the following further observations: "Bishop Percy also remarks that 'an ingenious friend thinks the author of Hardyknute has borrowed several expressions and sentiments from the foregoing and other old Scottish songs in this collection.' It was this resemblance with the localities Dunfermline and Aberdour, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Wardlaw's seat, that led me to throw out the conjecture, whether this much-admired ballad might not also have been written by Lady Wardlaw herself, to whom the ballad of Hardyknute is now universally attributed."[28]

Mr. J. H. Dixon, in 1845, considered that the suspicion had become a certainty, and wrote of Lady Wardlaw as one "who certainly appears to have been [Pg l]a great adept at this species of literary imposture." "This celebrated lady is now known to be the author of Edward! Edward! and of Sir Patrick Spence, in addition to Hardyknute."[29] Mr. Dixon and the late Mr. Robert Chambers have also thrown out hints of their disbelief in the authenticity of the recitations of Mrs. Brown of Falkland.

These, however, were mere skirmishing attacks, but in 1859 Robert Chambers marshalled his forces, and made a decisive charge in his publication entitled The Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship. He there explains his belief as follows:—

"Upon all these considerations I have arrived at the conclusion that the high-class romantic ballads of Scotland are not ancient compositions—are not older than the early part of the eighteenth century—and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind. Whose was this mind is a different question, on which no such confident decision may, for the present, be arrived at; but I have no hesitation in saying that, from the internal resemblance traced on from Hardyknute through Sir Patrick Spence and Gil Morrice to the others, there seems to be a great likelihood that the whole were the composition of the authoress of that poem, namely, Elizabeth Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie."

Scotsmen were not likely to sit down tamely under an accusation by which their principal ballad treasures were thus stigmatized as false gems, and we find that several writers immediately took up their pens to refute the calumny. It will be seen that the charge is divided into two distinct parts, and it will be well to avoid mixing them together, and to consider each part separately.

[Pg li]

I. Certain ballads, generally supposed to be genuine, were really written by one person, in imitation of the antique.

II. The author of this deceit was Lady Wardlaw, the writer of Hardyknute.

I. The ballads in the Reliques, which are instanced by Chambers, are as follows:—

Two of these (2 and 7) are in the Folio MS., which was written before Lady Wardlaw was born; Edom o' Gordon also exists in another old MS. copy; Gilderoy (5) is known to have been a street ballad, and the remainder are found in other copies. It is not necessary to discuss each of these cases separately, and we shall therefore reserve what we have to say for the special consideration of Sir Patrick Spence.

Before proceeding, we must first consider how far Chambers's previous knowledge of ballad literature prepared him for this inquiry; and we cannot rate that knowledge very highly, for in his Collection of Scottish Songs, he actually attributes Wotton's Ye Meaner Beauties to Darnley, and supposes Mary Queen of Scots to have been the subject of the author's praises. At this period also his scepticism had not been aroused, for all the ballads that he thought spurious in 1859 had been printed by him in 1829 as genuine productions.

To return to the main Point at issue. Chambers writes:—

[Pg lii]

"It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the successors of Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a particle of positive evidence for their having existed before the eighteenth century. Overlooking the one given by Ramsay in his Tea-table Miscellany, we have neither print nor manuscript of them before the reign of George III. They are not in the style of old literature. They contain no references to old literature. As little does old literature contain any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collection of Scottish poetry in 1706-1711, wholly overlooks them. Ramsay, as we see, caught up only one."

Mr. Norval Clyne (Ballads from Scottish History, 1863, p. 217) gives a satisfactory answer to the above. He writes:—

"The want of any ancient manuscript can be no argument against the antiquity of a poem, versions of which have been obtained from oral recitation, otherwise the great mass of ballads of all kinds collected by Scott, and by others since his time, must lie under equal suspicion. Bannatyne, in the sixteenth century, and Allan Ramsay, in the early part of the eighteenth, were not collectors of popular poetry in the same sense as those who have since been so active in that field. The former contented himself, for the most part, with transcribing the compositions of Dunbar, Henrysone, and other "makers," well known by name, and Ramsay took the bulk of his Evergreen from Bannatyne's MS. That a great many poems of the ballad class, afterwards collected and printed, must have been current among the people when the Evergreen was published, no one that knows anything of the subject will deny." The old ballads lived on the tongues of the people, and a small percentage of them only were ever committed to writing,[Pg liii] so that a fairer test of authenticity is the existence of various versions. Of known forgeries no varieties exist, but several versions of Sir Patrick Spence have been rescued from oblivion.

It is not probable that any fresh ballads will be obtained from recitation, but it is in some degree possible, as may be seen from an instance of a kindred nature in the field of language. We know that local dialects have almost passed away, and yet some of the glossaries of them lately issued contain words that explain otherwise dark passages in manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Chambers further affirms that the sentiment of these ballads is not congenial to that of the peasantry—"it may be allowably said, there is a tone of breeding throughout these ballads, such as is never found in the productions of rustic genius." This, however, is begging the question, for it does not follow that the songs of the peasantry were written by the peasantry. It is they who have remembered them, and held to them with greater tenacity than the educated classes.

We now come to the text that bears specially upon Sir Patrick Spence, and we will give it in Chambers's own words:—"The Scottish ladies sit bewailing the loss of Sir Patrick Spence's companions 'wi' the gowd kaims in their hair.' Sir Patrick tells his friends before starting on his voyage, 'Our ship must sail the faem;'[30] and in the description of the consequences of his shipwreck, we find 'Mony was the feather-bed that flattered on the faem.'[30] No old poet would use faem as an equivalent for the sea; but it was just such a phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would use in that sense." In the first place, we should be justified in saying that this test is not a [Pg liv]fair one, because no one will contend that the ballads have not been altered in passing from hand to hand, and new words inserted; but Mr. Norval Clyne has a complete answer for this particular objection; he writes: "Bishop Gawin Douglas completed his translation of Virgil's Æneid on 22nd July, 1513, and in his Prologue to the twelfth book are these lines:—

Here we have the expression, to which attention is called, occurring in a popular song in common use before the battle of Flodden. I have seen it remarked, however, that it is the elliptical use of 'sail the faem' for 'sail over the faem,' which indicates an authorship not older than the day of Queen Anne. My answer to this objection shall also be an example from an 'old poet.' One of the Tales of the Three Priests of Peblis assigned to the early part of the sixteenth century, describes in homely verse the career of a thrifty burgess, and contains these lines (Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, 1802):—

These quotations completely set aside one portion of the charge, and the other, in which an attempt is made to show that a similar form of expression is constantly occurring in the several poems, is really of little weight, pressed as it is with some unfairness. We have already seen that the old minstrels used certain forms of expression as helps to memory, and [Pg lv]these recur in ballads that have little or no connection with each other. Chambers, following David Laing, uses Percy's note at the end of Sir Patrick Spence[32] as an engine of attack against the authenticity of the ballad, but there is really no reason for the conclusion he comes to, "that the parity he remarked in the expressions was simply owing to the two ballads being the production of one mind," for a copyist well acquainted with ballad literature would naturally adopt the expressions found in them in his own composition.

II. The consideration of the opinion that Lady Wardlaw was the author of Sir Patrick Spence and other ballads, need not detain us long, because the main point of interest is their authenticity, and the question of her authorship is quite a secondary matter: that falls to the ground if the grand charge is proved false, and need not stand even if that remains unrefuted. The only reason for fixing upon Lady Wardlaw appears to have been that as these ballads were transmitted to Percy by Lord Hailes, and one of them was an imitation of the antique by Lady Wardlaw, and another was added to by the same lady, therefore if a similarity between the ballads could be proved, it would follow that all were written by her. Now the very fact that the authorship of Hardyknute was soon discovered is strong evidence against any such supposition, because none of her associates had any suspicion that she had counterfeited other ballads, and could such a wholesale manufacture have been concealed for a century it would be a greater mystery than the vexed question, who was Junius? The other point, whether the author of the indistinct and redundant Hardyknute [Pg lvi]could have written the clear and incisive lines of Sir Patrick Spence may be left to be decided by readers who have the two poems before them in these volumes.

A few particulars may, however, be mentioned. The openings of these ballads form excellent contrasted examples of the two different styles of ballad writing. Sir Patrick Spence commences at once, like other minstrel ballads, with the description of the king and his council:—

The king then sends a letter to Spence. There is no description of how this was sent, but we at once read:—

Hardyknute, on the other hand, is full of reasons and illustrative instances in the true ballad-writer's style:—

Having placed the openings of the two poems in opposition, we will do the same with the endings.[Pg lvii] How different is the grand finish of Sir Patrick Spence—

from the feeble conclusion of Hardyknute:—

Sir Patrick Spence gives us a clear picture that a painter could easily reproduce, but Hardyknute is so vague that it is sometimes difficult to follow it with understanding, and if the same author wrote them both she must have been so strangely versatile in her talents that there is no difficulty in believing that she wrote all the romantic ballads of Scotland.

How little Chambers can be trusted may be seen in the following passage, where he writes: "The first hint at the real author came out through Percy, who in his second edition of the Reliques (1767) gives the following statement, 'There is more than reason,' &c.,[33] to which he adds the note: 'It is rather remarkable that Percy was not informed of these particulars in 1765; but in 1767, Sir John Hope Bruce having died in the interval (June, 1766), they were communicated to him. It looks as if the secret had hung on the life of this venerable gentleman." Who would suspect, what is the real fact of the case, that Percy's quoted preface was actually printed in his first edition [Pg lviii](1765), and that Chambers's remarks fall to the ground because they are founded on a gross blunder.[34]

Printed broadsides are peculiarly liable to accidents which shorten their existence, and we therefore owe much to the collectors who have saved some few of them from destruction. Ballads were usually pasted on their walls by the cottagers, but they were sometimes collected together in bundles. Motherwell had "heard it as a by-word in some parts of Stirlingshire that a collier's library consists but of four books, the Confession of Faith, the Bible, a bundle of Ballads, and Sir William Wallace. The first for the gudewife, the second for the gudeman, the third for their daughter, and the last for the son, a selection indicative of no mean taste in these grim mold-warps of humanity."[35]

The love of a good ballad has, however, never been confined to the uneducated. Queen Mary II., after listening to the compositions of Purcell, played by the composer himself, asked Mrs. Arabella Hunt to sing Tom D'Urfey's ballad of "Cold and Raw," which was set to a good old tune, and thereby offended Purcell's vanity, who was left unemployed at the harpsichord. Nevertheless, the composer had the sense afterwards to introduce the tune as the bass of a song he wrote himself. When ballads were intended [Pg lix]for the exclusive use of the ordinary ballad-buyers they were printed in black letter, a type that was retained for this purpose for more than a century after it had gone out of use for other purposes. According to Pepys the use of black letter ceased about the year 1700, and on the title-page of his collection he has written "the whole continued down to the year 1700, when the form till then peculiar thereto, viz. of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures." White-letter printing of non-political street ballads really commenced about 1685, and of political ballads about half a century earlier. The saving referred to by Pepys as being made by the omission of woodcuts could not have been great, for they seldom illustrated the letterpress, and were used over and over again, so that cuts which were executed in the reign of James I. were used on ballads in Queen Anne's time.

