A was first printed by Hearne in Guilielmi Neubrigensis Historia, I, lxxxii ff, 1719; then by Percy, Reliques, I, 1, 1765, with a judicious preface. The whole manuscript, in which this piece is No 8, was edited by Thomas Wright for the Roxburghe Club in 1860: Songs and Ballads, with other short Poems, chiefly of the Reign of Philip and Mary.
B may probably be found in any of the larger sets of broadsides. It is included in such collections as Dryden's Miscellanies, II, 238, 1702; Pills to purge Melancholy, IV, 289, 1719; Old Ballads, I, 111, 1723; Percy's Reliques, I, 235, 1765. b has many readings of a, the copy in the Percy Manuscript There is a second Bagford copy, II, No 37, printed like e, for W. Onley. f, the Scottish copy, is probably of a date near 1700. Like the edition printed at Glasgow, 1747, it is, in the language of Percy, "remarkable for the wilful corruptions made in all the passages which concern the two nations": Folio Manuscript, Hales and Furnivall, II, 1, note, and Reliques, 1765, I, 234. The Scots are made fifteen hundred, the English twenty, in 6, 13, 53, 54; the speeches of King James and King Henry are interchanged in 58, 60; 62, 63, are dropped.
The 'Hunttis of Chevet' is among the "sangis of natural music of the antiquite" mentioned as sung by the "shepherds" in The Complaynt of Scotland, a book assigned to 1549. It was an old and a popular song at the middle of the sixteenth century. The copy in the Ashmolean manuscript is subscribed Expliceth, quod Rychard Sheale, upon which ground Sheale has been held to be the author,[foot-note] and not as Percy and Ritson assumed, simply the transcriber, of the ballad. Sheale describes himself as a minstrel living at Tarnworth, whose business was to sing and talk, or to chant ballads and tell stories. He was the author of four pieces of verse in the same manuscript, one of which is of the date 1559 (No 56). This and another piece (No 46), in which he tells how he was robbed of above three score pound, give a sufficient idea of his dialect and style and a measure of his ability. This ballad was of course part of his stock as minstrel; the supposition that he was the author is preposterous in the extreme.
The song "which is commonly sung of the Hunting of Chiviot," says Hume of Godscroft, "seemeth indeed poeticall and a meer fiction, perhaps to stirre up vertue; yet a fiction whereof there is no mention, neither in the Scottish nor English chronicle": p. 104. To this the general replication may be made that the ballad can scarcely be a deliberate fiction. The singer is not a critical historian, but he supposes himself to be dealing with facts; he may be partial to his countrymen, but he has no doubt that he is treating of a real event; and the singer in this particular case thought he was describing the battle of Otterburn, the Hunting of the Cheviot being indifferently so called: st. 65. The agreement to meet, in A, st. 9, corresponds with the plight in Otterburn, st. 16; 174 corresponds to Otterburn 124, 304; 47, 56, 57, are the same as Otterburn 58, 61, 67; 31, 32, 66, are variants of Otterburn 51, 52, 68; Douglas's summons to Percy to yield, Percy's refusal, and Douglas's death, 331, 35 372, may be a variation of Otterburn 513, 55-56; Sir John of Agarstone is slain with Percy in 52, and with Douglas in Otterburn 60; Sir Hugh Montgomery appears in both.
The differences in the story of the two ballads, though not trivial, are still not so material as to forbid us to hold that both may be founded upon the same occurrence, the Hunting of the Cheviot being of course the later version,[foot-note] and following in part its own tradition, though repeating some portions of the older ballad. According to this older ballad, Douglas invades Northumberland in an act of public war; according to the later, Percy takes the initiative, by hunting in the Scottish hills without the leave and in open defiance of Douglas, lieutenant of the Marches. Such trespasses,[foot-note] whether by the English or the Scots, were not less common, we may believe, than hostile incursions, and the one would as naturally as the other account for a bloody collision between the rival families of Percy and Douglas, to those who consulted "old men" instead of histories: cf. stanza 67. The older and the later ballad concur (and herein are in harmony with some chroniclers, though not with the best) as to Percy's slaying Douglas. In the older ballad Percy is taken prisoner, an incident which history must record, but which is somewhat insipid, for which reason we might expect tradition to improve the tale by assigning a like fate to both of the heroic antagonists.
