The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Edited by Francis James Child, Volume IV

190 JAMIE TELFER OF THE FAIR DODHEAD

191 HUGHIE GRAME — A — B — C — D — E — F — G

192 THE LOCHMABEN HARPER — A — B — C — D — E

A. a. ‘The Blind Harper of Lochmaben,’ Glenriddell MSS, XI, 42, 1791. b. ‘The Blind Harper,’ Johnson’s Museum, No 579, 1803. c. ‘The Lochmaben Harper,’ Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802, I, 65; 1833, I, 422.

B. ‘Lochmaben Harper,’ Glenriddell MSS, XI, 39.

C. ‘The Auld Harper,’ The Edinburgh Topographical, Traditional, and Antiquarian Magazine, 1849, p. 58.

D. Macmath MS, p. 35.

E. ‘The Jolly Harper,’ Buchan’s MSS, I, 35; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, Percy Society, vol. xvii, p. 37.

The Stationers’ Registers, 22 July, 1564–22 July, 1565, Arber, I, 260, have an entry of a fee from Owyn Rogers for license to print “a ballett intituled The Blende Harper, etc.”; and again, the following year, Arber, I, 294, of a fee from Lucas Haryson for license to print “a ballet intituled The Blynde Harpers, with the Answere.” Nothing further is known of this ballet.

Boyd, the translator of Dante, had a recollection of a ballad of a Scotch minstrel who stole a horse from one of the Henries of England: Ritson, Scotish Song, I, xxxvi, note 25, 1794.

Printed in Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1802 (A c), and the next year in the Musical Museum (A b), as communicated by Burns. Burns’s copy differs very slightly from A a, however he came by it. Scott had access to the Glenriddell collection, and his ballad (of which he gives no account) was made by changing A a to his taste, substituting one stanza of his own in place of 18, and the last two of B, with alterations, for the last of A a. To reduce improbabilities, Scott put the Lord Warden for King Henry.

C was pointed out to me, and transcribed from the short-lived periodical in which it was printed, by Mr James Barclay Murdoch, to whom I have been from the beginning indebted for the most essential help.

Of D Mr Macmath writes: This version was copied by me in fac-simile from the original manuscript in the handwriting of the late Rev. George Murray, of Troquhain, minister of Balmaclellan, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and was in possession of his son, the Rev. George Murray, to whose kindness I was indebted for the loan of it. The late Mr Murray took down the ballad from the singing of Sarah Rae, a poor weak-minded woman of his parish. Sarah Rae was the last person known to Mr Murray—and he was a keen observer of such matters—to use the distaff. The present Mr George Murray wrote to me on 12th January, 1883: “I may add that I have heard her sing the ballad myself, to a very simple but particularly plaintive lilt—more like a rapid chant than an ordinary song—which rings in my ear yet, although I only heard it once, when a lad.”^[8]

A-C. A harper of Lochmaben (blind, A, B) who means to steal the Wanton Brown, a horse of King Henry’s, consults with his wife before setting about the business, and gets a few valuable hints; among them, to leave his mare’s foal at home. He goes up to England, and has the good luck, so common in ballads, 17of finding King Henry at his gate. The king wants to hear some of his harping, and, as the harper makes a difficulty about the stabling of his mare, orders the beast to be put into his own stable. The harper harps all his hearers asleep; then makes his way softly to the stable, slips a halter over the Wanton’s nose and ties him to the mare’s tail, and turns the mare out. She goes straight to Lochmaben, to her foal, neighs at the harper’s house, and is let in by the servant-lass, who exclaims at the braw foal that the mare has got. In the morning they find in England that both the Wanton Brown and the mare have been stolen. The harper breaks out into ‘allaces:’ he has lost a foal in Scotland and had his mare stolen in England! The king quiets him with a promise of a better mare and pay for his foal to boot.

In D, E, the harper steals the horse on a wager, which, however, is passed over lightly in D. The wager in E is with two knights of Stirling, five ploughs of land with one and five thousand pounds with the other, and “John” has to go all the way to London to win it. The knights pay their loss and then restore the Wanton Brown to Henry!—so great an improvement upon the dealings of the Scots with English horseflesh as to compel one to assign this particular version of the story to the nineteenth, if not the twentieth, century.^[9]

The twelve armed men in armor bright that guard the stable night and day in E 23 remind us of popular tales; as of the Grimms’ ‘Master Thief.’

A b is loosely translated by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 16, p. 58.

a. Glenriddell MS. XI, 42, 1791; “from a MS. collection of Mr Henderson.” b. Johnson’s Museum, No 579, VI, 598, 1803, communicated by Burns, c. Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1802, I, 65.

Glenriddell MSS, XI, 39, 1791; “from Dr Clapperton, of Lochmaben.”

The Edinburgh Topographical, Traditional, and Antiquarian Magazine, 1849, p. 58; communicated by W. G. “from the recitation of a friend, who learned it many years ago from her grandfather,” a farmer in Wigtonshire, who died in 1813, at the age of ninety-four.

Taken down by the Rev George Murray from the singing of Sarah Rae, a weak-minded woman of Balmaclellan, Kirkcudbright, 1866. Communicated by Mr Macmath.

Buchan’s MSS, I, 35; Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 37, Percy Society, vol. xvii.

23A. a.

“I have here given another copy of this Border Ballad, which I took from a MS. collection of Mr Henderson. It varies a little from the former [A], which I had from Dr Clapperton of Lochmaben.”

4⁴, 13⁴, 18⁴. The Wanton Brown is a mare: so b, and D, 9⁴. But the Brown is a stallion in C, 3⁴, 8⁴, 13⁴, and is so made to be in A c, 13⁴, 17³: rightly, I should suppose.

8². say.

12⁴. to wanting.

b.

The third and fourth lines are repeated as burden.

1¹. O heard ye of a silly harper.

1². Livd long.

1³. he did.

8¹. he wanting.

9². lords gaed through.

9⁴. That they forgat.

14⁴. ere it.

15². gae.

16¹. raise.

17¹. then (misprint) for those.

17³. gainst.

21³. shall.

c.

No burden.

1¹. O heard ye na o.

1². How lang he lived.

1³. And how.

1⁴. steal the Lord Warden’s.

2². the haste.

2³. will neer gae weel.

3¹. hast.

3². That can baith lance oer laigh.

3³. Sae set thee on the gray mare’s back.

4, 5, wanting.

6². And even: he may drie.

6³. And when he cam to Carlisle gate.

6⁴. O whae: but the Warden, he.

7¹. into my hall, thou.

7⁴. I wad.

8¹. The Warden lookd ower.

8². said.

8³. silly blind. 8⁴. beside.

9¹. Then aye.

9². the lordlings footed.

9³. But an the.

9⁴. The groom had nae mind o.

10². were fast.

11¹ hied.

11⁴. gude wanting.

12¹. took a cowt halter.

12². he did.

13¹. He turned them loose at the castle gate.

13². muir and moss.

13³. neer let: bait.

13⁴. But kept him a-galloping hame to her foal.

14¹. The mare she was: foot.

14². She didna.

14⁴. A lang: before the day.

15³. Rise up.

16¹. cloathes.

16². keekit through at the.

16³. then cried.

16⁴. braw brown.

17¹. haud thy tongue, thou silly wench.

17². morn’s: in your ee.

17³. He’s.

19³. Behold the Wanton Brown was gane.

19⁴. poor blind.

20¹. quo the cunning auld.

20². And ever allace.

20³. I lost a.

21, 22, alteration of B 11, 12:

B.

1². in a Bell town: see 13¹.

5. The burden is here: Sing, Fadle fidle, etc.

C.

“The following is an oral version of a ballad which appears in the first volume of the ‘Minstrelsy.’ I have written it down from the recitation of a friend who learned it many years ago from her grandfather, a Mr John Macreddie, farmer, Little Laight parish of Inch, Wigtonshire. He died in 1813, at the age of ninety-four, and is supposed to have acquired the song from tradition in his youth. On comparison, it will be found to differ in several respects from Sir Walter’s version. 11 Hill Street, Anderston, Glasgow. W. G.”

D.