Until about the year 1712 ballads were universally printed on broadsides, and those intended to be sold in the streets are still so printed, but after that date such as were intended to be vended about the country were printed so as to fold into book form.

The great ballad factory has been for many years situated in Seven Dials, where Pitts employed Corcoran and was the patron of "slender Ben," "over head and ears Nic," and other equally respectably named poets. The renowned Catnach lived in Seven Dials, and left a considerable business at his death. He was the first to print yards of songs for a penny, and his fame was so extended, that his name has come to be used for a special class of literature.

Although, thanks to the labours of far-sighted men, our stock of old ballads and songs is large, we[Pg lx] know that those which are irrevocably lost far exceed them in number. It is therefore something to recover even the titles of some of these, and we can do this to a considerable extent by seeking them in some of the old specimens of literature. In Cockelbie's Sow, a piece written about 1450, which was printed in Laing's Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1822), there is a list of the songs sung at a meeting. In Henryson's curious old pastoral, Robin and Makyne (vol. 2, p. 85), reference is made to the popular tales and songs, which were even then old:—

To the prologues of Gawin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Æneid, we are indebted for a knowledge of four old songs, a fact that outweighs in the opinion of some the merits of the work itself, which was the first translation of a classic that ever appeared in England.

In the Catalogue of Captain Cox's Library, printed in Laneham's letter on the Kenilworth entertainments, there is a short list of some of the popular ballads of his time, but it is sorely tantalizing to read of "a bunch of ballets and songs all auncient," "and a hundred more he hath fair wrapt in parchment, and bound with a whipcord." We learn the names of ballads which were popular in old Scotland from the Complaynt of Scotland, a most interesting list, which Mr. Furnivall has fully illustrated and explained in his edition of Laneham. Another source of information for learning the names of songs no longer known to exist are the medleys, which are made up of the first lines of many songs. The[Pg lxi] extreme popularity of ballads in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is reflected in the literature of the time, which is full of allusions to them. Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, who put a little of almost everything into his book, could not be expected to overlook ballads. He says: "The very rusticks and hog-rubbers ... have their wakes, whitson ales, shepherds' feasts, meetings on holy dayes, countrey dances, roundelayes ... instead of odes, epigrams and elegies, &c., they have their ballads, countrey tunes, O the Broom, the bonny, bonny Broom, ditties and songs, Bess a Bell she doth excel." The favourite songs of Father Rosin, the minstrel in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub (act i. sc. 2), are Tom Tiler, the Jolly Joiner, and the Jovial Tinker. The old drama is full of these references, and one of the most frequent modes of revenge against an enemy was to threaten that he should be balladed. Thus Massinger writes:—

Fletcher sets side by side as equal evils the having one's eyes dug out, and the having one's name sung

The ballad-writers are called base rogues, and said to "maintaine a St. Anthonie's fire in their noses by nothing but two-penny ale."[38]

Shakspere was not behind his contemporaries in his contemptuous treatment of "odious ballads," or of "these same metre ballad-mongers," but he has [Pg lxii]shown by the references in King Lear and Hamlet his high appreciation of the genuine old work, and there is no doubt that the creator of Autolycus loved "a ballad but even too well."

There have been two kinds of collectors, viz. those who copied such fugitive poetry as came in their way, and those who bought up all the printed ballads they could obtain.

Of the manuscript collections of old poetry, the three most celebrated are the Maitland MS. in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge, the Bannatyne MS. presented by the Earl of Hyndford to the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and the famous folio MS. which formerly belonged to Percy, and is now in the British Museum. The Maitland MS., which contains an excellent collection of Scotch poetry, was formed by Sir Richard Maitland, of Lethington, Lord Privy Seal and Judge in the Court of Session (b. 1496, d. 1586). Selections from this MS. were printed by Pinkerton in 1786.

In the year 1568, when Scotland was visited by the Plague, a certain George Bannatyne, of whom nothing is known, retired to his house to escape infection, and employed his leisure in compiling his most valuable collection of Scottish poetry. This MS. was lent out of the Advocates' Library to Percy, and he was allowed to keep it for a considerable time. Sir David Dalrymple published "Some ancient Scottish Poems" in 1770, which were taken from this MS.

The great Lord Burghley was one of the first to recognize the value of ballads as an evidence of the popular feeling, and he ordered all broadsides to be brought to him as they were published. The learned Selden was also a collector of them, but the Chinese nation was before these wise men, and had realized an idea that has often been suggested in[Pg lxiii] Europe. One of their sacred books is the Book of Songs, in which the manners of the country are illustrated by songs and odes, the most popular of which were brought to the sovereign for the purpose.

The largest collections of printed ballads are now in Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the Bodleian at Oxford, and in the British Museum. Some smaller collections are in private hands. In taking stock of these collections, we are greatly helped by Mr. Chappell's interesting preface to the Roxburghe Ballads. The Pepysian collection deposited in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, consisting of 1,800 ballads in five vols., is one of the oldest and most valuable of the collections. It was commenced by Selden, who died in 1654, and continued by Samuel Pepys till near the time of his own death in 1703. Tradition reports that Pepys borrowed Selden's collection, and then "forgot" to return it to the proper owner. Besides these five volumes, there are three vols. of what Pepys calls penny merriments. There are 112 of these, and some are garlands that contain many ballads in each.

Cambridge's rival, Oxford, possesses three collections, viz. Anthony Wood's 279 ballads and collection of garlands, Francis Douce's 877 in four vols., and Richard Rawlinson's 218.

Previously to the year 1845, when the Roxburghe collection was purchased, there were in the British Museum Library about 1,000 ballads, but Mr. Chappell, without counting the Roxburghe Ballads, gives the number as 1292 in 1864. They are as follows:—

The celebrated Roxburghe collection was bought by Rodd at Benjamin Heywood Bright's sale in 1845 for the British Museum, the price being £535. It was originally formed by Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, and as John Bagford was one of the buyers employed by the Earl, he is the reputed collector of the ballads. At the sale of the Harleian Library, this collection became the property of James West, P.R.S., and when his books were sold in 1773, Major Thomas Pearson bought it for, it is said, £20. This gentleman, with the assistance of Isaac Reed, added to the collection, and bound it in two volumes with printed title-pages, indexes, &c. In 1788, John, Duke of Roxburghe, bought it at Major Pearson's sale for £36 14s. 6d., and afterwards added largely to it, making a third volume. At the Duke's sale in 1813, the three volumes were bought for £477 15s., by Harding, who sold them to Mr. Bright for, it is supposed, £700. The collection consists of 1335 broadsides, printed between 1567 and the end of the eighteenth century, two-thirds of them being in black letter. Bright added a fourth volume of eighty-five pages, which was bought for the British Museum for £25 5s.

Some early ballads are included in the collection of broadsides in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, and a collection of proclamations and ballads was made by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, and presented by him to the Chetham Library at Manchester.

The late George Daniel picked up a valuable collection of ballads at an old shop in Ipswich, which[Pg lxv] is supposed to have come from Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, where it had lain unnoticed or forgotten for two centuries or more. It originally numbered 175 to 200 ballads, but was divided by Daniel, who sold one portion (consisting of eighty-eight ballads) to Thorpe, who disposed of it to Heber. At Heber's sale it was bought by Mr. W. H. Miller, of Britwell, and from him it descended to Mr. S. Christie Miller. Twenty-five ballads known to have belonged to the same collection were edited by Mr. Payne Collier for the Percy Society in 1840. The portion that Daniel retained was bought at the sale of his library by Mr. Henry Huth, who has reprinted seventy-nine of the best ballads. Other known private collections are five volumes belonging to Mr. Frederic Ouvry, President of the Society of Antiquaries, which contain Mr. Payne Collier's collection of Black-letter Ballads, the Earl of Jersey's at Osterley Park, and one which was formed by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, who printed a full catalogue of the ballads contained in it, and then disposed of it to the late Mr. William Euing of Glasgow.

We owe our gratitude to all these collectors, but must also do honour to those writers who in advance of their age tried to lead their contemporaries to fresher springs than those to which they were accustomed. The first of these was Addison, who commented on the beauties of Chevy Chase and the Children in the Wood in the Spectator. He wrote: "it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man."

Rowe was another appreciator of this popular literature, and his example and teaching may have had its influence in the publication of the first Collection of Old Ballads, for the motto to the first[Pg lxvi] volume is taken from the prologue to Rowe's Jane Shore (first acted in 1713):—

Parnell, Tickell, and Prior belonged to the small band who had the taste to appreciate the unfashionable old ballad. Prior says of himself in a MS. essay quoted by Disraeli in the Calamities of Authors: "I remember nothing further in life than that I made verses: I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant before I was big enough for Westminster school." The few were, however, unable to convert the many, and Dr. Wagstaffe, one of the wits of the day, ridiculed Addison for his good taste, and in a parody of the famous essay on Chevy Chase he commented upon the History of Tom Thumb, and pretended to point out the congenial spirit of this poet with Virgil.

