The Balladists

Were baith held on ae day,'

The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace them to the thirteenth century Tale of the Ash, by Marie of France. The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Skiæn Annie' of Danish folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the bridal bed for her supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint. The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart:

'"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe,
Lie still as lang 's ye may;
For your father rides on high horseback,
And cares na for us twae."'

And again,

'"Gin my seven sons were seven young rats,
Runnin' upon the castle wa';
And I were a grey cat mysel',
Soon should I worry ane and a'."'

Wide, surely, is the gulf between the Original Woman of old romance and the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doubt, is for the better; and yet is it altogether for the better?

According to all modern canons, the conduct of these too-tardy bridegrooms was brutal beyond words; and as for the heroines of the Romantic Ballad, Mother Grundy, had she the handling of them, would use them worse than ever did moody brother or crafty stepmother. But the balladists and ballad characters had their own gauges of conduct. Their morals were not other or better than the morals of their age. They strained out the gnats and swallowed the camels of the law as given to Moses; perhaps if they could look into modern society and the modern novel they would charge the same against our own times and literature. If they broke, as they were too ready to do, the Sixth Commandment, or the Seventh, they made no attempt to glose the sin; they dealt not in innuendo or double entendre. Beside the page of modern realism, the ballad page is clean and wholesome. Human passion unrestrained there may be; but no sickly or vicious sentiment. There is a punctilious sense of honour; and if it is sometimes the letter rather than the spirit of vow or promise that is kept, the knights and ladies in the ballads are no worse than are the Pharisees of our day; and they are always ready to pay, and generally do pay, the utmost penalty.

Thus, in that most powerful and tragic ballad, Clerk Saunders, May Margaret ties a napkin about her eyes that she 'may swear, and keep her aith,' to her 'seven bauld brothers,' that she had not seen her lover 'since late yestreen'; she carries him across the threshold of her bower, that she may be able to say that his foot had never been there. The story of the sleeping twain – the excuses for their sin; the reason why ruth should turn aside vengeance – is told, in staccato sentences, by the brothers as they stand by the bedside of their 'ae sister,' with 'torches burning bright':

'Out and spake the first o' them,
"I wot that they are lovers dear";
And out and spake the second o' them,
"They 've been in love this mony a year";

And out and spake the third o' them,
"His father had nae mair than he."'

And so until the seventh – the Rashleigh of the band – who spake no word, but let his 'bright brown brand' speak for him. What follows rises to the extreme height of the balladist's art; literature might be challenged for anything surpassing it in simplicity and power, in the mingling of horror and pathos:

'Clerk Saunders he started and Margaret she turned,
Into his arms as asleep she lay;
And sad and silent was the night
That was atween the twae.

And they lay still and sleepéd sound,
Until the day began to daw,
And softly unto him she said,
"It 's time, true love, you were awa'."

But he lay still and sleepéd sound,
Albeit the sun began to sheen;
She looked atween her and the wa',
And dull and drumlie were his een.'

In the majority of ballads of the Clerk Saunders class there is some base agent who betrays trust and brings death upon the lovers. 'Fause Foodrage' takes many forms in these ancient tales without changing type. He is the slayer of 'Lily Flower' in Jellon Graeme; and the boy whom he has preserved and brought up sends the arrow singing to his guilty heart. Lammiken, the 'bloodthirsty mason,' who must have a life for his wage, is another enemy within the house who finds his way through 'steekit yetts'; and he is assisted by the 'fause nourice.' In other ballads it is the 'kitchen-boy,' the 'little foot-page,' the 'churlish carle,' or the bower-woman who plays the spy and tale-bearer. In Glenkindie, 'Gib, his man,' is the vile betrayer of the noble harper and his lady. Sometimes, as in Gude Wallace, Earl Richard, and Sir James the Rose, it is the 'light leman' who plays traitor. But she quickly repents, and meets her fate in the fire or at the sword's point, in 'Clyde Water' or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' In Gil Morice, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie, the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord Barnard's lady – to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir nae bauld baron's leave.'