3², 4², 6¹, 18¹, oh. 10¹, at, 16¹, then, added by Mr Murray in pencil above the line, as if on reading over what he had written down.

18⁴. Dr Mitchell gives: An waps. “ The ower-word,” he adds, “was something like the following:”

E.

2². The reading is perhaps pounds.

7^2,3. Absurdity could be avoided by exchanging grey mare and steed.

24². by for my.

193 THE DEATH OF PARCY REED — A — B

A. ‘A song of Parcy Reed and the Three False Halls,’ the late Robert White’s papers.

B. ‘The Death of Parcy Reed,’ Richardson’s Borderer’s Table Book, 1846, VII, 361; J. H. Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 99, Percy Society, vol. xvii, 1846.

Of B, which purports to have been taken down from an old woman’s singing by James Telfer, Mr Robert White, from whom I received A, said in a letter to Mr J. H. Dixon: “Parcy Reed, as you suspect, is not genuine, for it bears marks of our friend’s improvements. I have a copy of the original somewhere, but may not be able to find it.” And again, Telfer himself, “in a letter to the late Robert Storey, the Northumbrian poet,” wrote, “I will send Mr Dixon the real verses, but it is but a droll of a ballad.” (J. H. Dixon, in Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, I, 108, V, 520.)

Comparison will show that almost the whole of A is preserved in B, and in fairly good form. B has also some stanzas not found in A which may be accepted as traditional. Telfer may have added a dozen of his own, and has retouched others.

Mr White, after remarking that there is no historical evidence to show when the event on which the ballad was founded occurred, informs us that almost every circumstance in the narrative has been transmitted to the present century by local tradition.

“Percival, or Parcy, Reed,” in the words of Mr White, “was proprietor of Troughend, an elevated tract of land lying on the west side and nearly in the centre of Redesdale, Northumberland. The remains of the old tower may still be seen, a little to the west of the present mansion, commanding a beautiful and most extensive view of nearly the whole valley. Here he resided, and being a keen hunter and brave soldier, he possessed much influence, and was appointed warden or keeper of the district. His office was to suppress and order the apprehension of thieves and other breakers of the law; in the execution of which he incurred the displeasure of a family of brothers of the name of Hall, who were owners of Girsonsfield, a farm about two miles east from Troughend. He also drew upon himself the hostility of a band of moss-troopers, Crosier by name, some of whom he had been successful in bringing to justice. The former were, however, artful enough to conceal their resentment, and under the appearance of friendship calmly awaited an opportunity to be avenged. Some time afterwards, they solicited his attendance on a hunting expedition to the head of Redesdale, and unfortunately he agreed to accompany them. His wife had some strange dreams anent his safety on the night before his departure, and at breakfast, on the following morning, the loaf of bread from which he was supplied chanced to be turned with the bottom upwards, an omen which is still accounted most unfavorable all over the north of England. Considering these presages undeserving of notice, Reed set out in company with the Halls, and, after enjoying a good day’s sport, the party withdrew to a solitary hut in Batinghope, a lonely glen stretching westward from the Whitelee, whose little stream forms one of the chief sources of Reedwater. The whole of this arrangement had been previously planned by the Halls and Crosiers, and when the latter came down, late in the evening, to execute their purpose of vengeance, they found 25Parcy Reed altogether a defenceless man. His companions not only deserted him, but had previously driven his sword so firmly in its scabbard that it could not be drawn, and had also moistened the powder with which the very long gun he carried with him was charged, so as to render both useless when he came to rely upon them for protection. Accordingly the Crosiers instantly put him to death; and so far did they carry out their sanguinary measures, even against his lifeless body, that tradition says the fragments thereof had to be collected together and conveyed in pillow-slips home to Troughend. Public indignation was speedily aroused against the murderers; the very name of Crosier was abhorred throughout Redesdale, and the abettors were both driven from their residence and designated as the fause-hearted Ha’s, an appellation which yet remains in force against them.” (Richardson’s Borderer’s Table Book, VII, 361.)

The farm of Girsonsfield, according to the ballad, A 3, 18, belonged to the Halls. But that place has been the property of others, says Mr White, “ever since the reign of Elizabeth;” whence he concludes that the story is not to be dated later than the sixteenth century.

Parcy Reed is famed to have had a favorite dog named Keeldar, and, though a “peerless archer,” to have killed him by an unlucky shot while hunting. Sir Walter Scott has celebrated this mishap and its consequence in ‘The Death of Keeldar’ (Table Book, as above, p. 240); and he alludes to the treacherous murder of Reed (with which he became acquainted through Robert Roxby’s ‘Lay of the Reedwater Minstrel,’ 1809) in Rokeby, written in 1812, Canto I, xx.

The late Robert White’s papers; “Woodburn, December 1, 1829, Thomas Hedley, Bridge End, Corsonside Parish.”

Richardsons’ Borderers’ Table Book, VII, 361, 1846; “taken down by James Telfer, of Saughtree, Liddesdale, from the chanting of an old woman named Kitty Hall, a native of Northumberland.”

A.

10¹, 12¹, 14¹, or for nor; cf. 8¹.

12². “O Parcy Reed, etc. (same as stanza 8, save at end, thee and me).” The same abridgment and remark at 10², 14², but the last words are there given as me and thee. Uniformity is to be expected.

16¹. fare thou: cf. 16³, 17¹.

194 THE LAIRD OF WARISTON — A — B — C

195 LORD MAXWELL’S LAST GOODNIGHT — A — B

A. ‘Lord Maxwell’s Last Goodnight,’ communicated to Percy by G. Paton, 1778.

B. ‘Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight,’ Glenriddell MSS, XI, 18, 1791, Scott’s Minstrelsy, I, 194, 1802; II, 133, 1833.

First published in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, “from a copy in Glenriddell’s MS., with some slight variations from tradition.” I understand this to mean, not that the variations were derived from tradition, but that the text of the Minstrelsy departs somewhat from that of the manuscript.

A and B agree entirely as to matter. The order of the stanzas, not being governed by an explicit story, might be expected to vary with every reciter.

In the year 1585, John, Lord Maxwell, having incurred the enmity of the king’s favorite, the Earl of Arran, was denounced rebel, on such charges as were always at hand, and a commission was given to the Laird of Johnstone to pursue and take him. A hired force, by the aid of which this was expected to be done, was badly routed by the Maxwells in a sharp fight. Johnstone made a raid on Maxwell’s lands; Maxwell burnt Johnstone’s house. Finally, in one of their skirmishes, Johnstone was captured: “the grief of this overthrow gave Johnstone, shortly after he was liberated, his death.”

After some years of feud, the two chiefs, “by the industry of certain wise gentlemen of the Johnstones,” surprised all Scotland by making a treaty of peace. On April 1, 1592, they entered into a bond to forget and forgive all rancor and malice of the past, and to live in amity, themselves and their friends, in all time coming. A little more than a year after, a party of Johnstones, relying, no doubt, on the forbearance of their new ally, then warden of the West Marches, “rode a stealing” in the lands of Lord Sanquhar and of the knights of Drumlanrig, Lag, and Closeburn, carried off a large booty, and killed eighteen men who endeavored to retrieve their property. (See No 184, ‘The Lads of Wamphray.’) The injured gentlemen made complaint to Maxwell as warden, and also procured a commission directing him to proceed against the Johnstones. Maxwell was in an awkward plight. To induce him to take action, several of the sufferers engaged to enter into a bond of manrent, or homage, to Maxwell, by which they should be obliged to service and he to protection. “Maxwell, thinking this to be a good occasion for bringing all Nithsdale to depend upon him, embraced the offer.” But this bond, through negligence, came to the hands of Johnstone, who, seeing what turn matters would take, made a league with Scotts, Eliots, and others, and in a battle at Dryfe Sands, by superior strategy, defeated Maxwell, though the warden had much larger numbers. This was in December, 1593. “The Lord Maxwell, a tall man and heavy in armor, was in the chase overtaken and stricken from his horse. The report went that he called to Johnstone and desired to be taken as he had sometime taken his father, but was unmercifully used, and the hand that he reached forth cut off. But of this,” says Spotiswood, “I can affirm nothing. There always the Lord Maxwell fell, having received many wounds.” Drumlanrig, Closeburn, and other of the Nithsdale lairds of Maxwell’s faction, barely escaped with their lives.