There is still another class of preservers of ballads to be mentioned, viz. those whose tenacious memories allow them to retain the legends and songs they heard in their youth, but as Prof. Aytoun writes: "No Elspats of the Craigburnfoot remain to repeat to grandchildren that legendary lore which they had acquired in years long gone by from the last of the itinerant minstrels." The most celebrated of these retailers of the old ballads was Mrs. Brown of Falkland, wife of the Rev. Dr. Brown, for from her both Scott and[Pg lxvii] Jamieson obtained some of their best pieces. Her taste for the songs and tales of chivalry was derived from an aunt, Mrs. Farquhar, "who was married to the proprietor of a small estate near the sources of the Dee in Braemar, a good old woman, who spent the best part of her life among flocks and herds, [but] resided in her latter years in the town of Aberdeen. She was possest of a most tenacious memory, which retained all the songs she had heard from nurses and countrywomen in that sequestered part of the country."[39] Doubts have been expressed as to the good faith of Mrs. Brown, but they do not appear to be well grounded. Another of these ladies from whose mouths we have learnt so much of the ever-fading relics of the people's literature was Mrs. Arrot.

The earliest printed collection of Scottish popular poetry known to exist is a volume printed at Edinburgh, "by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, in the year 1508," which was reprinted in facsimile by David Laing in 1827. The next work of interest in the bibliography of ballads is "Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, collected out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other ballates, chainged out of prophaine songs for avoiding of Sinne and Harlotrie," printed in 1590 and 1621, and reprinted by J. G. Dalzell in 1801, and by David Laing in 1868. It contains parodies of some of the songs mentioned in the Complaint of Scotland, and is supposed to be the work of three brothers—James, John, and Robert Wedderburn, of Dundee. To the last of the three Mr. Laing attributed the Complaint, but Mr. Murray, the latest editor of that book, is unable to agree with him.

The first book of "prophane" songs published in Scotland was a musical collection entitled "Cantus [Pg lxviii]Songs and Fancies to several musicall parts, both apt for voices and viols: with a brief introduction to musick, as it is taught by Thomas Davidson in the Musick School of Aberdeen. Aberdeen, printed by John Forbes." 1662, 1666, and 1682.

The next work in order of time is "A Choise Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, both ancient and modern, by several hands. Edinburgh, printed by James Watson." In three parts, 1706, 1709, 1710. Supposed to have been compiled by John Spottiswood, author of Hope's Minor Practicks.

All these works emanated from Scotchmen, and the only works of the same character that were published in England were small collections of songs and ballads, called Garlands and Drolleries. These are too numerous to be noticed here; but that they were highly popular may be judged from the fact that a thirteenth edition of The Golden Garland of Princely Delight is registered. The Garlands are chiefly small collections of songs on similar subjects. Thus, there were Love's Garlands, Loyal Garlands, Protestant Garlands, &c. Considerable pains seem to have been taken in order to obtain attractive titles for these little brochures. Thus, on one we read:—

Drolleries were collections of "jovial poems" and "merry songs," and some of them were confined to the songs sung at the theatres.

One of the first English collections of any pretensions was Dryden's Miscellany Poems, published in 1684-1708, which was shortly after followed by Tom D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719-20. But the first attempt to bring together a large number of popular ballads, as distin[Pg lxix]guished from songs, was made in "A Collection of Old Ballads, corrected from the best and most ancient copies extant, with Introductions historical, critical, or humorous." London. Vols I. and II. 1723. Vol. III. 1725.

The object of most of the works referred to above was the publication of songs to be sung; the object of this one was the presentment of ballads to be read. It had a large sale, and the editor (who is said to have been Ambrose Phillips) expresses his satisfaction in the Preface to Vol. II.: "Though we printed a large edition for such a trifle, and in less than two months put it to the press again, yet could we not get our second edition out before it was really wanted." In spite, however, of its satisfactory reception, it does not appear to have taken any permanent position in literature, although it must have prepared the public mind to receive the Reliques. This collection contains one hundred and fifty-nine ballads, out of which number twenty-three are also in the Reliques.[40] Many of the others are of considerable interest, but some had better have been left unprinted, and all are of little critical value.

In the year after the first two volumes of the English collection were published, Allan Ramsay issued [Pg lxx]in Edinburgh "The Evergreen, being a collection of Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600," the principal materials of which were derived from the Bannatyne MS. This was followed in the same year (1724) by "The Tea-Table Miscellany: a Collection of choice Songs, Scots and English," a work which is frequently referred to by Percy in the following pages. In neither of these works was Ramsay very particular as to the liberties he allowed himself in altering his originals. In order to make the volumes fit reading for his audience, which he hoped would consist of

Ramsay pruned the songs of their indelicacies, and filled up the gaps thus made in his own way. The Tea-table Miscellany contains upwards of twenty presumably old songs, upwards of twelve old songs much altered, and about one hundred songs written by the editor himself, Crawford, Hamilton, and others.

In 1725, William Thomson, a teacher of music in London, brought out a collection of Scottish songs, which he had chiefly taken from the Tea-table Miscellany without acknowledgment. He called his book Orpheus Caledonius.

For some years before Percy's collection appeared, the Foulises, Glasgow's celebrated printers, issued from their press, under the superintendence of Lord Hailes, various Scottish ballads, luxuriously printed with large type, in a small quarto size.

These were the signs that might have shown the far-sighted man that a revival was at hand. At last the time came when, tired out with the dreary and leaden regularity of the verse-writers of the day, the people were ready to receive poetry fresh from na[Pg lxxi]ture. The man who arose to supply the want (which was none the less a want that it was an unrecognized one) was Thomas Percy, a clergyman living in a retired part of the country, but occasionally seen among the literati of the capital.

Thomas Percy was born on April 13th, 1729, at Bridgnorth in Shropshire, in a street called the Cartway. His father and grandfather were grocers, spelt their name Piercy, and knew nothing of any connection with the noble house of Northumberland.[41] His early education was received at the grammar school of Bridgnorth, and in 1746, being then in his eighteenth year, and having obtained an exhibition, he matriculated as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford.

He took the degree of B.A. on May 2nd, 1750, that of M.A. on July 5th, 1753, and shortly after was presented by his college to the living of Easton Maudit, in the county of Northampton. In this poor cure he remained for twenty-five years, and in [Pg lxxii]the little vicarage his six children (Anne, Barbara, Henry, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Hester), were all born. Percy's income was increased in 1756 by the gift of the rectory of Wilby, an adjacent parish, in the patronage of the Earl of Sussex, and on April 24th, 1759, he married Anne, daughter of Barton Gutteridge,[42] who was his beloved companion for forty-seven years. It was to this lady, before his marriage to her, that Percy wrote his famous song, "O Nancy, wilt thou go with me?" Miss Matilda Lætitia Hawkins stated in her Memoirs, that these charming verses were intended by Percy as a welcome to his wife on her release from a twelve-month's confinement in the royal nursery, and Mr. Pickford follows her authority in his Life of Percy, but this is an entire mistake, for the song was printed as early as the year 1758 in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Collection of Poems. Anyone who reads the following verses will see, that though appropriate as a lover's proposal, they are very inappropriate as a husband's welcome home to his wife.

By the alteration of a few words, such as gang for go, toun for town, &c., "Oh Nanny, wilt thou gang with me?" was transposed into a Scotch song, and printed as such in Johnson's Musical Museum. Burns remarked on this insertion: "It is too barefaced to take Dr. Percy's charming song, and by the means of transposing a few English words into Scots, to offer it to pass for a Scots song. I was not acquainted with the editor until the first volume was nearly finished, else had I known in time I would have prevented such an impudent absurdity." Stenhouse, suggested[43] that Percy may have had in view the song called The young Laird and Edinburgh Kate, printed in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, the second stanza of which is somewhat similar—

[Pg lxxiv]

Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, however, hinted[44] that "perhaps both the author of The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katy, and the Bishop, took the idea of their ballads from a song in Lee's beautiful tragedy of Theodosius, or the Force of Love."

Dr. Rimbault communicated this poem to the editors of the folio MS. from a MS. dated 1682, or fifteen years earlier than Lee's version. It is called The Royal Nun, and the first stanza is as follows:—

The likeness in this stanza to Percy's song is not very apparent, and the subject is very different. The other three stanzas have nothing in common with O Nancy. Even could it be proved that Percy had borrowed the opening idea from these two poems, it does not derogate from his originality, for the charm of the song is all his own.

A portrait of Mrs. Percy holding in her hand a scroll inscribed Oh Nancy, is preserved at Ecton House, near Northampton, the seat of Mr. Samuel Isted, husband of Percy's daughter Barbara.

The song was set to music by Thomas Carter, and sung by Vernon at Vauxhall in 1773.

In 1761 Percy commenced his literary career by the publication of a Chinese novel, Hau Kiau Chooan, in four volumes, which he translated from the Portuguese, and in the same year he undertook to edit [Pg lxxv]the works of the Duke of Buckingham. In 1762 he published "Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese," and in 1763 commenced a new edition of Surrey's Poems, with a selection of early specimens of blank verse. The "Buckingham" and "Surrey" were printed, but never published, and the stock of the latter was destroyed by fire in 1808. In 1763 were published "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry—translated from the Icelandic Language," and in the following year appeared "A New Translation of the Song of Solomon from the Hebrew, with Commentary and Notes," and also "A Key to the New Testament." Dr. Johnson paid a long-promised visit to the Vicarage of Easton Maudit in the summer of 1764, where he stayed for some months, and the little terrace in the garden is still called after him, "Dr. Johnson's Walk." At this time Percy must have been full of anxiety about his Reliques, which were shortly to be published, and in the preparation of which he had so long been engaged. The poet Shenstone was the first to suggest the subject of this book, as he himself states in a letter to a friend, dated March 1, 1761. "You have heard me speak of Mr. Percy; he was in treaty with Mr. James Dodsley for the publication of our best old ballads in three volumes. He has a large folio MS. of ballads, which he showed me, and which, with his own natural and acquired talents, would qualify him for the purpose as well as any man in England. I proposed the scheme to him myself, wishing to see an elegant edition and good collection of this kind. I was also to have assisted him in selecting and rejecting, and fixing upon the best readings; but my illness broke off the correspondence in the beginning of winter."

In February, 1765, appeared the first edition of the Reliques, which gave Percy a name, and obtained[Pg lxxvi] for him the patronage of the great. He became Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland, with whose family he kept up intimate relations throughout his life. The Northumberland Household Book, which he compiled in accordance with the wishes of his patron, was privately printed in the year 1768.[46] In 1769 he was appointed Chaplain to George III., and in the following year appeared his translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities. Each of these three works was the first of its class, and created a taste which produced a literature of the same character. The Household Book gave rise to a large number of publications which have put us in possession of numerous facts relating to the domestic expenses and habits of the royal and noble families of old England. The mythology of the Eddas was first made known to English readers by Percy, and in his Preface to Mallet's work he clearly pointed out the essential difference between the Celtic and Teutonic races, which had previously been greatly overlooked.