The singer all but startles us with his historical lore when he informs us in 63 that King Harry the Fourth "did the battle of Hornbylldown" to requite the death of Percy; for though the occasion of Homildon was really another incursion on the part of the Scots, and the same Percy was in command of the English who in the ballad meets his death at Otterburn, nevertheless the battle of Homildon was actually done fourteen years subsequent to that of Otterburn and falls in the reign of Henry Fourth. The free play of fancy in assigning the cause of Homildon must be allowed to offset the servility to an accurate chronology; and such an extenuation is required only in this instance.[foot-note] Not only is the fourth Harry on the throne of England at the epoch of Otterburn, but Jamy is the Scottish king, although King James I was not crowned until 1424, the second year of Henry VI.
But here we may remember what is well said by Bishop Percy: "A succession of two or three Jameses, and the long detention of one of them, in England, would render the name familiar to the English, and dispose a poet in those rude times to give it to any Scottish king he happened to mention." The only important inference from the mention of a, King James is that the minstrel's date is not earlier than 1424.
The first, second, and fourth James were contemporary with a Henry during the whole of their reign, and the third during a part of his; with the others we need not concern ourselves. It has given satisfaction to some who wish to reconcile the data of the ballad with history to find in a Scottish historiographer a record of a fight between a Percy and a Douglas in 1435 or 1436, at the very end of the reign of James I. Henry Percy of Northumberland, says Hector Boece, made a raid into Scotland with four thousand men (it is not known whether of his own motion or by royal authority), and was encountered by nearly an equal force under William Douglas, Earl of Angus, and others, at Piperden, the victory falling to the Scots, with about the same slaughter on both sides: Scotorum Historia, 1526, fol. ccclxvi, back. This affair is mentioned by Bower, Scotichronicon, 1759, II, 500 f, but the leader of the English is not named,[foot-note] wherefore we may doubt whether it was a Percy. Very differently from Otterburn, this battle made but a slight impression on the chroniclers.
Sidney's words, though perhaps a hundred times requoted since they were cited by Addison, cannot be omitted here: "Certainly I must confesse my own barbarousnes. I never heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas that I found not my heart mooved more then with a trumpet; and yet is it sung but by some blinde crouder, with no rougher voyce then rude stile: which, being so evill apparrelled in the dust and cobwebbes of that uncivill age, what would it worke trymmed in the gorgeous eloquence of Pindar!"[foot-note] Sidney's commendation is fully justified by the quality of The Battle of Otterburn, but is merited in even a higher degree by The Hunting of the Cheviot, and for that reason (I know of no other) The Hunting of the Cheviot may be supposed to be the ballad he had in mind. The song of Percy and Douglas, then, was sung about the country by blind fiddlers about 1580 in a rude and ancient form, much older than the one that has come down to us; for that, if heard by Sidney, could not have seemed to him a song of an uncivil age, meaning the age of Percy and Douglas, two hundred years before his day. It would give no such impression even now, if chanted to an audience three hundred years later than Sidney.[foot-note]
B is a striking but by no means a solitary example of the impairment which an old ballad would suffer when written over for the broadside press. This very seriously enfeebled edition was in circulation throughout the seventeenth century, and much sung (says Chappell) despite its length.[foot-note] It is declared by Addison, in his appreciative and tasteful critique, Spectator, Nos 70, 74, 1711, to be the favorite ballad of the common people of England.[foot-note] Addison, who knew no other version, informs us that Ben Jonson used to say that he had rather have been the author of Chevy Chase than of all his works. The broadside copy may possibly have been the only one known to Jonson also, but in all probability the traditional ballad was still sung in the streets in Jonson's youth, if not later.
A 3. By these "shyars thre" is probably meant three districts in Northumberland which still go by the name of shires and are all in the neighborhood of Cheviot. These are Islandshire, being the district so named from Holy Island; Norehamshire, so called from the town and castle of Noreham or Norham; and Bamboroughshire, the ward or hundred belonging to Bamborough castle and town. Percy's Reliques, 1794, I, 5, note.