Sir James Johnstone soon made his peace with the king, whose warden had been slain while acting under royal authority. The heir 35of the slain warden, John, the ninth Lord Maxwell, is said to have been only eight years old at the time of his father’s death.^[14] If this was so, he became very early of age for all purposes of offence. The two clans kept up a bloody and destructive private war. Both chiefs were imprisoned and proclaimed rebel or traitor; Maxwell twice, first in 1601, as favoring popery, and again in 1607, for his extravagant turbulence; and in each case he made his own escape, the second time by the use of violence. At length, influenced perhaps by a conviction that his defiance of the law had gone too far for his safety, Maxwell seemed to be seriously disposed to reconcile himself with his inveterate enemy.^[15] Sir James Johnstone, as it happened, had already asked Sir Robert Maxwell, who was his brother-in-law and cousin to Lord Maxwell, to speak to his kinsman with that view. Sir Robert had no wish to meddle, for his cousin, he said, was a dangerous man to have to do with. Lord John, however, spontaneously sent for Sir Robert, and said to him, You see my estate and the danger I stand in. I would crave your counsel as a man that tenders my weal. The result of much conference and writing (in which Sir Robert Maxwell, evidently feeling imperfect confidence in his cousin, acted with great caution) was that Lord Maxwell proposed a tryst with Sir James Johnstone, each of them to be accompanied by one person only, and no others to be present except Sir Robert, and faithfully promised, with his hands between Sir Robert’s hands, that neither he nor the man he should bring with him should do any wrong, “whether they agreed or not.” Johnstone accepted the terms and made corresponding promises. The meeting came off the 6th of April, 1608. Johnstone brought Willie Johnstone with him, and Maxwell Charlie Maxwell, a man that Sir Robert strongly disapproved, but his chief undertook to be answerable for him. Sir Robert required the same guaranty on the part of Johnstone for his follower, and these men were ordered to keep away from one another. The two principals and their mediator between them rode off, with their backs to their men, and began their parley. Looking round, Sir Robert saw that Charlie Maxwell had left his appointed place and gone to Willie Johnstone, at whom, after some words between them, he fired a pistol. Sir Robert cried to Lord Maxwell, Fie, make not yourself a traitor and me both! Lord Maxwell replied, I am blameless. Sir James Johnstone slipped away to see to his follower’s safety. Lord Maxwell followed Sir James, shot him in the back, and rode off.^[16]

Lord Maxwell fled the country, but was tried in his absence and sentenced to death, with forfeiture of his estates. He came back to Scotland after four years, was basely betrayed into the power of the government by a kinsman, and was beheaded at Edinburgh May 21, 1613.^[17]

“Thus was finally ended,” remarks Sir Walter Scott, “by a salutary example of severity, the ‘foul debate’ betwixt the Maxwells and Johnstones, in the course of which each family lost two chieftains: one dying of a broken heart, one in the field of battle, one by assassination, and one by the sword of the executioner.”

A 1, 2, and passim. The very affectionate relations of Lord Maxwell and his ‘lady and 36only joy,’ are a fiction of the ballad-maker. His wife was daughter of the first Marquis of Hamilton. Maxwell instituted a process of divorce against her, and she died while this was pending, before he fled the country in 1608. By his treatment of his wife he made her brother, the second marquis, and the Hamiltons generally, his enemies.^[18]

5, 6. Carlaverock castle had from far back belonged to the Maxwells, and is theirs still. They had a house, or castle, at Dumfries, and the custody of the “houses” of Lochmaben, Langholm, and Thrieve.

9, 10. Douglas of Drumlanrig, Kirkpatrick of Closeburn, and Grierson of Lag fled in the sauve qui peut of Dryfe Sands, and the partisans of Lord Maxwell, who there lost his life, would naturally describe them as deserting their chief. They (or two of them) had entered into a “band” with Maxwell, as aforesaid. The ballad-maker seems to intimate that they were in a band with each other, or with somebody, to betray Maxwell.

11, and B 1. ‘Robin in the Orchet,’ ‘Robert of Oarchyardtoan,’ is properly Sir Robert Maxwell of Orchardton, Lord John’s cousin, but it is evident, from the conjunction of mother and sisters, that the person here intended is his brother Robert, to whom, some years after the execution and forfeiture of Lord John, the estates were restored.

14. Maxwell’s wife, as said above, was no longer living. The “offers” which he made, to save his life, contain a proposal that he should marry the slain Sir James Johnstone’s daughter, without any dowry.

“Goodnight” is to be taken loosely as a farewell. Other cases are ‘John Armstrong’s last Goodnight,’ and the well-known beautiful fragment (?) of two stanzas called ‘Armstrong’s Goodnight;’ again, Essex’s last Goodnight, to the tune of The King’s last Goodnight, Chappell, Roxburghe Ballads, I, 570, and Popular Music, p. 174. The Earl of Derby sings a Goodnight (though the name is not used) in ‘Flodden Field,’ No 168, III, 356, stanzas 36–58. Justice Shallow sang those tunes that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his Fancies, or his Good-nights: Second Part of Henry IV, III, 2. Lord Byron, in the preface to Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, says “the good-night in the beginning of the first canto was suggested by Lord Maxwell’s Goodnight in the Border Minstrelsy.”

Communicated to Percy by G. Paton, Edinburgh, December 4, 1778.

A.

1². faither’s place? So B.

4². And a’ to be revainged on him. Cf. B.

5². Fair well the Lanríke faires. (?)

9⁴. struet. (?)

B.

Written in stanzas of eight lines.

4¹. labourod.

The variations of the Minstrelsy, being editorial, do not require to be recorded, but some of them have a certain interest.

1². sisters three.

1⁴. My heart is wae for thee.

3³. mind their wrath disdains.

14³. His life is but a three days’ lease.

15¹. was clear, as in A.

196 THE FIRE OF FRENDRAUGHT — A — B — C — D — E — APPENDIX

A. a. ‘The Fire of Frendraught,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 161, 1827. b. ‘Burning of Frendraught,’ Maidment’s North Countrie Garland, p. 4, 1824.

B. ‘The Burning of Frendraught,’ Kinloch MSS, V, 399.

C. ‘The Fire of Frendraught,’ from a note-book of Dr Joseph Robertson’s.

D. Ritson’s Scotish Songs, II, 35, 1794.

E. Kinloch MSS, VI, 27, one stanza.

A a was communicated to Motherwell by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. (Corrections have here been adopted from Motherwell’s Errata: see also the Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 322*.) A b, says Motherwell, has the “disadvantage of containing a very considerable number of slight verbal and literal inaccuracies.” The implication is, or should be, that these variations are of editorial origin. Some of the readings of b are in themselves better than those of a. b is repeated in Buchan’s Gleanings, p. 165. The copy in Maidment’s Scotish Ballads, 1868, I, 267, is a with a reading or two from b, arbitrary alterations, and some misprints.

Dr Joseph Robertson has, in one of his notebooks, “Adversaria,” p. 63, the two following stanzas, given him by a gentleman of Buchan as belonging to “The Burning of Frendraught House.”

Undoubtedly these stanzas may have occurred in a version of this ballad, but they are a commonplace, and sometimes an intrusive one. See II, 109, ‘Fair Janet,’ F 4, 5; 154, ‘Young Hunting,’ K 8, 9; 164, ‘Clerk Saunders,’ F, 5, 6; 409, ‘Willie o Douglas Dale,’ B 20.

The modern, and extremely vapid, ballad of ‘Frennet Hall’ appeared originally (I suppose) in Herd’s Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 142, and was afterwards received into Ritson’s Scotish Songs, II, 31, The Musical Museum, No 286, etc.