The remuneration which Percy received for his labours was not large. Fifty pounds was the pay for the Chinese novel, and one hundred guineas for the first edition of the Reliques. The agreements he made with the Tonsons were fifty guineas for Buckingham's Works and twenty guineas for Surrey's Poems. He also agreed to edit the Spectator and Guardian, with notes, for one hundred guineas, but was obliged to abandon his intention on account of the engrossing character of his appointments in the Northumberland family.

About this time Mrs. Percy was appointed nurse [Pg lxxvii]to Prince Edward, the infant son of George III., afterwards Duke of Kent, and father of her present Majesty, who was born in 1767.

In 1770 Percy took his degree of D.D. at Cambridge, having incorporated himself at Emmanuel College, the master of which was his friend, Dr. Farmer, to be remembered as the Shakspere commentator. Later on in the year he lost his eldest daughter, and in January, 1771, yet another child was buried in the village church. In 1771 he printed the Hermit of Warkworth, which exhibited his continued interest in the subject of the Reliques, and we find him for many years after this date continually writing to his literary correspondents for information relating to old ballads.

In 1778 Percy obtained the Deanery of Carlisle, which four years afterwards he resigned on being appointed to the bishopric of Dromore, worth £2,000 a year. He did not resign his vicarage and rectory until the same time, and he was succeeded in the first by Robert Nares, the compiler of the well-known glossary. It was in 1778 that the memorable quarrel between Percy and Johnson occurred which is graphically described by Boswell. The cause of the heat was the different views held by the two disputants as to the merits of the traveller Pennant. When the reconciliation was brought about Johnson's contribution to the peace was, "My dear sir, I am willing you shall hang Pennant."

In this same year Percy was writing about his son Henry, then a tall youth of fifteen, who he hoped in a few years would be able to edit the Reliques for him, but in April, 1783, soon after he had settled at Dromore, a great sorrow fell upon him, and this only and much-loved son died at the early age of twenty. In 1780 a large portion of Northumberland House, Strand, was consumed by[Pg lxxviii] fire, when Percy's apartments were burnt. The chief part of his library, was, however, saved. Four very interesting letters of the bishop's, written to George Steevens in 1796 and 1797, are printed in the Athenæum for 1848 (pp. 437 and 604). The first relates to his edition of Goldsmith's works, which was published in 1801 in four volumes octavo. His object in undertaking the labour was to benefit two surviving relations of Goldsmith, and he complains to Steevens that the publishers had thwarted him in his purpose. The second letter is on the same subject, and the third and fourth relate to his work on blank verse before Milton, attached to Surrey's Poems. In 1798 the Irish Rebellion broke out, and Percy sent a large quantity of correspondence and valuable books to his daughter, Mrs. Isted, for safe preservation at Ecton House. In 1806 his long and happy union with Mrs. Percy was abruptly brought to a close, and to add to his afflictions he became totally blind. He bore his trials with resignation, and ere five more years had passed by, he himself was borne to the tomb. On the 30th of September, 1811, he died in the eighty-third year of his age, having outlived nearly all his contemporaries.[47]

That his attachment to "Nancy" was fervent as well as permanent, is shown by many circumstances. One of these is a little poem printed for the first time in the edition of the folio MS.[48]

"On leaving —— on a Tempestuous Night, March 22, 1788, by Dr. Percy.

Percy had naturally a hot temper, but this cooled down with time, and the trials of his later life were accepted with Christian meekness. One of his relations, who as a boy could just recollect him, told Mr. Pickford "that it was quite a pleasure to see even then his gentleness, amiability, and fondness for children. Every day used to witness his strolling down to a pond in the palace garden, in order to feed his swans, who were accustomed to come at the well-known sound of the old man's voice." He was a pleasing companion and a steady friend. His duties, both in the retired country village and in the more elevated positions of dean and bishop, were all performed with a wisdom and ardour that gained[Pg lxxx] him the confidence of all those with whom he was brought in contact. The praise given to him in the inscription on the tablet to his memory in Dromore Cathedral does not appear to have gone beyond the truth. It is there stated that he resided constantly in his diocese, and discharged "the duties of his sacred office with vigilance and zeal, instructing the ignorant, relieving the necessitous, and comforting the distressed with pastoral affection." He was "revered for his piety and learning, and beloved for his universal benevolence, by all ranks and religious denominations."

There are three portraits of Percy. The first and best known was painted by Reynolds in May, 1773. It represents him habited in a black gown and bands, with a loose black cap on his head, and the folio MS. in his hand. It is not known whether the original is still in existence, but engravings from it are common. The next was painted by Abbot in 1797, and hangs at Ecton Hall. Percy is there represented as a fuller-faced man, in his episcopal dress, and wearing a wig. We have Steevens's authority for believing this to be an excellent likeness. An engraving from it is prefixed to the "Percy Correspondence," in Nichols's Illustrations of Literature.

In the third volume of Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron is a beautiful engraving from a watercolour drawing, which represents the bishop in his garden at Dromore, when totally blind, feeding his swans.[49]

[Pg lxxxi]

What were the sources from which Percy obtained the chief contents of his celebrated work? They were:—1. The folio MS.; 2. Certain other MS. collections, the use of which he obtained; 3. The Scotch ballads sent to him by Sir David Dalrymple (better known by his title of Lord Hailes, which he assumed on being appointed one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Edinburgh); 4. The ordinary printed broadsides; 5. The poems he extracted from the old printed collections of fugitive poetry—The Paradise of Dainty Devices, England's Helicon, &c.

In considering the above sources, it will be necessary to give some little space to the discussion of the connection between the folio MS. and the Reliques, as it is not generally understood by the ordinary readers of the latter.

The folio MS. came into Percy's hands early in his life, and the interest of its contents first caused him to think of forming his own collection. One of the notes on the covers of the MS. is as follows:—

"When I first got possession of this MS. I was very young, and being no degree an antiquary, I had not then learnt to reverence it; which must be my excuse for the scribble which I then spread over some parts of its margin, and, in one or two instances, for even taking out the leaves to save the trouble of transcribing. I have since been more careful. T. P."

He showed it to his friends, and immediately after the publication of the Reliques he deposited it at the house of his publishers, the Dodsleys, of Pall Mall. In spite of all this publicity, Ritson actually denied the very existence of the MS. Another memorandum on the cover of the folio was written on Nov. 7, 1769. It is as follows:—

[Pg lxxxii]

"This very curious old manuscript, in its present mutilated state, but unbound and sadly torn, &c., I rescued from destruction, and begged at the hands of my worthy friend Humphrey Pitt, Esq., then living at Shiffnal, in Shropshire, afterwards of Priorslee, near that town; who died very lately at Bath (viz., in summer 1769). I saw it lying dirty on the floor, under a Bureau in y^e Parlour: being used by the maids to light the fire. It was afterwards sent, most unfortunately, to an ignorant Bookbinder, who pared the margin, when I put it into Boards in order to lend it to Dr. Johnson. Mr. Pitt has since told me that he believes the transcripts into this volume, &c., were made by that Blount who was author of Jocular Tenures, &c., who he thought was of Lancashire or Cheshire, and had a remarkable fondness for these old things. He believed him to be the same person with that Mr. Thomas Blount who published the curious account of King Charles the 2^ds escape intitled Boscobel, &c., Lond. 1660, 12mo, which has been so often reprinted. As also the Law Dictionary, 1671, folio, and many other books which may be seen in Wood's Athenæ, ii. 73, &c. A Descendant or Relation of that Mr. Blount was an apothecary at Shiffnal, whom I remember myself (named also Blount). He (if I mistake not) sold the Library of the said predecessor Thos. Blount to the above-mentioned Mr. Humph^y Pitt: who bought it for the use of his nephew, my ever-valued friend Rob^t Binnel. Mr. Binnel accordingly had all the printed books, but this MS. which was among them was neglected and left behind at Mr. Pitt's house, where it lay for many years. T. Percy."

Mr. Furnivall believes that the copier of the MS. must have been a man greatly inferior to Thomas Blount, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple, of considerable learning.

[Pg lxxxiii]

Percy afterwards kept the volume very much to himself, and Ritson affirmed that "the late Mr. Tyrwhitt, an excellent judge and diligent peruser of old compositions, and an intimate friend of the owner, never saw it."[50] Although Jamieson was obliged by receiving a copy of three of the pieces in the MS., he was not allowed a sight of the volume, and no one else was permitted to make any use of it. This spirit of secrecy was kept up by the bishop's descendants, who refused all who applied to see it. Sir Frederic Madden alone was allowed to print some pieces in his Syr Gawayne for the Bannatyne Club, 1839. The public obtained a glimpse of its contents through Dr. Dibdin, who copied from Percy's list the first seventy-two entries, and would have finished the whole, had he not been stopped by his entertainers (Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Isted, of Ecton Hall), when they found out what he was about. He gave in his Bibliographical Decameron a description of the MS. which he thus handled in the winter of 1815. Mr. Furnivall writes as follows of his several attempts to get the MS. printed, and of his success at last: "The cause of the printing of Percy's MS., of the publication of the book, was the insistence time after time by Professor Child, that it was the duty of English antiquarian men of letters to print this foundation document of English balladry, the basis of that structure which Percy raised, so fair to the eyes of all English-speaking men throughout the world. Above a hundred years had gone since first the Reliques met men's view, a Percy Society had been born and died, but still the Percy manuscript lay hid in Ecton Hall, and no one was allowed to know how the owner who had made his fame by it had dealt with it, whether his treatment [Pg lxxxiv]was foul or fair. No list even of its contents could be obtained. Dibdin and Madden, and many a man less known had tried their hands, but still the MS. was kept back, and this generation had made up its mind that it was not to see the desired original in type.... I tried to get access to the MS. some half-a-dozen years ago. Repulsed, I tried again when starting the Early English Text Society. Repulsed again, I tried again at a later date, but with the like result. Not rebuffed by this, Professor Child added his offer of £50 to mine of £100, through Mr. Thurstan Holland, a friend of his own and of the owners of the MS., and this last attempt succeeded." The less said the better about the conduct of these owners who were only to be tempted to confer a public benefit by the increased offers of two private gentlemen, but there cannot be two opinions about the spirited conduct of Mr. Furnivall and Professor Child. The three volumes[51] that the printed edition of the MS. occupy, form a handsome monument of well-directed labour. The text is printed with the most careful accuracy under the superintendence of Mr. Furnivall, and the elaborate prefaces which exhibit that union of judgment and taste for which Mr. Hales is so well known, leave nothing to be desired.

