Ballads of Scottish Tradition and Romance | Page 4

history and tradition, that it would have been rash (to say the least) for a Southron to have ventured across the border unaided. It is therefore more than a pleasure to record my thanks to my friend Mr. A. Francis Steuart of Edinburgh, to whom I have submitted the proofs of these ballads. His extensive and peculiar knowledge of Scottish history and genealogy has been of the greatest service throughout.
I must also thank Mr. C. G. Tennant for assistance with the map given as frontispiece; and my unknown friend, Messrs. Constable's reader, has supplied valuable help in detail.
My self-imposed scheme of classification by subject-matter becomes no easier as the end of my task approaches. The Fourth Series will consist mainly of ballads of Robin Hood and other outlaws, including a few pirates. The projected class of 'Sea Ballads' has thus been split; _Sir Patrick Spence_, for example, appears in this volume. A few ballads defy classification, and will have to appear, if at all, in a miscellaneous section.
The labour of reducing to modern spelling several ballads from the seventeenth-century orthography of the Percy Folio is compensated, I hope, by the quaint and spirited result. These lively ballads are now presented for the first time in this popular form.
In _The Jolly Juggler_, given in the Appendix, I claim to have discovered a new ballad, which has not yet been treated as such, though I make bold to think Professor Child would have included it in his collection had he known of it. I trust that the publicity thus given to it will attract the attention of experts more competent than myself to annotate and illustrate it as it deserves.
F. S.
BALLADS IN THE THIRD SERIES
I have hesitated to use the term 'historical' in choosing a general title for the ballads in this volume, although, if the word can be applied to any popular ballads, it would be applied with most justification to a large number of these ballads of Scottish and Border tradition. 'Some ballads are historical, or at least are founded on actual occurrences. In such cases, we have a manifest point of departure for our chronological investigation. The ballad is likely to have sprung up shortly after the event, and to represent the common rumo[u]r of the time. Accuracy is not to be expected, and indeed too great historical fidelity in detail is rather a ground of suspicion than a certificate of the genuinely popular character of the piece.... Two cautionary observations are necessary. Since history repeats itself, the possibility and even the probability must be entertained that every now and then a ballad which had been in circulation for some time was adapted to the circumstances of a recent occurrence, and has come down to us only in such an adaptation. It is also far from improbable that many ballads which appear to have no definite localization or historical antecedents may be founded on fact, since one of the marked tendencies of popular narrative poetry is to alter or eliminate specific names of persons and places in the course of oral tradition.'[1]
[Footnote 1: Introduction (p. xvi) to _English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited from the Collection of Francis James Child, by Helen Child Sargent and George Lyman Kittredge_, 1905. This admirable condensation of Child's five volumes, issued since my Second Series, is enhanced by Professor Kittredge's _Introduction_, the best possible substitute for the gap left in the larger book by the death of Child before the completion of his task.]
Warned by these wise words, we may, perhaps, select the following ballads from the present volume as 'historical, or at least founded on actual occurrences.'
(i) This section, which we may call 'Historical,' includes _The Hunting of the Cheviot_, _The Battle of Otterburn_, _Mary Hamilton_, _The Laird o' Logie_, _Captain Car_, _Flodden Field_, _The Fire of Frendraught_, _Bessy Bell and Mary Gray_, _Jamie Douglas_, _Earl Bothwell_, _Durham Field_, _The Battle of Harlaw_, and _Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight_. Probably we should add _The Death of Parcy Reed_; possibly _Geordie_ and _The Gipsy Laddie_. More doubtful still is _Sir Patrick Spence_; and _The Baron of Brackley_ confuses two historical events.
(ii) From the above section I have eliminated those which may be separately classified as 'Border Ballads.' _Sir Hugh in the Grime's Downfall_ seems to have some historical foundation, but _Bewick and Grahame_ has none. A sub-section of 'Armstrong Ballads' forms a good quartet; _Johnie Armstrong_, _Kinmont Willie_, _Dick o' the Cow_, and _John o' the Side_.
(iii) In the purely 'Romantic' class we may place _The Braes of Yarrow_, _The Twa Brothers_, _The Outlyer Bold_, _Clyde's Water_, _Katharine Jaffray_, _Lizie Lindsay_, _The Heir of Linne_, and _The Laird of Knottington_.
(iv) There remain a lyrical ballad, _The Gardener_; a song, _Waly, waly, gin love be bonny_; and the nondescript _Whummil Bore_. The Appendix contains a