James Crichton of Frendraught and William Gordon of Rothiemay (a neighboring estate^[19]) had a fierce quarrel about fishing-rights pertaining to lands which Gordon had sold to Crichton. A legal decision was rendered in favor of Frendraught, who, however, pursued his adversary with excessive vigor and procured him to be outlawed. After this, Rothiemay would hear to no terms of peace, and collected a party of loose fellows with the intent to waste Frendraught’s lands. Frendraught obtained a commission to arrest Rothiemay, and on the first day of the year 1630 set out to put this in force, accompanied, among others, by his uncle (George Gordon) James Leslie, son of the laird of Pitcaple, and John Meldrum, who was married to young Leslie’s aunt. Rothiemay, hearing of Frendraught’s coming, rode out to meet him, and there was a fight, in which Rothiemay and George Gordon were mortally 40wounded, and Meldrum badly. The feud waxed hot, and Frendraught’s lands were in danger of being burned and ravaged by Highlanders, with whom John Gordon of Rothiemay, son to the slain laird, had combined for the purpose. But in the end, by the strenuous exertions of the Marquis of Huntly and others, a settlement was effected. The laird of Rothiemay and the children of George Gordon were “to remit their father’s slaughter mutually,” and in satisfaction thereof the laird of Frendraught was to pay a certain sum of money to young Rothiemay and to George Gordon’s children: “which both, Frendraught obeyed and performed willingly, and so, all parties having shaken hands, they were heartily reconciled.”

This broil was no sooner settled than another sprouted, a side-shoot from the same stem. Meldrum, who had been with Frendraught in the affray with Rothiemay, and had been wounded, was dissatisfied with such requital as he received, and, getting nothing more by his bickering and threats, helped himself one night to two of Frendraught’s best horses. Summoned to court for the theft, he “turned rebel” and did not appear. Frendraught obtained a commission to arrest him, and went to look for him at Pitcaple, a place belonging to John Leslie, Meldrum’s brother-in-law. He did not find Meldrum, but fell in with James Leslie, Pitcaple’s son, who had also been of Frendraught’s party at the encounter on New Year’s day. There was talk about Meldrum’s behavior, in which Frendraught comported himself forbearingly; but James Leslie and Robert Crichton, a kinsman of Frendraught, had hot words, which ended in Leslie’s getting a dangerous shot in the arm. Hereupon the larger part of the surname of Leslie rose in arms against the Crichtons. Frendraught, grieved for what had happened to James Leslie, betook himself to the Marquis of Huntly, and entreated him to make peace. The marquis sent for the Leslies, and did his best to reconcile them, but Pitcaple would listen to nothing until he knew whether his son James was to live or die. Huntly, fearing for Frendraught’s safety, kept him two days at the Bog of Gight, and then, hearing that the Leslies were lying in wait, sent his own son, Viscount Melgum, and the young laird of Rothiemay, to protect him on the way home. Arrived there, the laird and his lady begged these young gentlemen to remain overnight, “and did their best, with all demonstration of love and kindness, to entertain them, thinking themselves happy now to have purchased such friends who had formerly been their foes.” At about two in the morning the tower of Frendraught house, in which these guests lay, took fire, and they with four of their servants were burnt to death. This occurred on the eighth (ninth) of October.

So far Sir Robert Gordon, uncle of the lady of Frendraught and cousin of the Marquis of Huntly, who was perfectly acquainted with all the parties and circumstances. He goes on to say, with entire fairness: “The rumor of this unhappy accident did speedily spread itself throughout the whole kingdom, every man bewailing it, and constructing it diversly as their affections led them; some laying an aspersion upon Frendraught, as if he had wilfully destroyed his guests, who had come thither to defend him against his enemies; which carried no appearance of truth; for, besides the improbability of the matter, he did lose therein a great quantity of silver, both coined and uncoined, and likewise all his writs and evidents were therein burnt.”^[20]

The monstrous wickedness of this act would not, in the light of the history of those times, afford an argument that would of itself avail to clear Frendraught; but what words could describe his recklessness and folly! Supposing him willing to set fire to his own house, and sacrifice his silver and securities, for the gratification of burning young Rothiemay with the rest, he knew very well what consequences he had to expect. He had been glad to compound 41his feud with the Rothiemays by the payment of money (some say the considerable sum of 50,000 merks). He had been alarmed, and with good reason, at the prospect of a feud with the Leslies. But what were these to a feud with the Marquis of Huntly, which would bring down upon him, and did bring down upon him, not only the reprisals of the Gordons, but spoliation from all the brigands of the country?^[21]

says Chaucer, and so it was with ballad-makers, and sometimes even with clerks; John Spalding, for instance, the other contemporary authority upon this subject, who gives a lively and detailed account of the burning of the tower, as follows.^[22]

“The viscount was laid in a bed in the Old Tower, going off the hall, and standing upon a vault, wherein there was a round hole, devised of old, just under Aboyne’s^[23] bed. Robert Gordon, born in Sutherland, his servitor, and English Will, his page, was both laid beside him in the same chamber. The laird of Rothiemay, with some servants beside him, was laid in an upper chamber just above Aboyne’s chamber; and in another room above that chamber was laid George Chalmer of Noth, and George Gordon, another of the viscount’s servants; with whom also was laid Captain Rollok, then in Frendraught’s own company. Thus all being at rest, about midnight that dolorous tower took fire in so sudden and furious manner, yea, and in a clap, that this noble viscount, the laird of Rothiemay, English Will, Colin Ivat, another of Aboyne’s servitors, and other two, being six in number, were cruelly burnt and tormented to the death, but help or relief; the laird of Frendraught, his lady and whole household looking on, without moving or stirring to deliver them from the fury of this fearful fire, as was reported. Robert Gordon, called Sutherland Robert, being in the viscount’s chamber, escaped this fire with his life. George Chalmer and Captain Rollok, being in the third room, escaped also this fire, and, as was said, Aboyne might have saved himself also if he had gone out of doors, which he would not do, but suddenly ran up stairs to Rothiemay’s chamber, and wakened him to rise, and as he is wakening him, the timber passage and lofting of the chamber hastily takes fire, so that none of them could win down stairs again; so they turned to a window looking to the close, where they piteously cried help, help, many times, for God’s cause! the laird and the lady, with their servants, all seeing and hearing this woeful crying, but made no help nor manner of helping;^[24] which they perceiving, they cried oftentimes mercy 42at God’s hands for their sins, syne clasped in other arms, and cheerfully suffered this cruel martyrdom. Thus died this noble viscount, of singular expectation, Rothiemay, a brave youth, and the rest, by this doleful fire never enough to be deplored, to the great grief and sorrow of their kin, friends, parents, and whole country people, especially to the noble marquis, who for his goodwill got this reward.”

Spalding tells us that it was reported that, the morning after the fire, Lady Frendraught, riding on a small nag, and with no attendants but a boy to lead her horse, came weeping to the Bog, desiring to speak with the marquis, but was refused. The Huntly-Gordons, the Earl of Errol (brother of Viscountess Melgum), and many other friends held a council, and after serious consideration came to the conclusion that the fire “could not come by chance, sloth, or accident, but was plotted and devised of set purpose;” Frendraught, his lady, his friends and servants, one or other, knowing thereof. The marquis, however, was resolved not to revenge himself “by way of deed,” but to invoke the laws. Frendraught, as far as we can see, desired a legal inquiry no less than Huntly. He addressed himself to the Lord Chancellor and to the Privy Council, and offered to undergo any form of trial, and, delays occurring, he repeated to the Council his wish to have “that hidden mystery brought to a clear light.” Examinations and prosecutions, extended to the middle of the year 1634, failed to fix the guilt of the fire on him or anybody, although John Meldrum, on the strength of some threats which he had uttered, was wrongfully convicted of the act and was executed.^[25]

A. The date is the eighteenth of October, new style for the eighth. When Gordon and Rothiemay (having convoyed Frendraught safely home) are on the point of returning, Lady Frendraught urges them to stay, in token of good feeling between Huntly and her husband. Lord John is quite disposed to comply, but Rothiemay says that his horse has been tampered with since their coming, and he fears that he is fey. After the regular evening-mass of ballads (which would have suited Lady Frendraught, a concealed Catholic, but not her husband), Lord John and Rothiemay are laid in one chamber, an arrangement which would have allowed both to escape, as Robert Gordon did, who slept in his master’s room. Lord John wakes with the smoke and heat, and rouses Rothiemay. The doors and windows are fastened. Rothiemay goes to the ‘wire-window,’ and finds the stanchions too strong to be dealt with. He sees Lady Frendraught below, and cries to her for mercy; her husband killed the father, and now she is burning the son. Lady Frendraught is sorry that she must burn Lord John in order to burn Rothiemay, but there is no help; the keys are cast in the deep draw-well.^[26] [Robert] Gordon, who has escaped though the keys were in the well, calls to his master to jump from the window; he will catch him in his arms. His 43master answers that no fire shall part him and Rothiemay, and besides, the window is fast. He throws his finger-rings down, to be given to his lady. When the servant goes home to his mistress, she reproaches him for coming back alive and leaving his master dead. She tears off the clothes which her maid puts on her, exclaiming that she won a sore heart the day she was married, and that that day has returned (which is not easy to understand: see Appendix).