"The manuscript itself is a 'scrubby, shabby paper' book, about fifteen and a half inches long by five and a half wide, and about two inches thick, which has lost some of its pages both at the beginning and end.... The handwriting was put by Sir F. Madden at after 1650 A.D.; by two authorities at the Record Office whom I consulted, in the reign of [Pg lxxxv]James I. rather than that of Charles I., but as the volume contains, among other late pieces, one on the siege of Newark in Charles I.'s time (ii. 33), another on the taking of Banbury in 1642 (ii. 39), and a third, The King inioyes his rights againe, which contains a passage[52] that (as Mr. Chappell observes in Pop. Mus. ii. 438, note 2) fixes the date of the song to the year 1643, we must make the date about 1650, though rather before than after, so far as I can judge. I should keep it in Charles I.'s reign, and he died Jan. 30, 1649, but within a quarter of a century one can hardly determine.... The dialect of the copier of the MS. seems to have been Lancashire, as is shown by the frequent use of the final st, thoust for thou shalt, Ist for I will, youst for you will, unbethought for umbethought, and the occurrence of the northern terms, like strang, gange, &c. &c. Moreover, the strong local feeling shown by the copier in favour of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the Stanleys, in his choice of Flodden Feilde, Bosworth Feilde, Earles of Chester, Ladye Bessiye, confirms the probability that he was from one of the counties named. That much, if not all, of the MS. was written from dictation and hurriedly is almost certain, from the continual miswriting of they for the, rought for wrought, knight for night (once), me fancy for my fancy, justine for justing."[53]

A very erroneous impression has grown up as to the proportion of pieces in the Reliques which were taken from the MS. This is owing to a misleading statement made by Percy in his preface, to the effect that "the greater part of them are extracted from [Pg lxxxvi]an ancient MS. in the editor's possession, which contains near two hundred poems, songs, and metrical romances." The fact is that only one-fourth were so taken. The Reliques contain 180 pieces, and of these only forty-five[54] are taken from the manuscript. We thus see that a very small part of the manuscript was printed by Percy. He mentions some of the other pieces in various parts of his [Pg lxxxvii]book, and he proposed to publish a fourth volume of the Reliques at some future period that never came.

Mr. Furnivall has the following remarks on the gains to literature by the publication of the manuscript: "It is more that we have now for the first time Eger and Grime in its earlier state, Sir Lambewell, besides the Cavilere's praise of his hawking, the complete versions of Scottish Feilde and Kinge Arthur's Death, the fullest of Flodden Feilde and the verse Merline, the Earle of Westmorlande, Bosworth Feilde, the curious poem of John de Reeve, and the fine alliterative one of Death and Liffe, with its gracious picture of Lady dame Life, awakening life and love in grass and tree, in bird and man, as she speeds to her conquest over death."

In 1774 Percy wrote: "In three or four years I intend to publish a volume or two more of old English and Scottish poems in the manner of my Reliques." And again in 1778: "With regard to the Reliques, I have a large fund of materials, which when my son has compleated his studies at the University, he may, if he likes it, distribute into one or more additional volumes." The death of this son put an end to his hopes, but before the fourth edition was required, the bishop had obtained the assistance of his nephew, the Rev. Thomas Percy. In 1801 he wrote as follows to Jamieson, who had asked for some extracts from the folio: "Till my nephew has completed his collection for the intended fourth volume it cannot be decided whether he may not wish to insert himself the fragments you desire; but I have copied for you here that one which you particularly pointed out, as I was unwilling to disappoint your wishes and expectations altogether. By it you will see the defective and incorrect state of the old text in the ancient folio MS., and the[Pg lxxxviii] irresistible demand on the editor of the Reliques to attempt some of those conjectural emendations, which have been blamed by one or two rigid critics, but without which the collection would not have deserved a moment's attention."

Percy has been very severely judged for the alterations he made in his manuscript authorities; and Ritson has attempted to consider his conduct as a question of morality rather than one of taste. As each point is noticed in the prefaces to the various pieces, it is not necessary to discuss the question here. It may, however, be remarked that, in spite of all Ritson's attacks (and right was sometimes on his side), the Reliques remain to the present day unsuperseded.

Mr. Thoms communicated to the Notes and Queries (5th series, v. 431) the following note, which he made upwards of forty years ago, after a conversation with Francis Douce:—

"Mr. Douce told me that the Bishop (Percy) originally intended to have left the manuscript to Ritson; but the reiterated abuse with which that irritable and not always faultless antiquary visited him obliged him to alter his determination. With regard to the alterations (? amendments) made by Percy in the text, Mr. Douce told me that he (Percy) read to him one day from the MS., while he held the work in his hand to compare the two; and 'certainly the variations were greater than I could have expected,' said my old friend, with a shrug of the shoulders."

Of the other sources from which Percy drew his materials little need be said. 2. Some of the ballads were taken from MSS. in public libraries, and others from MSS. that were lent to him. 3. The Scotch ballads supplied by Sir David Dalrymple have already been referred to. 4. The printed ballads[Pg lxxxix] are chiefly taken from the Pepys Collection at Cambridge. 5. When the Reliques were first published, the elegant poems in the Paradyse of Daynty Devises, England's Helicon, were little known, and it was a happy thought on the part of Percy to intersperse these smaller pieces among the longer ballads, so as to please the reader with a constant variety.

The weak point in the book is the insertion of some of the modern pieces. The old minstrel believed the wonders he related; but a poet educated in modern ideas cannot transfer himself back to the times of chivalry, so that his attempts at imitating "the true Gothic manner" are apt to fill his readers with a sense of unreality.

After the first edition of the Reliques was printed, and before it was published, Percy made a great alteration in its arrangement. The first volume was turned into the third, and the third into the first, as may be seen by a reference to the foot of the pages where the old numbering remains. By this means the Arthur Ballads were turned off to the end, and Chevy Chase and Robin Hood obtained the place of honour. Several ballads were also omitted at the last moment, and the numbers left vacant. These occur in a copy of two volumes at Oxford which formerly belonged to Douce. In Vol. III. (the old Vol. I.), Book 1, there is no No. 19; in the Douce copy this is filled by The Song-birds. In Vol. II., Book 3, there are no Nos. 10 and 11; but in the Douce copy, Nos. 9, 10, and 11 are Cock Lorrell's Treat, The Moral Uses of Tobacco, and Old Simon the Kinge. Besides these omissions it will be seen that in Book 3 of Vol. III. there are two Nos. 2; and that George Barnwell must have been inserted at the last moment, as it occupies a duplicate series of pages 225-240, which are printed between brackets. In 1765 the volumes were published in London. In[Pg xc] the following year a surreptitious edition was published in Dublin, and in 1767 appeared a second edition in London. In 1775 was published the third edition, which was reprinted at Frankfort in 1790. The fourth edition, ostensibly edited by the Rev. Thomas Percy, but really the work of the bishop himself, was published in 1794. Many improvements were made in this edition, and it contains Percy's final corrections; the fifth edition, published in 1812, being merely a reprint of the fourth.

The year 1765 was then a memorable one in the history of literature. The current ballads which were bawled in the street, or sung in the ale-house, were so mean and vulgar that the very name of ballad had sunk into disrepute. It was therefore a revelation to many to find that a literature of nature still existed which had descended from mother to child in remote districts, or was buried in old manuscripts, covered with the dust of centuries. It is necessary to realize this state of things in order to understand Percy's apologetic attitude. He collected his materials from various sources with great labour, and spared no pains in illustrating the poetry by instructive prose. Yet after welding with the force of genius the various parts into an harmonious whole, he was doubtful of the reception it was likely to obtain, and he called the contents of his volumes "the barbarous productions of unpolished ages." He backed his own opinion of their interest by bringing forward the names of the chiefs of the republic of letters, and ill did they requite him. Johnson parodied his verses, and Warburton sneered at him as the man "who wrote about the Chinese." Percy looked for his reward where he received nothing but laughter; but the people accepted his book with gladness, and the young who fed upon the food he presented to them grew up to found new schools of poetry.

[Pg xci]

Few books have exerted such extended influence over English literature as Percy's Reliques. Beattie's Minstrel was inspired by a perusal of the Essay on the Ancient Minstrels; and many authors have expressed with gratitude their obligations to the bishop and his book.

How profoundly the poetry of nature, which lived on in the ballads of the country, stirred the souls of men is seen in the instance of two poets of strikingly different characteristics. Scott made his first acquaintance with the Reliques at the age of thirteen, and the place where he read them was ever after imprinted upon his memory. The bodily appetite of youth was unnoticed while he mentally devoured the volumes under the huge leaves of the plantain tree. Wordsworth was not behind Scott in admiration of the book. He wrote: "I have already stated how much Germany is indebted to this work, and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation to the Reliques. I know that it is so with my friends; and for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own." After such men as these have spoken, who can despise our old ballads?

The impetus given to the collection of old ballads by the publication of Reliques showed itself in the rapid succession of volumes of the same class which issued from the press. Most of these were devoted to the publication of Scottish ballads exclusively. In 1769, David Herd, a native of St. Cyrus, in Kincar[Pg xcii]dineshire, who had spent most of his life as clerk in an accountant's office in Edinburgh, published his Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, &c., a work which was enlarged into two volumes in 1776.[55] He was a most successful and faithful collector, and not being a poet, he was preserved from the temptation of tampering with his stores. Motherwell mentions twenty ballads which had not appeared in a collected form before the publication of this work. Herd was assisted in his editorial labours by George Paton.

In 1777 appeared the first edition of Evans's Old Ballads, Historical and Narrative, in two volumes. The best edition of this work, edited by the son of the original compiler, was published in 4 vols., 1810.

