Three stanzas of this ballad were printed in 1812 (C). I followed in 1825, a full copy, which would have been a very good one had it been given as taken down, and not restored "to something like poetical propriety."[foot-note] The editor of the " old song " observes that it was one of the most popular in the north of England for a long period after the event which it records, and a glance at what is here brought together will show that the ballad was at least equally popular in Scotland. I is repeated in Richardson's Borderer's Table-Book, VI, 291, and in Harland and Wilkinson's Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, 1882, p. 265. Mr. J.H. Dixon, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, XI, 389, says that the ballad "originally appeared in the Town and Country Magazine."
'Lord Derwentwater's Goodnight,' Hogg's Jacobite Relics, II, 30, 268, was both communicated and composed by Robert Surtees. 'Derwentwater,' Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, 1810, p. 127, is from the pen of Allan Cunningham. It is repeated in Hogg's Jacobite Relics, 1821, II, 28, and in Cunningham's Songs of Scotland, 1825, III, 192, etc.; also in Kinloch Manuscripts, V, 413, with two lines to fill out an eighth stanza. (Translated by Loève-Veimars, p. 375.) 'Young Ratcliffe,' Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 400, is another ballad of the same class.
James Ratcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, being suspected or known to be engaged in concerting a rising in the north of England in behalf of the Pretender, a warrant was issued by the Secretary of State for his apprehension, towards the end of September, 1715. Hereupon he took arms, and he was one of the fifteen hundred English and Scots who were forced to an inglorious surrender at Preston, November 14. The more distinguished prisoners were conveyed to London, where they had a boisterous reception from the mob. Derwentwater was committed to the Tower, December 9; was impeached of high treason, and pleaded guilty, in January; was sentenced to death, February 9, at Westminster Hall, and was executed February 24 (1716). In a paper which he read from the scaffold he stated that he had regarded his plea of guilty as a formality consequent upon his "having submitted to mercy," and declared that he had never had "any other but King James the Third for his rightful and lawful sovereign."
Derwentwater had not attained the age of twenty-seven at the time of his death. We may believe that the character given of him by the renegade Patten was not overcharged: "The sweetness of his temper and disposition, in which he had few equals, had so secured him the affection of all his tenants, neighbors, and dependants that multitudes would have lived and died with him. The truth is, he was a man formed by nature to be generally beloved, for he was of so universal a beneficence that he seemed to live for others. As he lived among his own people, there he spent his estate, and continually did offices of kind ness and good neighborhood to everybody, as opportunity offered. He kept a house of generous hospitality and noble entertainment, which few in that country do, and none come up to. He was very charitable to poor and distressed families on all occasions, whether known to him or not, and whether Papist or Protestant. His fate will be sensibly felt by a great many who had no kindness for the cause he died in."
The king's letter, which, in the ballad, summons Derwentwater to London (to answer for his head, D 3), suggests the Secretary of State's warrant of arrest, which his lordship, unhappily for himself, evaded. But very probably the ballad-maker supposed Derwentwater to have gone home after his less than six weeks in arms. As he is setting forth to obey the mandate, his wife calls to him from child-bed to make his will. This business does not delay him long: one third of his estate is to be his wife's, and the rest to go to his children. (He had a son not two years old at the date of his execution, and a daughter who must have been born, at the earliest, not much before the rising. His very large estates first passed to the crown, and were afterwards bestowed on Greenwich hospital.) Bad omens attend his departure. As he mounts his horse, his ring drops from his finger, or breaks, and his nose begins to bleed, B 5, D 6, E 8, F 9, H 7, I 10; presently his horse stumbles, A 8, E 9, F 10, I 11; it begins to rain, H 8. When he comes to London, to Westminster Hall, B 6, F 11, to Whitehall, D 7, rides up Westminster Street, in sight of the White Hall, I 12, the lords and knights, the lords and ladies, a mob, H 9, call him "traitor." How can that be, he answers, with surprise or indignation, except for keeping five hundred men (five thousand, seven thousand, eight score), to fight for King Jamie? A 10, D 8, E 11, F 12, H 10, I 13. A man with an ax claims his life, which he ungrudgingly resigns, B 8, D 9, 10, E 12, 13, F 13, 14, H 11, 12, I 14, 15, directing that a good sum of money which he has in his pockets shall be given to the poor, A 12, D 11, E 14, F 15, 1 17.
In A 2, D 12, Derwentwater seems to be taken for a Scot.
Ellis, Brand's Antiquities, 1813, II, 261, note, remarks that he had heard in Northumberland that when the Earl of Derwentwater was beheaded, the stream (the Divelswater) that runs past his seat at Dilston Hall flowed with blood.[foot-note]
The Northern Lights (perhaps the red-colored ones) were peculiarly vivid on the night of February 16, 1716, and were long called Lord Derwentwater's Lights in the north of England, where, it is said, many of the people know (or knew) them by no other name. It was even a popular belief that the aurora borealis was first seen on that night: Notes and Queries, Third Series, IX, 154, 268; Gibson, Dilston Hall, p. 111.
The omen of nose-bleed occurs in the ballad of 'The Mother's Malison,' No 216, C; both nose-bleed and horse-stumbling, as omens, in Webster's Dutchess of Malfi, Act II, Scene 2, Dyce, 1859, p. 70, cited, with other cases, in Ellis's ed. of Brand's Antiquities, II, 497.
'Brig. Macintosh's Farewell to the Highlands,' or 'Macintosh was a Soldier Brave,' is one half a Derwentwater ballad: see Harland's Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, 1865, p. 75, Ritson's Northumberland Garland, p. 85, Hogg's Jacobite Relics, II, 102, etc.
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