B. This fragment represents Lady Frendraught as being very importunate with Lord John: she presses him three times over to stay, and promises him a morning-gift of lands if he will comply; by a perversion of tradition, Strathbogie, which had been in his family three hundred years, and which, further on, he offers to give her if she will let him out. Finding that he cannot escape (perhaps stanza 7 should come later), Lord John takes out his psalm-book and sings three verses, with ‘God end our misery’ at each verse’s end. In 9 he sees his elder brother, Lord George, from the window, and asks what news he has, but a defect conceals from us the point of this passage. Stanza 16 seems to belong to Lord John’s wife.

C. When the gentlemen are in their saddles, ready to ride away, Lady Frendraught, on her bare knees, begs them to remain, and promises them a firlot of red gold if they will. When everybody has gone to bed, the doors are locked and the windows shut. The reek begins to rise and the joists to crack; Lord John betakes himself to the window, and finds the stanchions too strong to break. He goes back and wakens Rothiemay, and proposes to him to praise the Lord in the fifty-third psalm,^[27] for there is treason about them. He calls to Lady Frendraught, walking on the green, for mercy; she replies that the keys are in the well, and the doors were locked yesterday. He reproaches her for burning her own flesh. George Chalmers (who really escaped, though lodged in the third story) is described as leaping the ditches and coming, from without, to Rothiemay’s help, and Colin Irving (the Colin Ivat of Spalding, who was burnt) as doing the same in behalf of Lord John, to whom he calls to jump into his arms. Lord John is burning, and there is little more left of him than his spirit; but he throws down a purse of gold for the poor and his rings for his wife. Lady Rothiemay comes in the morning to cry vengeance on Frendraught, who has betrayed the gay Gordons, killed her lord, and burnt her son.^[28]

D. “‘There are some intermediate particulars,’ Mr Boyd says, ‘respecting the lady’s lodging her victims in a turret or flanker which did not communicate with the castle.’ ‘This,’ adds he, ‘I only have from tradition, as I never heard any other stanzas besides the foregoing.’ The author of the original, we may perceive, either through ignorance or 44design, had deviated from the fact in supposing Lady Frennet’s husband to have been slain by Lord John’s father.” Ritson, p. 36.@

It may be noted that three of the most tragical of the Scottish historical ballads are associated with the name of Gordon: the Burning of Towie, as we might call ‘Captain Car,’ No 178, through Adam Gordon, uncle of the first marquis of Huntly; the Burning of Donibristle, known as ‘The Bonny Earl of Murray,’ No 181, of which the responsibility is put upon the marquis (then earl) himself; and the Burning of Frendraught, in which his son perished.

a. Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 161, from a MS. of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. b. Maidment’s North Countrie Garland, p. 4; “long preserved by tradition in Aberdeenshire, and procured from an intelligent individual resident in that part of Scotland.”

Kinloch MSS, V, 399, in the handwriting of John Hill Burton.

From a note-book of Dr Joseph Robertson: “procured in the parish of Forgue by A. Scott; communicated to me by Mr John Stuart, Aberdeen, 11 October, 1832.”

Ritson’s Scotish Songs, 1794, II, 35; remembered by the Rev. Mr Boyd, translator of Dante, and communicated to the editor by J. C. Walker.

Kinloch MSS, VI, 27, in the handwriting of Joseph Robertson when a youth.

A. a.

23, 24. The &c. at the end denote that the servant repeated the substance of 15–18 and of 20, which, however, was not written out.

b.

1¹. day of.

1⁴. Were. 2¹, 5¹, 5⁴, 8³. were.

2³. out there came the.

6². but new.

6³. the wanting.

7³. to your.

8¹. dressed wi.

9¹. did flee to.

10¹. While he.

10³, 12¹. the for her.

11¹. Cried wanting.

12⁵. The keys were casten.

12⁶. win away.

13³. Then called.

15⁴. may lay.

17¹. But wanting.

18¹. are southering.

19². Which are.

20¹. So wanting.

20⁴. but wanting.

21². fair for she.

21³. Calling unto his.

22⁴. lord burned.

23². come to.

23⁴. would not: no &c.

24⁴. sit: no &c.

25². O wanting.

25⁴. I wat wanting.

26¹. One alas wanting.

26². heart’s easy wan.

26⁴. And, well wanting.

Some readings of b are preferable, as in 6², 18¹, 21³, 22⁴; others also, which may be editorial improvements.

B.

16. “This is another stanza which I afterwards received.”

C.

4¹. A small stroke between out and it.

My friend the late Mr Norval Clyne thought that this obscure stanza might perhaps be cleared up by the following verses, communicated to him in 1873 by the Rev. George Sutherland, Episcopal clergyman at Tillymorgan, Aberdeenshire.

Mr Sutherland wrote: This fragment I took down from the recitation of my mother, twenty or twenty-five years ago. She was born in 1790, and her great-grandmother was a servant of the last Forbes of Tolquhon. She had a tradition that Sophia Hay was one of the Errol family, and married 49Lord John Gordon, who was burned at Frendraught. Mr Clyne remarked: The Young Tolquhon at the time of this marriage, about 1628, was Alexander Forbes, eldest son of William Forbes of Tolquhon. Alexander is recorded to have died without issue, and the following additional particulars, singularly suggestive of a determination on the unfortunate lover’s part to renounce the world, have been communicated to me by Dr John Stuart. In 1631 William Forbes granted a charter of the lands of Tolquhon to his second son Walter and his heirs male, and in 1632 another deed of the same sort to Walter, with the express consent of Alexander, his elder brother. In 1641 Alexander is supposed to have been dead, as Walter is then styled “of Tolquhon.” The lady’s somewhat enigmatical exclamation,

may have its explanation in the words of Young Tolquhon,

Mr Clyne did not fail to observe that Father Blakhal has recorded of Lady Melgum that he had often heard her say that she had never loved anybody but her husband, and never would love another (Narration, p. 92). This testimony, if not decisive, may be considered not less cogent as to the matter of fact than anything in ‘Young Tolquhon’ to the contrary. But it may be that stanza 24 became attached to the Frendraught ballad in consequence of the coexistence of this or some similar ballad of Young Tolquhon.

197 JAMES GRANT

198 BONNY JOHN SETON — A — B

A. ‘Bonny John Seton,’ Maidment’s North Countrie Garland, p. 15; Buchan’s Gleanings, p. 161; Maidment’s Scotish Ballads and Songs, Historical and Traditionary, I, 280.

B. ‘The Death of John Seton,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 136.

Buchan had another copy, sent him in manuscript by a young lady in Aberdeen, in which the Earl Marischal was made prominent: Ballads, II, 321. Aytoun, I, 139, had a copy which had been annotated by C. K. Sharpe, and from this he seems to have derived a few variations. The New Deeside Guide [1832], p. 5 (nominally by James Brown, but written by Dr Joseph Robertson), gives A, with a few trifling improvements which seem to be editorial.