In 1781 Pinkerton published his Scottish Tragic Ballads, which was followed in 1783 by Select Scottish Ballads. These volumes contained several fabrications by the editor, as already stated on a previous page.

In 1783 Ritson commenced the publication of that long series of volumes which is of such inestimable value to the literary antiquary, with A Select Collection of English Songs. The Bishopric Garland, or Durham Minstrel, followed, in 1784; The Yorkshire Garland, in 1788; the Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, in 1791; Ancient Songs and Ballads from the reign of Henry II. to the Revolution, in 1787; The Northumberland Garland, in 1793; Scottish Songs, in 1794; and Robin Hood, in 1795.

In 1787 was commenced The Scots Musical Museum, by James Johnson. Johnson was a music-seller and engraver in Edinburgh, and the work was really [Pg xciii]projected by William Tytler of Woodhouselee, Dr. Blacklock, and Samuel Clark. The first volume was partly printed, when Burns became acquainted with the object of the work. He then entered into the scheme with enthusiasm, and besides "begging and borrowing" old songs, wrote many new songs himself.

In 1801 was published at Edinburgh, Scottish Poems of the XVIth Century, edited by J. G. Dalzell, which contains a reprint of Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, already referred to above.

In 1802 appeared the first two volumes of the only work which is worthy to stand side by side with the Reliques. Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is a book that can be read through, and it and the Reliques are the only works of the class in which the materials are welded into a whole, so as no longer to appear a collection of units.

In 1806, Robert Jamieson published at Edinburgh his Popular Ballads and Songs, from Tradition, Manuscripts, and scarce editions. He was working upon this book at the same time that Scott was engaged upon his Minstrelsy, and he obtained much of his material from the same source as Scott, viz. Mrs. Brown, of Falkland; but he, nevertheless, was able to print seventeen ballads that had not before appeared in any published collection. Jamieson has the following remarks on himself in the Introduction to the first volume:—

"Being obliged to go, at a few weeks' warning, to a distant part of the world, and to seek, on the shores of the frozen Baltic, for (which his own country seems to deny him) the means of employing his talents and industry in some such manner as may enable him to preserve (for a time, at least) his respectability and a partial independence in the world, the following[Pg xciv] sheets have been prepared for the press, amidst all the anxiety and bustle of getting ready and packing up for a voyage." (Vol. i. p. xvii.)

John Finlay of Glasgow published in 1808 his Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads. These volumes only contain twenty-six ballads in all.

John Gilchrist's Collection of Ancient and Modern Scottish Ballads, Tales, and Songs, (Edinburgh 1815) is a carefully edited work, compiled from former books.

In 1822 David Laing published his valuable Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, and in 1824 C. K. Sharpe printed privately a little volume which he entitled A Ballad Book. James Maidment printed also privately A North Countrie Garland in the same year (1824).

In 1825 E. V. Utterson printed "Select Pieces of Early English Poetry, republished principally from early printed copies in Black Letter."

Peter Buchan commenced his ballad career by publishing at Peterhead, in 1825, a little volume entitled "Gleanings of Scotch, English, and Irish scarce old ballads, chiefly tragical and historical, many of them connected with the localities of Aberdeenshire." In 1828 he published his "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland, hitherto unpublished." He affirmed that his materials were faithfully and honestly transcribed, and "they have suffered no change since they fortunately were consigned to me by their foster parents." A portrait is given in this book, which represents the compiler as a wild-looking, unkempt, man. Besides these two books Buchan made a large collection of ballads, songs, and poems, which he took down from the oral recitation of the peasantry. These were pronounced by Scott to be "decidedly and indubitably original." The two folio MS. volumes in which they[Pg xcv] were contained came into the possession of the Percy Society, and a selection was made from them by J. H. Dixon, in 1845, who entitled his work Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads (Percy Society Publications, vol. xvii.).

In 1826 Allan Cunningham published The Songs of Scotland, to which reference has already been made.

George R. Kinloch published in 1827, "Ancient Scottish Ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before published." He states in his introduction that "the present collection is almost entirely composed of ballads obtained in the 'North Countrie,' a district hitherto but little explored, though by no means destitute of traditional poetry."

In this same year appeared William Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, a work of the most sterling character, which contains the best account of ballad literature extant.

In 1829 Robert Chambers published his collection of Scottish Ballads, which contains eighty pieces, of which number twelve are modern, or imitations. At this period the editor had not elaborated his theory that Sir Patrick Spence and certain other ballads were modern imitations.

Peter Cunningham published The Songs of England and Scotland, in 1835, and Thomas Wright printed The Political Songs of England from the reign of John to that of Edward II. in 1839, for the Camden Society.

In 1840 was founded, in honour of Bishop Percy, the Percy Society, which continued to print some of the old Garlands and various collections of old Ballads until 1852.

William Chappell published in 1840 his valuable Collection of National English Airs, consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad and Dance Tunes, which[Pg xcvi] work was re-arranged and enlarged, and issued in 1855 as Popular Music of the Olden Time. This work is a mine of wealth concerning both the airs and the words of our ballad treasures. It was a truly national undertaking, and has been completed with great skill. No ballad lover can get on without it.

In 1844 Alexander Whitelaw published The Book of Scottish Ballads, and The Book of Scottish Song. An edition of the former was printed in 1875, and one of the latter in 1866, which contains about twelve hundred and seventy songs.

In 1847 John Matthew Gutch published "A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode, with other Ancient and Modern Ballads and Songs relating to this celebrated yeoman."

In the same year appeared Frederick Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, but it is a work of very little value.

Dr. Rimbault printed in 1850 those valuable Musical Illustrations of Bishop Percy's Reliques, which are so frequently quoted in the following pages.

Professor Francis James Child, of Harvard College, one of our greatest authorities on Ballad lore, published at Boston, U.S., a very complete collection of English and Scottish Ballads, in eight volumes. The first volume contains a full list of the principal collections of Ballads and Songs.

In 1858 William Edmondstoune Aytoun published his Ballads of Scotland, which contain collated versions of one hundred and thirty-nine ballads, with short introductions.

The year 1867 was memorable as seeing the publication of the first instalment of the Folio Manuscript under the editorship of J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall.

[Pg xcvii]

In 1868 appeared "Scottish Ballads and Songs, historical and traditionary, edited by James Maidment, Edinburgh, 1868," 2 vols. The number of pieces is small but select, and the introductions are full and elaborate.

In 1871 Messrs. Ogle of Glasgow published a well edited collection of Scottish Ballads, with an interesting introduction and notes, entitled "The Ballad Minstrelsy of Scotland. Romantic and Historical. Collated and Annotated."

Upon the completion of the Percy Folio, Mr. Furnivall started the Ballad Society, for the publication of the various collections of ballads that exist. Mr. Chappell has edited half of the Roxburghe Ballads in several parts, and Mr. Furnivall himself has printed some interesting ballads from manuscripts. All these have been presented to readers with a wealth of illustrative notes.

The books referred to above form but a portion of the literature of the subject. So mighty has been the growth of the small seed set by Percy, that the despised outcasts which the literary leaders attempted to laugh out of existence have made good their right to a high position among the poetry of the nation, and proved that they possessed the germs of a long and vigorous life.

H. B. W.

[Pg xcviii]
[Pg 1]

Madam,—

Those writers, who solicit the protection of the noble and the great, are often exposed to censure by the impropriety of their addresses: a remark that will, perhaps, be too readily applied to him, who, having nothing better to offer than the rude songs of ancient minstrels, aspires to the patronage of the Countess of Northumberland, and hopes that the barbarous productions of unpolished ages can obtain the approbation or notice of her, who adorns courts by her presence, and diffuses elegance by her example.

But this impropriety, it is presumed, will disappear, when it is declared that these poems are presented to your Ladyship, not as labours of art, but as effusions of nature, showing the first efforts of ancient genius, and exhibiting the customs and[Pg 2] opinions of remote ages: of ages that had been almost lost to memory, had not the gallant deeds of your illustrious ancestors preserved them from oblivion.

No active or comprehensive mind can forbear some attention to the reliques of antiquity. It is prompted by natural curiosity to survey the progress of life and manners, and to inquire by what gradations barbarity was civilized, grossness refined, and ignorance instructed; but this curiosity, Madam, must be stronger in those who, like your Ladyship, can remark in every period the influence of some great progenitor, and who still feel in their effects the transactions and events of distant centuries.

By such bonds, Madam, as I am now introducing to your presence, was the infancy of genius nurtured and advanced, by such were the minds of unlettered warriors softened and enlarged, by such was the memory of illustrious actions preserved and propagated, by such were the heroic deeds of the Earls of Northumberland sung at festivals in the hall of Alnwick; and those songs, which the bounty of your ancestors rewarded, now return to your Ladyship by a kind of hereditary right; and, I flatter myself, will find such reception as is usually shown to poets and historians, by those whose consciousness of merit makes it their interest to be long remembered.

I am,                                                  

Madam,                                      

Your Ladyship's                  

Most humble,              

And most devoted Servant,

Thomas Percy.[56]

[Pg 3]

TO
ELIZABETH,
LATE DUCHESS AND COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND,
IN HER OWN RIGHT BARONESS PERCY,
ETC. ETC. ETC.
WHO, BEING SOLE HEIRESS TO MANY GREAT FAMILIES OF OUR ANCIENT NOBILITY, EMPLOYED THE PRINCELY FORTUNE, AND SUSTAINED THE ILLUSTRIOUS HONOURS, WHICH SHE DERIVED FROM THEM, THROUGH HER WHOLE LIFE WITH THE GREATEST DIGNITY, GENEROSITY, AND SPIRIT; AND WHO FOR HER MANY PUBLIC AND PRIVATE VIRTUES WILL EVER BE REMEMBERED AS ONE OF THE FIRST CHARACTERS OF HER TIME, THIS LITTLE WORK WAS ORIGINALLY DEDICATED; AND, AS IT SOMETIMES AFFORDED HER AMUSEMENT, AND WAS HIGHLY DISTINGUISHED BY HER INDULGENT APPROBATION, IT IS NOW, WITH THE UTMOST REGARD, RESPECT, AND GRATITUDE, CONSECRATED TO HER BELOVED AND HONOURED
MEMORY.[57]

[Pg 4]

Twenty years have near elapsed since the last edition of this work appeared. But, although it was sufficiently a favourite with the public, and had long been out of print, the original editor had no desire to revive it. More important pursuits had, as might be expected, engaged his attention; and the present edition would have remained unpublished, had he not yielded to the importunity of his friends, and accepted the humble offer of an editor in a nephew, to whom, it is feared, he will be found too partial.