15. Chyviat Chays, well remarks Mr. Wheatley in his edition of the Reliques, I, 22, becomes Chevy Chace by the same process as that by which Teviotdale becomes Tividale, and there is no sufficient occasion for the suggestion that Chevy Chase is a corruption of chevauchee, raid, made by Dr. E.B. Nicholson, Notes and Queries, Third Series, XII, 124, and adopted by Burton, History of Scotland, II, 366.
38 f. "That beautiful line taking the dead man by the hand will put the reader in mind of Æneas's behavior towards Lausus, whom he himself had slain as he came to the rescue of his aged father" (Ingemuit miserans graviter, dextramque tetendit, etc., Æn. X, 823, etc.): Addison, in Spectator, No 70.
543,4, and B 503,4. Witherington's prowess was not without precedent, and, better still, was emulated in later days. Witness the battle of Ancrum Muir, 1545, or "Lilliard's Edge," as it is commonly called, from a woman that fought with great bravery there, to whose memory there was a monument erected on the field of battle with this inscription, as the traditional report goes:
The giant Burlong also fought wonderfully on his stumps after Sir Triamour had smitten his legs off by the knee: Utterson's Popular Poetry, I, 67, 1492-94, cited by Motherwell; Percy Manuscript, Hales and Furnivall, II, 131. Sir Gray steel fights on one leg: Eger and Grine, Percy Manuscript, I, 386 f, 1032, 1049. Nygosar, in Kyng Alisaunder, after both his armes have been cut off, bears two knights from their steeds "with his heved and with his cors": 2291-2312, Weber, I, 98 f. Still better, King Starkaðr, in the older Edda, fights after his head is off: Helgakviða Hundingsbana, ii, 27, Bugge, p. 196.[foot-note]
"Sed, etiam si ceciderit, de genu pugnat," Seneca, De Providentia 2, 4 (cited in The Gentleman's Magazine, 1794, I, 306), is explained by Seneca himself, Epis. lxvi, 47: "qui, succisis poplitibus, in genua se excepit nee arma dimisit." "In certaminibus gladiatorum hoc sæpe accidisse et statuse existentes docent, imprimis gladiator Borghesinus." Senecæ Op. Phil., Bouillet, II, 12.
611. "Lovely London," as Maginn remarks, Blackwood's Magazine, VII, 327, is like the Homeric Α ὐγεὰς ἐρατεινάς, Ἀρήνην ἐρατειήν, Il., ii, 532, 591, etc. Leeve, or lovely, London, is of frequent occurrence: see No 158, 11, No 168, appendix, 75, No 174, 351, etc. So "men of pleasant Tivydale," B 141, wrongly in B a, f, "pleasant men of Tiuydale."
643. Glendale is one of the six wards of Northumberland, and Homildon is in this ward, a mile northwest of Wooler.
652. That tear begane this spurn "is said to be a proverb, meaning that tear, or pull, brought about this kick": Skeat. Such a proverb is unlikely and should be vouched. There may be corruption, and perhaps we should read, as a lamentation, That ear (ever) begane this spurn! Or possibly, That tear is for That there, meaning simply there.
For genealogical illustrations may be consulted, with caution, Percy's Reliques, 1794, I, 34 ff, 282 ff. With respect to 53 1, Professor Skeat notes: "Loumle, Lumley; always hitherto printed louele (and explained Lovel), though the Manuscript cannot be so read, the word being written loule. 'My Lord Lumley' is mentioned in the ballad of Scotish Feilde, Percy Fol. Manuscript, I, 226, 1. 270; and again in the ballad of Bosworth Feilde, id., III, 245, 1. 250."
A is translated by Herder, II, 213; by R. v. Bismarck, Deutsches Museum, 1858, 1, 897; by Von Marges, p. 63; by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 84, No 13. Into Latin by Dr. William Maginn, in Black wood's Magazine, 1819-20, VI, 199, VII, 323.
B is translated by Bothe, p. 6; by Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 24, No 7; by Loève-Veimars, p. 55; (in part) by Cantù, p. 802. Into Latin by Henry Bold, Dryden's Miscellanies, ed. 1702, II, 239; by Rev. John Anketell, Poems, etc., Dublin, 1793, p. 264.
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