A, B, 1–8. The ballad is accurate as to the date, not commonly a good sign for such things. On Tuesday, the eighteenth of June, 1639, Montrose began an attack on the bridge of Dee, which had been fortified and manned by the royalists of Aberdeen to stop his advance on the city. The bridge was bravely defended that day and part of the next by Lieutenant-Colonel Johnston (not Middleton; Middleton was of the assailants). The young Lord of Aboyne, just made the king’s lieutenant in the north, had a small body of horse on the north side of the river. Montrose’s cavalry were sent up the south side as if to cross (though there was no ford), and Aboyne’s were moved along the opposite bank to resist a passage. This exposed the latter to Montrose’s cannon, and the Covenanters let fly some shot at them, one of which killed “a gallant gentleman, John Seton of Pitmeddin, most part of his body above the saddle being carried away.” Johnston’s leg was crushed by stones brought down from one of the turrets of the bridge by a cannon-shot, and he had to be carried off. The loss of their commander and the disappearance of Aboyne’s horse discouraged the now small party who were holding the bridge, and they abandoned it. Aboyne rode off, and left Aberdeen to to shift for itself.^[32]

A 9–12, B 9–13. The spoiling of John Seton by order of Sir William Forbes of Craigievar is not noticed by Gordon and Spalding, though other matters of not greater proportion are.

A 13–15. The reference is to the affair called the Raid of Stonehaven, June 15, three days before that of the Bridge of Dee. Aboyne’s Highlanders, a thousand or more, were totally unused to artillery, and a few shots from Montrose’s cannon lighting among them so frightened them that “they did run off, all in a confusion, never looking behind them, till they were got into a moss.”^[33]

B 14–17. “When Montrose entered Aberdeen,” says James Gordon, “the Earl Marischal and Lord Muchall pressed him to burn the town, and urged him with the Committee of Estates’ warrant for that effect. He answered that it were best to advise a night upon it, since Aberdeen was the London of the north, and would prejudice themselves by want of it. So it was taken to consideration 52for that night, and next day the Earl Marischal and Lord Muchall came protesting he would spare it. He answered he was desirous so to do, but durst not except they would be his warrant. Whereupon they drew up a paper, signed with both their hands, declaring that they had hindered it, and promising to interpose with the Committee of Estates for him. Yet the next year, when he was made prisoner and accused, this was objected to Montrose, that he had not burned Aberdeen, as he had orders from the Committee of Estates. Then he produced Marischal and Muchall’s paper, which hardly satisfied the exasperated committee.”^[34]

B.

11^1,2. Spulzie.

Readings in Aytoun which may have been derived from Sharpe:

A.

4². The tear stood in.

8³. But bonny John Seton o Pitmeddin.

B.

8³. And there the Covenanters’ shot.

8⁴. It dang him frae his.

10². Was riding frae D.

10³. This is the proudest Seton of a’.

14³. And wha sae ready as Craigievar.

5415¹. Then up and spake the gude.

16². As he rade owre the field.

16³. Why should we burn the bonny.

16⁴. When its like we couldna build.

Readings in The New Deeside Guide:

A.

1³. lords their pallions pitched.

2². A baron bold.

3¹. To his.

4¹. and came.

5⁵. your steed.

11⁴. He bore: to me.

15⁴. cannon’s rair.

199 THE BONNIE HOUSE O AIRLIE — A — B — C — D

200 THE GYPSY LADDIE — A — B — C — D — E — F — G — H — I — J — K

A. ‘Johny Faa, the Gypsy Laddie,’ Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, vol. iv, 1740. Here from the edition of 1763, p. 427.

B. a. The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany (vol. lxxx of the Scots Magazine), November, 1817, p. 309. b. A fragment recited by Miss Fanny Walker, of Mount Pleasant, near Newburgh-on-Tay.

C. ‘Davie Faw,’ Motherwell’s MS., p. 381; ‘Gypsie Davy,’ Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, 1827, p. 360.

D. ‘The Egyptian Laddy,’ Kinloch MSS, V, 331.

E. ‘The Gypsie Laddie,’ Mactaggart’s Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824, p. 284.

F. ‘Johnny Faa, the Gypsey Laddie,’ The Songs of England and Scotland [P. Cunningham], London, 1835, II, 346.

G. a. ‘The Gypsie Loddy,’ a broadside, Roxburghe Ballads, III, 685. b. A recent stall-copy, Catnach, 2 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials.

H. ‘The Gipsy Laddie,’ Shropshire Folk-Lore, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne, p. 550.

I. Communicated by Miss Margaret Reburn, as sung in County Meath, Ireland, about 1860.

J. a. ‘The Gipsey Davy,’ from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. b. From a lady born in Maine.

K. ‘Lord Garrick,’ a, b, communicated by ladies of New York.

The English ballad, though derived from the Scottish, may perhaps have been printed earlier. A conjectural date of 1720 is given, with hesitation, to G a, in the catalogue of the British Museum.

The Scottish ballad appears to have been first printed in the fourth volume of the Tea-Table Miscellany, 1740, but no copy of that edition has been recovered. From the Tea-Table Miscellany it was repeated, with variations, some traditional, some arbitrary, in: Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, ‘Gypsie Laddie,’ p. 88, ed. 1776, II, 54; The Fond Mother’s Garland, not dated, but earlier than 1776; Pinkerton’s Select Scotish Ballads, 1783, I, 67; Johnson’s Museum, ‘Johny Faa, or, The Gypsie Laddie,’ No 181, p. 189; Ritson’s Scotish Songs, 1794, II, 176; and in this century, Cromek’s Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 15; Cunningham’s Songs of Scotland, 1825, II, 175. A transcript in the Campbell MSS, ‘The Gypsies,’ I, 16, is from Pinkerton.

“The people in Ayrshire begin this song,

They have a great many more stanzas ... than I ever yet saw in any printed.” Burns, in Cromek’s Reliques, 1809, p. 161. (So Sharpe, in the Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 217, but perhaps repeating Burns.) B, from Galloway, has eight more stanzas than A, and E, also from Galloway, fourteen more, but quite eight of the last are entirely untraditional,^[38] and the hand of the editor is frequently to be recognized elsewhere.

Finlay, Scottish Ballads, 1808, II, 39, inserted two stanzas after A 2, the first of which is nearly the same as 5, and the second as B 3, C 3. The variations of his text, and others in his notes, are given under A. Kinloch MSS, V, 299; Chambers, Scottish Ballads, 1829, p. 143; Aytoun, 1859, I, 187, repeat Finlay, with a few slight changes. The Ballads and Songs of Ayrshire, I, 9, follows Chambers.

The copy in Smith’s Scotish Minstrel, III, 90, is derived from B a, but has readings of 62other texts, and is of no authority. That in Maidment’s Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 185, is B a with changes. Ten stanzas in a manuscript of Scottish songs and ballads, copied 1840 or 1850 by a granddaughter of Lord Woodhouselee, p. 46, are from B a. This may be true also of B b, which, however, has not Cassilis in 1¹.

C is from a little further north, from Renfrewshire; D from Aberdeenshire. F is from the north of England, and resembles C. The final stanza of G a is cited by Ritson, Scotish Songs, II, 177, 1794. ‘The Rare Ballad of Johnnie Faa and the Countess o Cassilis,’ Sheldon’s Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 326, which the editor had “heard sung repeatedly by Willie Faa,” and of which he “endeavored to preserve as much as recollection would allow,” has the eleven stanzas of the English broadside, and twelve more of which Sheldon must have been unable to recollect anything. H-K are all varieties of the broadside.

The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has most obligingly sent me a ballad, taken down by him from the singing of an illiterate hedger in North Devon, in which ‘The Gypsy Laddie,’ recomposed (mostly with middle rhyme in the third verse, as in A 1, 8), forms the sequel to a story of an earl marrying a very reluctant gypsy maid. When the vagrant who has been made a lady against nature hears some of her tribe singing at the castle-gate, the passion for a roving life returns, and she deserts her noble partner, who pursues her, and, not being able to induce her to return to him, smites her “lily-white” throat with his sword. This little romance, retouched and repaired, is printed as No 50 of Songs and Ballads of the West, now publishing by Baring-Gould and Sheppard. Mr Baring-Gould has also given me a defective copy of the second part of ‘The Gipsy Countess’ (exhibiting many variations), which he obtained from an old shoemaker of Tiverton.