These volumes are now restored to the public with such corrections and improvements as have occurred since the former impression; and the text in particular hath been emended in many passages by recurring to the old copies. The instances, being frequently trivial, are not always noted in the margin; but the alteration hath never been made without good reason; and especially in such pieces as were extracted from the folio manuscript so often mentioned in the following pages, where any variation [Pg 5]occurs from the former impression, it will be understood to have been given on the authority of that MS.

The appeal publicly made to Dr. Johnson in the first page of the following Preface, so long since as in the year 1765, and never once contradicted by him during so large a portion of his life, ought to have precluded every doubt concerning the existence of the MS. in question. But such, it seems, having been suggested, it may now be mentioned, that, while this edition passed through his press, the MS. itself was left for near a year with Mr. Nichols, in whose house, or in that of its possessor, it was examined with more or less attention by many gentlemen of eminence in literature. At the first publication of these volumes it had been in the hands of all, or most of, his friends; but, as it could hardly be expected that he should continue to think of nothing else but these amusements of his youth, it was afterwards laid aside at his residence in the country. Of the many gentlemen above-mentioned, who offered to give their testimony to the public, it will be sufficient to name the Honourable Daines Barrington, the Reverend Clayton Mordaunt Cracherode, and those eminent Critics on Shakespeare, the Reverend Dr. Farmer, George Steevens, Esq., Edmund Malone, Esq., and Isaac Reed, Esq., to whom I beg leave to appeal for the truth of the following representation.

The MS. is a long narrow folio volume, containing 195 Sonnets, Ballads, Historical Songs, and Metrical Romances, either in the whole or in part, for many of them are extremely mutilated and imperfect. The first and last leaves are wanting; and of fifty-four pages near the beginning half of every leaf hath been torn away, and several others are injured towards the end; besides that through a great part[Pg 6] of the volume the top or bottom line, and sometimes both have been cut off in the binding.

In this state is the MS. itself: and even where the leaves have suffered no injury, the transcripts, which seem to have been all made by one person (they are at least all in the same kind of hand), are sometimes extremely incorrect and faulty, being in such instances probably made from defective copies, or the imperfect recitation of illiterate fingers; so that a considerable portion of the song or narrative is sometimes omitted; and miserable trash or nonsense not unfrequently introduced into pieces of considerable merit. And often the copyist grew so weary of his labour as to write on without the least attention to the sense or meaning; so that the word which should form the rhyme is found misplaced in the middle of the line; and we have such blunders as these, want and will for wanton will;[59] even pan and wale for wan and pale,[60] &c., &c.

Hence the public may judge how much they are indebted to the composer of this collection; who, at an early period of life, with such materials and such subjects, formed a work which hath been admitted into the most elegant libraries; and with which the judicious antiquary hath just reason to be satisfied, while refined entertainment hath been provided for every reader of taste and genius.

Thomas Percy,                      

Fellow of St. John's College, Oxford.

[Pg 7]

The reader is here presented with select remains of our ancient English bards and minstrels, an order of men, who were once greatly respected by our ancestors, and contributed to soften the roughness of a martial and unlettered people by their songs and by their music.

The greater part of them are extracted from an ancient folio manuscript, in the editor's possession, which contains near 200 poems, songs, and metrical romances. This MS. was written about the middle of the last century; but contains compositions of all times and dates, from the ages prior to Chaucer, to the conclusion of the reign of Charles I.[61]

This manuscript was shewn to several learned and ingenious friends, who thought the contents too curious to be consigned to oblivion, and importuned the possessor to select some of them, and give them to the press. As most of them are of great simplicity, and seem to have been merely written for the people, he was long in doubt, whether, in the present state of improved literature, they could be deemed [Pg 8]worthy the attention of the public. At length the importunity of his friends prevailed, and he could refuse nothing to such judges as the author of the Rambler and the late Mr. Shenstone.

Accordingly such specimens of ancient poetry have been selected, as either shew the gradation of our language, exhibit the progress of popular opinions, display the peculiar manners and customs of former ages, or throw light on our earlier classical poets.

They are here distributed into volumes, each of which contains an independent series of poems, arranged chiefly according to the order of time, and shewing the gradual improvements of the English language and poetry from the earliest ages down to the present. Each volume, or series, is divided into three books, to afford so many pauses, or resting-places to the reader, and to assist him in distinguishing between the productions of the earlier, the middle, and the latter times.

In a polished age, like the present, I am sensible that many of these reliques of antiquity will require great allowances to be made for them. Yet have they, for the most part, a pleasing simplicity, and many artless graces, which in the opinion of no mean critics[62] have been thought to compensate for the want of higher beauties, and, if they do not dazzle the imagination, are frequently found to interest the heart.

To atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems, each volume concludes with a few modern attempts in the same kind of writing: and, to take off from the tediousness of the longer narratives, [Pg 9]they are everywhere intermingled with little elegant pieces of the lyric kind. Select ballads in the old Scottish dialect, most of them of the first-rate merit, are also interspersed among those of our ancient English minstrels; and the artless productions of these old rhapsodists are occasionally confronted with specimens of the composition of contemporary poets of a higher class; of those who had all the advantages of learning in the times in which they lived, and who wrote for fame and for posterity. Yet perhaps the palm will be frequently due to the old strolling minstrels, who composed their rhymes to be sung to their harps, and who looked no farther than for present applause, and present subsistence.

The reader will find this class of men occasionally described in the following volumes, and some particulars relating to their history in an Essay subjoined. (Appendix I.)

It will be proper here to give a short account of the other collections that were consulted, and to make my acknowledgements to those gentlemen who were so kind as to impart extracts from them; for, while this selection was making, a great number of ingenious friends took a share in the work, and explored many large repositories in its favour.

The first of these that deserved notice was the Pepysian library at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Its founder, Sam. Pepys, Esq.,[63] Secretary of the Admiralty in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. had made a large collection of ancient English [Pg 10]ballads, near 2,000 in number, which he has left pasted in five volumes in folio; besides Garlands and other smaller miscellanies. This collection he tells us was "begun by Mr. Selden; improved by the addition of many pieces elder thereto in time; and the whole continued down to the year 1700; when the form peculiar till then thereto, viz., of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures."

In the Ashmole Library at Oxford is a small collection of ballads made by Anthony Wood in the year 1676, containing somewhat more than 200. Many ancient popular poems are also preserved in the Bodleyan library.

The archives of the Antiquarian Society at London contain a multitude of curious political poems in large folio volumes, digested under the several reigns of Hen. VIII., Edw. VI., Mary, Elizabeth, James I., &c.[65]

In the British Museum is preserved a large treasure of ancient English poems in MS. besides one folio volume of printed ballads.

From all these some of the best pieces were selected; and from many private collections, as well printed, as manuscript, particularly from one large folio volume which was lent by a lady.

Amid such a fund of materials, the editor is afraid he has been sometimes led to make too great a parade of his authorities. The desire of being accurate has perhaps seduced him into too minute and trifling an exactness; and in pursuit of information he may have been drawn into many a petty and frivolous research. It was, however, necessary to [Pg 11]give some account of the old copies; though often, for the sake of brevity, one or two of these only are mentioned, where yet assistance was received from several. Where any thing was altered that deserved particular notice, the passage is generally distinguished by two inverted 'commas.' And the editor has endeavoured to be as faithful as the imperfect state of his materials would admit. For, these old popular rhymes being many of them copied only from illiterate transcripts, or the imperfect recitation of itinerant ballad-singers, have, as might be expected, been handed down to us with less care than any other writings in the world. And the old copies, whether MS. or printed, were often so defective or corrupted, that a scrupulous adherence to their wretched readings would only have exhibited unintelligible nonsense, or such poor meagre stuff, as neither came from the bard, nor was worthy the press; when, by a few slight corrections or additions, a most beautiful or interesting sense hath started forth, and this so naturally and easily, that the editor could seldom prevail on himself to indulge the vanity of making a formal claim to the improvement; but must plead guilty to the charge of concealing his own share in the amendments under some such general title, as a Modern Copy, or the like. Yet it has been his design to give sufficient intimation where any considerable liberties[66] were taken with the old copies, and to have retained either in the text or margin any word or phrase which was antique, obsolete, unusual, or peculiar, so that these might be safely quoted as of genuine and undoubted antiquity. His object was to please both the judicious antiquary, and the reader of taste; and he hath endeavoured to gratify both without offending either.

[Pg 12]

The plan of the work was settled in concert with the late elegant Mr. Shenstone, who was to have borne a joint share in it had not death unhappily prevented him[67]: most of the modern pieces were of his selection and arrangement, and the editor hopes to be pardoned if he has retained some things out of partiality to the judgment of his friend. The old folio MS. above-mentioned was a present from Humphrey Pitt, Esq., of Prior's-Lee, in Shropshire,[68] to whom this public acknowledgement is due for that, and many other obliging favours. To Sir David Dalrymple, Bart., of Hailes, near Edinburgh, the editor is indebted for most of the beautiful Scottish poems with which this little miscellany is enriched, and for many curious and elegant remarks with which they are illustrated. Some obliging communications of the same kind were received from John MacGowan, Esq., of Edinburgh; and many curious explanations of Scottish words in the glossaries from John Davidson, Esq., of Edinburgh, and from the Rev. Mr. Hutchinson, of Kimbolton. Mr. Warton, who has twice done so much honour to the Poetry Professor's chair at Oxford, and Mr. Hest, of Wor[Pg 13]cester College, contributed some curious pieces from the Oxford libraries. Two ingenious and learned friends at Cambridge deserve the editor's warmest acknowledgements: to Mr. Blakeway, late fellow of Magdalen College, he owes all the assistance received from the Pepysian library: and Mr. Farmer, fellow of Emanuel, often exerted, in favour of this little work, that extensive knowledge of ancient English literature for which he is so distinguished.[69] Many extracts from ancient MSS. in the British Museum, and other repositories, were owing to the kind ser[Pg 14]vices of Thomas Astle, Esq., to whom the public is indebted for the curious Preface and Index annexed to the Harleyan Catalogue.[70] The worthy Librarian of the Society of Antiquaries, Mr. Norris, deserved acknowledgement for the obliging manner in which he gave the editor access to the volumes under his care. In Mr. Garrick's curious collection of old plays are many scarce pieces of ancient poetry, with the free use of which he indulged the editor in the politest manner. To the Rev. Dr. Birch he is indebted for the use of several ancient and valuable tracts. To the friendship of Dr. Samuel Johnson he owes many valuable hints for the conduct of the work. And, if the Glossaries are more exact and curious than might be expected in so slight a publication, it is to be ascribed to the supervisal of a friend, who stands at this time the first in the world for northern literature, and whose learning is better known and respected in foreign nations than in his own country. It is, perhaps, needless to name the Rev. Mr. Lye, editor of Junius's Etymologicum, and of the Gothic Gospels.