'The lady stampéd wi' her foot
And winkéd wi' her e'e;
But for a' that she could say or do
Forbidden he wadna be.'

It is the angry and jealous baron who, in woman guise, meets and slays the youth who is waiting in gude greenwood, and brings back the bloody head to the mother.

Other fine ballads in which mother and son carry on tragic colloquy are Lord Randal and Edward. These versions of a story of treachery and blood, conveyed in the dark hints of a strange dialogue, have received many touches from later hands; but the germ comes down from the age of tradition. It has even been noted that, with the curious tenacity with which the ballad memory often clings to a detail while forgetting or mislaying essential fact, the food with which, in the version Burns recovered for Johnson's Museum, Lord Randal is poisoned – 'eels boiled in broo' – is identical with that given to his prototype in the folk-ballads of Italy and other countries. The structure of this ballad, like the beautiful old air to which it is sung, bears marks of antiquity, and its wide diffusion militates against Scott's not very convincing suggestion that it refers to the alleged poisoning of the Regent Randolph. But it lacks the terrible and dramatic intensity of Son Davie, better known in the version transmitted, under the name of Edward, by Lord Hailes to Bishop Percy's Reliques. Here it is the murderer, and not the victim, who answers; and it is the questioning mother, and not the absent false love, with whom the curse is left as a legacy. Despair had never a more piercing utterance than this:

'"And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife?
Edward, Edward!
And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife
When ye gang over the sea, O?"
"The warld 's room, let them beg through life,
Mither, Mither!
The warld 's room, let them beg through life,
For them never mair will I see, O!"
"And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear?
Edward, Edward!
And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear,
My dear son, now tell me, O?"
"The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,
Mither, Mither!
The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,
Sic counsels ye gae me, O!"'

Although Yarrow be the favoured haunt on Scottish soil – may we not also say on the whole round of earth? – of the Romantic Ballad, and has coloured them, and taken colour from them, for all time, yet there are other streams and vales that only come short of being its rivals. 'Leader Haughs,' for instance, which the harp of Nicol Burne, the 'Last Minstrel' who wandered and sang in the Borderland, has linked indissolubly with Yarrow braes, know of ballad strains well-nigh as sweet as those of the neighbour water. But cheerfulness rather than sadness is their prevailing note. Auld Maitland, the lay which James Hogg's mother repeated to Scott, has its scene on Leader side, and at the 'darksome town' – a misnomer in these days – of Lauder. Long before the time of that tough champion, St. Cuthbert and True Thomas had wandered and dreamed and sang by Leader. It was a Lord Lauderdale who rode to Traquair to court, after the older fashion, Katherine Janferie:

'He toldna her father, he toldna her mither,
He toldna ane o' her kin;
But he whispered the bonnie may hersel',
And has her favour won.'

He it was, according to the old ballad, who rode to the bridal at the eleventh hour, with four and twenty Leader lads behind him:

'"I comena here to fight," he said,
"I comena here to play;
But to lead a dance wi' the bonnie bride,
And mount and go my way"';

and it was Lord Lochinvar (although 'he who told the story later' has taught us so differently) who played the inglorious part of the deserted bridegroom. Scott himself drank in the passion for Border romance and chivalry on the braes of Sandyknowe, between Leader and Eden waters, not far from Smailholm and Dryburgh, and Huntly Bank and Mellerstain, and Rhymer's Tower and the Broom o' the Cowdenknowes. According to Mr. Ford, the ballad which takes its name from this last-mentioned spot is traditionally assigned to a Mellerstain maid named Crosbie, whose words were set to music by no less famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and 'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ballad romance:

'The hills were high on ilka side,
And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,
And aye as she sang her voice it rang
Out ower the head o' yon hill.

There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,
Merrily riding by,
And ane o' them rade out o' the way
To the bucht to the bonnie may.'