Читать книгу The Ancient English Poetry - Various Authors - Страница 8

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 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 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 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;" 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.