The names of so many men of learning and character the editor hopes will serve as an amulet to guard him from every unfavourable censure, for having bestowed any attention on a parcel of old ballads. It was at the request of many of these gentlemen, and of others eminent for their genius and taste, that this little work was undertaken. To prepare it for the press has been the amusement of now and then a vacant hour amid the leisure and retirement of rural life, and hath only served as a relaxation from graver studies. It has been taken up at different times, and often thrown aside for many months, during an interval of four or five years. This [Pg 15]has occasioned some inconsistencies and repetitions, which the candid reader will pardon. As great care has been taken to admit nothing immoral and indecent, the editor hopes he need not be ashamed of having bestowed some of his idle hours on the ancient literature of our own country, or in rescuing from oblivion some pieces (though but the amusements of our ancestors) which tend to place in a striking light their taste, genius, sentiments, or manners.

[Pg 16]
[Pg 17]

RELIQUES OF ANCIENT POETRY, ETC.

SERIES THE FIRST.

[Pg 18]

[Pg 19]

The fine heroic song of Chevy-Chase has ever been admired by competent judges. Those genuine strokes of nature and artless passion, which have endeared it to the most simple readers, have recommended it to the most refined; and it has equally been the amusement of our childhood, and the favourite of our riper years.

Mr. Addison has given an excellent critique[71] on this very popular ballad, but is mistaken with regard to the antiquity of the common-received copy; for this, if one may judge from the style, cannot be older than the time of Elizabeth, and was probably written after the elogium of Sir Philip Sidney: perhaps in consequence of it. I flatter myself, I have here recovered the genuine antique poem; the true original song, which appeared rude even in the time of Sir Philip, and caused him to lament, that it was so evil-apparelled in the rugged garb of antiquity.

This curiosity is printed, from an old manuscript,[72] at the end of Hearne's preface to Gul. Newbrigiensis Hist. 1719, 8vo. vol. i. To the MS. copy is subjoined the name of the author, Rychard Sheale;[73] whom Hearne had so little judgement as to suppose to be the same with a R. Sheale, who was living in 1588. But whoever examines the gradation of language and idiom in the following volumes, will be convinced that this is the production [Pg 20]of an earlier poet. It is indeed expressly mentioned among some very ancient songs in an old book intituled, The Complaint of Scotland[74] (fol. 42), under the title of the Huntis of Chevet, where the two following lines are also quoted:—

which, tho' not quite the same as they stand in the ballad, yet differ not more than might be owing to the author's quoting from memory. Indeed whoever considers the style and orthography of this old poem will not be inclined to place it lower than the time of Henry VI.: as on the other hand the mention of James the Scottish King,[77] with one or two anachronisms, forbids us to assign it an earlier date. King James I. who was prisoner in this kingdom at the death of his father,[78] did not wear the crown of Scotland till the second year of our Henry VI.,[79] but before the end of that long reign a third James had mounted the throne.[80] A succession of two or three Jameses, and the long detention of one of them in England, would render the name familiar to the English, and dispose a poet in those rude times to give it to any Scottish king he happened to mention.

So much for the date of this old ballad: with regard to its subject, altho' it has no countenance from history, there is room to think it had originally some foundation in fact. It was one of the Laws of the Marches frequently renewed between the two nations, that neither party should hunt in the other's borders, without leave from the proprietors or their deputies.[81] There had long been a [Pg 21]rivalship between the two martial families of Percy and Douglas, which heightened by the national quarrel, must have produced frequent challenges and struggles for superiority, petty invasions of their respective domains, and sharp contests for the point of honour; which would not always be recorded in history. Something of this kind, we may suppose, gave rise to the ancient ballad of the Hunting a' the Cheviat.[82] Percy earl of Northumberland had vowed to hunt for three days in the Scottish border without condescending to ask leave from earl Douglas, who was either lord of the soil, or lord warden of the marches. Douglas would not fail to resent the insult, and endeavour to repel the intruders by force; this would naturally produce a sharp conflict between the two parties: something of which, it is probable, did really happen, tho' not attended with the tragical circumstances recorded in the ballad: for these are evidently borrowed from the Battle of Otterbourn,[83] a very different event, but which after-times would easily confound with it. That battle might be owing to some such previous affront as this of Chevy Chase, though it has escaped the notice of historians. Our poet has evidently jumbled the two subjects together: if indeed the lines,[84] in which this mistake is made, are not rather spurious, and the after-insertion of some person, who did not distinguish between the two stories.

Hearne has printed this ballad without any division of stanzas, in long lines, as he found it in the old written copy; but it is usual to find the distinction of stanzas neglected in ancient MSS.; where, to save room, two or three verses are frequently given in one line undivided. See flagrant instances in the Harleian Catalogue, No. 2253, s. 29, 34, 61, 70, et passim.

[Pg 28]

The only battle wherein an Earl of Douglas was slain fighting with a Percy was that of Otterbourne, which is the subject of this ballad. It is here related with the allowable partiality of an English poet, and much in the same manner as it is recorded in the English Chronicles. The Scottish writers have, with a partiality at least as excusable, related it no less in their own favour. Luckily we have a very circumstantial narrative of the whole affair from Froissart, a French historian, who appears to be unbiassed. Froissart's relation is prolix; I shall therefore give it, with a few corrections, as abridged by Carte, who has, however, had recourse to other authorities, and differs from Froissart in some things, which I shall note in the margin.

In the twelfth year of Richard II., 1388, "The Scots taking advantage of the confusions of this nation, and falling with a party into the West-marches, ravaged the country about Carlisle, and [Pg 36]carried off 300 prisoners. It was with a much greater force, headed by some of the principal nobility, that, in the beginning of August,[212] they invaded Northumberland; and, having wasted part of the county of Durham,[213] advanced to the gates of Newcastle; where, in a skirmish, they took a 'penon' or colours[214] belonging to Henry lord Percy, surnamed Hotspur, son to the Earl of Northumberland. In their retreat home, they attacked a castle near Otterbourn: and, in the evening of Aug. 9 (as the English writers say, or rather, according to Froissart, Aug. 15), after an unsuccessful assault were surprised in their camp, which was very strong, by Henry, who at the first onset put them into a good deal of confusion. But James Earl of Douglas rallying his men, there ensued one of the best-fought actions that happened in that age; both armies showing the utmost bravery:[215] the earl Douglas himself being slain on the spot;[216] the Earl of Murrey mortally wounded; and Hotspur,[217] with his brother Ralph Percy, taken prisoners. These disasters on both sides have given occasion to the event of the engagement's being disputed. Froissart (who derives his relation from a Scotch knight, two gentlemen of the same country, and as many of Foix)[218] affirming that the Scots [Pg 37]remained masters of the field; and the English writers insinuating the contrary. These last maintain that the English had the better of the day: but night coming on, some of the northern lords, coming with the Bishop of Durham to their assistance, killed many of them by mistake, supposing them to be Scots; and the Earl of Dunbar, at the same time falling on another side upon Hotspur, took him and his brother prisoners, and carried them off while both parties were fighting. It is at least certain, that immediately after this battle the Scots engaged in it made the best of their way home: and the same party was taken by the other corps about Carlisle."

Such is the account collected by Carte, in which he seems not to be free from partiality: for prejudice must own that Froissart's circumstantial account carries a great appearance of truth, and he gives the victory to the Scots. He, however, does justice to the courage of both parties; and represents their mutual generosity in such a light, that the present age might edify by the example. "The Englyshmen on the one partye, and Scottes on the other party, are good men of warre, for whan they mete, there is a hard fighte without sparynge. There is no hoo[219] betwene them as long as speares, swordes, axes, or dagers wyll endure; but lay on eche upon other: and whan they be well beaten, and that the one party hath obtayned the victory, they than glorifye so in their dedes of armes, and are so joyfull, that suche as be taken, they shall be ransomed or they go out of the felde;[220] so that shortely eche of them is so contente with other, that at their departynge curtoysly they will saye, God thanke you. But in fyghtynge one with another there is no playe, nor sparynge." Froissart's Chronicle (as translated by Sir Johan Bourchier Lord Berners), cap. cxlii.

The following Ballad is (in this present edition) printed from an old MS. in the Cotton Library[221] (Cleopatra, c. iv.), and contains many stanzas more than were in the former copy, which was transcribed from a MS. in the Harleian Collection [No. 293, fol. 52.] In the Cotton MS. this poem has no title, but in the Harleian copy it is thus inscribed, A songe made in R. 2. his tyme of the battele of Otterburne, betweene Lord Henry Percye earle of Northomberlande and the earle Douglas of Scotlande, Anno 1388.

[Pg 38]

But this title is erroneous, and added by some ignorant transcriber of after-times: for, 1. The battle was not fought by the Earl of Northumberland, who was absent, but by his son, Sir Henry Percy, Knt., surnamed Hotspur (in those times they did not usually give the title of Lord to an Earl's eldest son). 2. Altho' the battle was fought in Richard II.'s time, the song is evidently of later date, as appears from the poet's quoting the chronicles in Pt. II., ver. 26; and speaking of Percy in the last stanza as dead. It was, however, written in all likelihood as early as the foregoing song, if not earlier. This, perhaps, may be inferred from the minute circumstances with which the story is related, many of which are recorded in no chronicle, and were probably preserved in the memory of old people. It will be observed that the authors of these two poems have some lines in common; but which of them was the original proprietor must depend upon their priority; and this the sagacity of the reader must determine.

[Pg 40]