Читать книгу The Ancient English Poetry - Various Authors - Страница 10

'Some sang ring-sangs, dancis, ledis, roundis,

With vocis schil, quhil all the dale resounds,

Quhareto they walk into their karoling,

For amourous layis dois all the rochis ring:

Ane sang 'The schip salis over the salt fame,

Will bring thir merchandis and my lemane hame.'

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):—

'Then bocht he wool, and wyselie couth it wey;

And efter that sone saylit he the sey.'"31

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 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 Spence32 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 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 sits in Dumferling toune,

Drinking the blude-reid wine:

O quhar will I get guid sailòr

To sail this schip of mine?

Up and spak an eldern knicht,

Sat at the kings richt kne:

Sir Patrick Spence is the best sailòr,

That sails upon the se."

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

"The first line that Sir Patrick red,

A loud lauch lauched he;

The next line that Sir Patrick red,

The teir blinded his ee."

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

"Stately stept he east the wa',

And stately stept he west,

Full seventy years he now had seen

Wi' scarce seven years of rest.

He liv'd when Britons breach of faith

Wrought Scotland mickle wae:

And ay his sword tauld to their cost,

He was their deadlye fae."

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

"Have owre, have owre to Aberdour,

It's fiftie fadom deip,

And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence,

Wi' the Scots lords at his feit."

from the feeble conclusion of Hardyknute:—

"'As fast I've sped owre Scotlands faes,'—

There ceas'd his brag of weir,

Sair sham'd to mind ought but his dame,

And maiden fairly fair.

Black fear he felt, but what to fear

He wist nae yet; wi' dread

Sai shook his body, sair his limbs,

And a' the warrior fled."

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 (1765), and that Chambers's remarks fall to the ground because they are founded on a gross blunder.34