Among the Percy papers there is a set of ballads made over by the Bishop, which may have been intended for the contemplated extension of his Reliques. ‘The Gipsie Laddie,’ in eighteen stanzas, and not quite finished, is one of these. After seven stanzas of A, not much altered, the husband ineffectually pursues the lady, who adopts the gipsy trade, with her reid cheek stained wi yallow. Seven years pass, during which the laird has taken another wife. At Yule a wretched carline begs charity at his gate, who, upon questioning, reveals that she had been a lady gay, with a comely marrow, but had proved false and ruined herself.

A. Gypsies sing so sweetly at our lord’s gate as to entice his lady to come down; as soon as she shows herself, they cast the glamour on her (so B-F, G b). She gives herself over to the chief gypsy, Johny Faa by name, without reserve of any description. Her lord, upon returning and finding her gone, sets out to recover her, and captures and hangs fifteen gypsies. (It is extremely likely that this version has lost several stanzas.)

Our lord, unnamed in A, is Lord Cassilis in B, C, F (so Burns, and Johnson’s Museum). Cassilis has become Cassle, Castle in E, G, Corsefield^[39] in D, Cashan in Irish I, Garrick^[40] in American K. The Gypsy Laddie is again Johnie, Jockie, Faa in B, D, E; but Gipsy Davy in C (where Lady Cassilis is twice called Jeanie Faw), and in American I a b; and seems to be called both Johnnie Faw and Gypsie Geordie in F. The lady gives the gypsies the good wheat bread B, E (beer and wine, Finlay); they give her (sweetmeats, C) ginger, nutmeg, or both, and she gives them the ring (rings) off her finger (fingers), B, C, E, G, I, (and Finlay).

B a has a full story from this point on. The gypsy asks the lady to go with him, and swears that her lord shall never come near her. The lady changes her silk mantle for a 63plaid, and is ready to travel the world over with the gypsy, B a 5, A 3, C 4, D 3, E 4, F 4, (B a 6 is spurious). They wander high and low till they come to an old barn, and by this time she is weary. The lady begins to find out what she has undertaken: last night she lay with her lord in a well-made bed, now she must lie in an old barn, B a 7, 8, A 4, C 6, D 7, F 5 (reeky kill E 8, on a straw bed H 7, in the ash-corner I 6). The gypsy bids her hold her peace, her lord shall never come near her. They wander high and low till they come to a wan water, and by this time she is weary. Oft has she ridden that wan water with her lord; now she must set in her white feet and wade, B a 11, C 5, D 5, 6, E 7, (and carry the gipsie laddie, B a 11, badly; follow, B b). The lord comes home, is told that his lady is gone off with the gypsy, and immediately sets out to bring her back (so all). He finds her at the wan water, B a 14; in Abbey Dale, drinking wi Gipsey Davy, C 10; near Strabogie, drinking wi Gypsie Geordie, F 10;^[41] by the riverside, J a 4; at the Misty Mount, K 5, 6. He asks her tenderly if she will go home, B a 15, E 15, F 12, he will shut her up so securely that no man shall come near, B a 15, E 15; he expostulates with her, more or less reproachfully, C 11, F 11, G 9, H 5, J 5. She will not go home; as she has brewed, so will she drink, B a 16, G 10; she cares not for houses or lands or babes (baby) G 10, H 6, J 6. But she swears to him that she is as free of the gypsies as when her mother bare her, B a 17, E 16.

Fifteen gypsies are hanged, or lose their lives, A 10, B 18, D 14; sixteen, all sons of one mother, C 12, 13; seven, F 13, G 11, (cf. I 1).^[42]

D 8–11 is ridiculously perverted in the interest of morals: compare B a 17, E 16. ‘I swear that my hand shall never go near thee,’ D 8, is transferred to the husband in I 5: ‘A hand I’ll neer lay on you’ (in the way of correction).

In G 4 the lady, in place of exchanging her silk mantle for a plaidie, pulls off her high-heeled shoes, of Spanish leather, and puts on Highland brogues. In I 7 gypsies take off her high-heeled shoes, and she puts on Lowland brogues. The high-heeled shoes, to be sure, are not adapted to following the Gypsy Laddie, but light may perhaps be derived from C 12, where the gypsies ‘drink her stockings and her shoon.’ In K these high-heeled shoes of Spanish leather are wrongly transferred to Lord Garrick in the copy as delivered, but have been restored to the lady.

It is not said (except in the spurious portions of E) that the lady was carried back by her husband, but this may perhaps be inferred from his hanging the gypsies. In D and K we are left uncertain as to her disposition, which is elsewhere, for the most part, to stick to the gypsy. J, a copy of very slight authority, makes the lord marry again within six months of his wife’s elopement.

The earliest edition of the ballad styles the gypsy Johny Faa, but gives no clew to the fair lady. Johnny Faa was a prominent and frequent name among the gypsies. Johnnë Faw’s right and title as lord and earl of Little Egypt were recognized by James V in a document under the Privy Seal, February 15, 1540, and we learn from this paper that, even before this date, letters had been issued to the king’s officers, enjoining them to assist Johnnë Faw “in execution of justice upon his company and folks, conform to the laws of Egypt, and in punishing of all them that rebels against him.” But in the next year, by an act of the Lords of Council, June 6, Egyptians are ordered to quit the realm within thirty days on pain of death, notwithstanding any other letters or privileges granted them by the king, his grace having discharged the same. The gypsies were expelled from Scotland by act of Parliament in 1609. Johnnë, alias Willie, Faa, with three others of the name, remaining notwithstanding, were sentenced to be hanged, 1611, July 31. In 1615, January 25, a man was delated for harboring of Egyptians, 64“specially of Johnnë Fall, a notorious Egyptian and chieftain of that unhappy sort of people.” In 1616, July 24, Johnnë Faa, Egyptian, his son, and two others were condemned to be hanged for contemptuous repairing to the country and abiding therein. Finally, in 1624, January 24, Captain Johnnë Faa and seven others were sentenced to be hanged for the same offence, and on the following 29th Helen Faa, relict of the late Captain Johnnë Faa, with ten other women, was sentenced to be drowned, but execution was stayed. Eight men were executed, but the rest, “being either children and of less-age and women with child or giving suck to children,” were, after imprisonment, banished the country under pain of death, to be inflicted without further process should they be found within the kingdom after a day fixed.^[43] The execution of the notorious Egyptian and chieftain Johnny Faa must have made a considerable impression, and it is presumable that this ballad may have arisen not long after. Whether this were so or not, Johnny Faa acquired popular fame, and became a personage to whom any adventure might plausibly be imputed. It is said that he has even been foisted into ‘The Douglas Tragedy’ (‘Earl Brand’), and Scott had a copy of ‘Captain Car’ in which, as in F, G, of that ballad, the scene was transferred to Ayrshire, and the incendiary was called Johnny Faa.^[44]

Toward the end of the last century we begin to hear that the people in Ayrshire make the wife of the Earl of Cassilis the heroine of the ballad. This name, under the instruction of Burns, was adopted into the copy in Johnson’s Museum (which, as to the rest, is Ramsay’s), and in the index to the second volume of the Museum, 1788, we read, “neighboring tradition strongly vouches for the truth of this story.” After this we get the tradition in full, of course with considerable variety in the details, and sometimes with criticism, sometimes without.^[45]

The main points in the traditional story are that John, sixth earl of Cassilis, married, for his first wife, Lady Jean Hamilton, whose affections were preëngaged to one Sir John Faa, of Dunbar. Several years after, when Lady Cassilis had become the mother of two children,^[46] Sir John Faa took the opportunity of the earl’s absence from home (while Lord Cassilis was attending the Westminster Assembly, say some) to present himself at the castle, accompanied by a band of gypsies and himself disguised as a gypsy, and induced his old love to elope with him. But the earl returned in the nick of time, went in pursuit, captured the whole party, or all but one,^[47] who is supposed to tell the story, and hanged them, on the dule tree, “a most umbrageous plane, which yet flourishes upon a mound in front of the castle gate.” The fugitive wife was banished from board and bed, and confined for life in a tower at Maybole, built for the purpose. “Eight heads carved in stone below one of the turrets are said to be the effigies of so many of the gypsies.”^[48] The ford by which the lady and her lover crossed the River Doon is still called The Gypsies’ Steps.

