The Stationers' Registers, 22 July, 1564 – 22 July, 1565, Arber, I, 260, have an entry of a fee from Owyn Rogers for license to print "a ballett intituled The Blende Harper, etc."; and again, the following year, Arber, I, 294, of a fee from Lucas Haryson for license to print "a ballet intituled The Blynde Harpers, with the Answere." Nothing further is known of this ballet.
Boyd, the translator of Dante, had a recollection of a ballad of a Scotch minstrel who stole a horse from one of the Henries of England: Ritson, Scotish Song, I, xxxvi, note 25, 1794.
Printed in Scott's Minstrelsy, 1802 (A c), and the next year in the Musical Museum (A b), as communicated by Burns. Burns's copy differs very slightly from A a, however he came by it. Scott had access to the Glenriddell collection, and his ballad (of which he gives no account) was made by changing A a to his taste, substituting one stanza of his own in place of 18, and the last two of B, with alterations, for the last of A a. To reduce improbabilities, Scott put the Lord Warden for King Henry.
C was pointed out to me, and transcribed from the short-lived periodical in which it was printed, by Mr. James Barclay Murdoch, to whom I have been from the beginning in debted for the most essential help.
Of D Mr. Macmath writes: This version was copied by me in facsimile from the original manuscript in the handwriting of the late Rev. George Murray, of Troquhain, minister of Balmaclellan, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, and was in possession of his son, the Rev. George Murray, to whose kindness I was indebted for the loan of it. The late Mr. Murray took down the ballad from the singing of Sarah Rae, a poor weak-minded woman of his parish. Sarah Rae was the last person known to Mr. Murray and he was a keen observer of such matters to use the distaff. The present Mr. George Murray wrote to me on 12th January, 1883: "I may add that I have heard her sing the ballad myself, to a very simple but particularly plaintive lilt more like a rapid chant than an ordinary song which rings in my ear yet, although I only heard it once, when a lad."[foot-note]
A-C. A harper of Lochmaben (blind, A, B) who means to steal the Wanton Brown, a horse of King Henry's, consults with his wife before setting about the business, and gets a few valuable hints; among them, to leave his mare's foal at home. He goes up to England, and has the good luck, so common in ballads, of finding King Henry at his gate. The king wants to hear some of his harping, and, as the harper makes a difficulty about the stabling of his mare, orders the beast to be put into his own stable. The harper harps all his hearers asleep; then makes his way softly to the stable, slips a halter over the Wanton's nose and ties him to the mare's tail, and turns the mare out. She goes straight to Lochmaben, to her foal, neighs at the harper's house, and is let in by the servant-lass, who exclaims at the braw foal that the mare has got. In the morning they find in England that both the Wanton Brown and the mare have been stolen. The harper breaks out into 'allaces:' he has lost a foal in Scotland and had his mare stolen in England! The king quiets him with a promise of a better mare and pay for his foal to boot.
In D, E, the harper steals the horse on a wager, which, however, is passed over lightly in D. The wager in B is with two knights of Stirling, five ploughs of land with one and five thousand pounds with the other, and "John" has to go all the way to London to win it. The knights pay their loss and then restore the Wanton Brown to Henry! so great an improvement upon the dealings of the Scots with English horseflesh as to compel one to assign this particular version of the story to the nineteenth, if not the twentieth, century.[foot-note]
The twelve armed men in armor bright that guard the stable night and day in E 23 remind us of popular tales; as of the Grimms' 'Master Thief.'
A b is loosely translated by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 16, p. 58.
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