65Several accounts put the abduction at the time when the Earl of Cassilis was attending the Assembly of Divines at Westminster. This was in September, 1643. It is now known that Lady Cassilis died in December, 1642. What is much more important, it is known from two letters written by the earl immediately after her death that nothing could have occurred of a nature to alienate his affection, for in the one he speaks of her as a “dear friend” and “beloved yoke-fellow,” and in the other as his “dear bed-fellow.”^[49]

“Seldom, when stripped of extraneous matter, has tradition been better supported than it has been in the case of Johnie Faa and the Countess of Cassilis:” Maidment, Scotish Ballads, 1868, II, 184. In a sense not intended, this is quite true; most of the traditions which have grown out of ballads have as slight a foundation as this. The connection of the ballad with the Cassilis family (as Mr Macmath has suggested to me) may possibly have arisen from the first line of some copy reading, ‘The gypsies came to the castle-gate.’ As F 1³ has perverted Earl of Cassilis to Earl of Castle, so Castle may have been corrupted into Cassilis.^[50]

Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 28, translates freely eight stanzas from Aytoun.

Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, vol. iv, 1740. Here from the London edition of 1763, p. 427.

a. The Edinburgh Magazine and Literary Miscellany, being a new series of the Scots Magazine (vol. lxxx of the entire work), November, 1817, p. 309, communicated by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, as taken down from the recitation of a peasant in Galloway. b. A fragment recited by Miss Fanny Walker, of Mount Pleasant, near Newburgh-on-Tay, as communicated by Mr Alexander Laing, 1873.

Motherwell’s MS., p. 381, from the recitation of Agnes Lyle, Kilbarchan, 27 July, 1825.

Kinloch MSS, V, 331, in the handwriting of John Hill Burton; from a reciter who came from the vicinity of Craigievar.

The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, by John Mactaggart, 1824, p. 284.

The Songs of England and Scotland [by P. Cunningham], London, 1835, II, 346, taken down, as current in the north of England, from the recitation of John Martin, the painter.

a. A broadside in the Roxburghe Ballads, III, 685, entered in the catalogue, doubtfully, as of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1720. b. A recent stall-copy, Catnach, 2 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials.

Shropshire Lolk-Lore, edited by Charlotte Sophia Burne, p. 550, as sung May 23, 1885, by gypsy children.

From Miss Margaret Reburn, “as sung in County Meath, Ireland, about 1860.”

a. Written down by Newton Pepoun, as learned from a boy with whom he went to school in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, about 1845. b. From the singing of Mrs Farmer, born in Maine, as learned by her daughter, about 1840.

a. From Mrs Helena Titus Brown of New York. b. From Miss Emma A. Clinch of New York. Derived, 1820, or a little later, a directly, b indirectly, from the singing of Miss Phœbe Wood, Huntington, Long Island, and perhaps learned from English soldiers there stationed during the Revolutionary war.

A.

Variations of Finlay, II, 39 ff.

Inserted after 2:

4². Wi my.

4³. But this.

6³. For I vow and I swear, by the fan in my hand.

7². And wanting.

9². Otherwise: The brown was neer sae ready.

10³. but ane.

10⁴. For a.

Herd has in 10^3,4 but ane, For. Pinkerton follows Herd, with changes of his own in 1, 10, and the omission of 7. The copy in Johnson’s Museum is Herd’s, with changes: in 10^3,4, are a’ put down for ane, The Earl of Cassilis’ lady. Ritson follows Ramsay, except that in 6² he has And I’ll, found in Herd; perhaps also in some edition of the Tea-Table Miscellany.

B. a.

“Some lines have been omitted on account of their indelicacy:” p. 308 b. The reference is no doubt to a stanza corresponding to A 7, or perhaps to a passage like 5–7.

b.

Only 1, 2, 5, 10–13, are preserved.

1¹. gipsies cam to oor ha-door.

1⁴. doon stairs cam oor gay leddie.

2². afore.

2³. An whan they.

2⁴. cuist the glamour.

5¹. my gay mantle.

5². me my.

5³. For I maun leave my guid lord at hame.

5⁴. An follow the.

10¹. They travelld east, they travelld wast.

10². They travelld.

10³. to the.

10⁴. By that time she.

11¹. I crost this.

11². An my guid man.

11³. Noo I maun put.

11⁴. An follow.

12¹. Whan her guid lord cam hame at nicht.

12². He spierd for his gay.

12³. The tane she cried an the ither replied.

12⁴. She’s aff.

13¹. the brown, he said.

13². The black neer rides.

13³. For I.

13⁴. Till I’ve brought back.

C.

4¹. Originally plaid was written for cloak; evidently by accidental anticipation.

5³. fit altered perhaps from fut; printed fit.

Motherwell has made several verbal changes in printing, and has inserted three stanzas to fill out the ballad.

After 3,

After 7,

E.

12, 13. After 9 of A, says Finlay, some copies insert:

See also G 7.

G. a.

4³. br oges.

b.

In stanzas of eight lines.

1¹. There were.

2². With her.

2³. fair wanting.

2⁴. They cast the glamer over her.

3². Which was of the belinger.

3⁴. ’Twas wanting.

4². They were.

4³. brogues.

4⁴. laddy, and always.

6¹. me wanting.

6³. That I may go and seek.

6⁴. Who’s.

7⁴. Following a.

8¹. all the summer.

8³. espied.

8⁴. and wet.

9¹. O why.

9³. your own.

10¹. lands.

10³. will I remain.

11¹. There were.

11². They were.

11³. all in.

H.

2¹. the lawyer did.

J. b.

Order: 1, 5, 6, 2, 3.

5 (as 2).

5^1,2. Will you.

5³. Will you forsake your own wedded lord.

6 (as 3).

6². And I’ll.

6³. I will forsake my own wedded lord.

6⁴. And go with the gypsy Davy.

7. Wanting.

b 6. I lay last night. The rest wanting.

b 8. Puts the question whether she will go back.

b 9. I lay last night. The rest wanting.

K. a.

The order as delivered was 3, 1, 2, etc., and the high-heeled shoes were attributed to Lord Garrick. Him, his, he in 2 have been changed to her, her, she. But a further change should be made for sense, in 1, 2: the lady should take off her high-heeled shoes and put on her low-heeled shoes; see G 4, I 8.

Burden given also:

b. Burden:

Or,

Order as in a.

1¹. fetch me.

1³. And take away.

2¹. fetched him down his.

2³. And they took away his.

3¹. got home.

3⁴. with the.

4¹. Go fetch me out.

4³. And we’ll away to.

4⁴. To for And.

5¹. They fetched him out.

5⁴. To overtake my.

6³. lady bright.

7³. you won’t.

201 BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY

a. Sharpe’s Ballad Book, 1823, p. 62. b. Lyle’s Ancient Ballads and Songs, 1827, p. 160, “collated from the singing of two aged persons, one of them a native of Perthshire.” c. Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1833, I, 45, two stanzas.

A squib on the birth of the Chevalier St George, beginning

shows that this little ballad, or song, was very well known in the last years of the seventeenth century.^[51] The first stanza was made by Ramsay the beginning of a song of his own, and stands thus in Ramsay’s Poems, Edinburgh, 1721, p. 80:^[52]

Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, III, 60, gives, as recited to him by Sir Walter Scott, four stanzas which are simply a with ‘Lyndoch brae’ substituted in the third for Sharpe’s ‘Stronach haugh.’ ‘Dranoch haugh,’ nearly as in b, is, as will presently appear, the right reading. Sharpe’s third stanza, with the absurd variation of royal kin, occurs in a letter of his of the date November 25, 1811 (Letters, ed. Allardyce, I, 504), and is printed in the Musical Museum, IV, *203, ed. 1853.

In the course of a series of letters concerning the ballad in The Scotsman (newspaper), August 30 to September 8, 1886, several verses are cited with trivial variations from the texts here given.

‘Bessy Bell’ was made into this nursery-song in England (Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes of England, 1874, p. 246, No 484):