First published in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1808 (B b). Scott remarks that he "found it easy to collect a variety of copies, but very difficult indeed to select from them such a collated edition as might in any degree suit the taste of 'these more light and giddy-paced times.'" The copy principally used was B a. St. 12 of Scott, which suited the taste of the last century, but does not suit with a popular ballad, is from O, and also st. 13, and there are traces of F, G, M, but 5-7 have lines which do not occur in any version that I have seen.
A had been somewhat edited before it was communicated to Percy; the places were, however, indicated by commas. Several copies besides O, already referred to, have slight passages that never came from the unsophisticated people; as J 2, in which a page "runs with sorrow," for rhyme and without reason, L 23, and L 123,4, which is manifestly taken from Logan's Braes of Yarrow.[foot-note] N has been interpolated with artificial nonsense,[foot-note] and is an almost worthless copy; the last stanza may defy competition for silliness.
M 1, 3, and N 4, 6, 7, belong to 'The Duke of Athole's Nurse.' So also does one half of a fragment sent by Burns in a letter to William Tytler, Cromek's Select Scotish Songs, 1810, II, 194-8, which, however, has two stanzas of this ballad (P) and two of 'Rare Willie's drowned in Yarrow,' No 215.
The fragment in Ritson's Scotish Songs, 1794, I, lxvii, is O.
Herd's Manuscripts, I, 36, II, 182, have the following couplets, evidently from a piece treating the story of this ballad:
The groups A-I and J-P are distinguished by the circumstance, of no importance to the story, that the hero and heroine in the former are man and wife, in the other unmarried lovers. In all the versions (leaving out of account the fragments O, P) the family of the woman are at variance with the man. Her brothers think him an unfit match for their sister, A 8, B 2.[foot-note] In C 2 the brothers have taken offence because their sister was not regarded as his equal by her husband, which is perhaps too much of a refinement for ballads, and may be a perversion. She was worth stealing in C as in B. The dispute in two or three copies appears to take the form who is the flower, or rose, of Yarrow, that is the best man, C 8, 9, 17, B 1, 12, D 1, 14; but this matter is muddled, cf. C 2, 3, D 2. We hear nothing about the unequal match in D-I, but in J-L a young lady displeases her father by refusing nine gentlemen in favor of a servant-lad.
Men who are drinking together fall out and set a combat for the next day, B-F, H, I. It is three lords that drink and quarrel in B-D (ten (?) in I). The lady fears that her three brothers will slay her husband, B 5, C 5. The lord in D 2 seems not to be one of the three in D 1, and we are probably to understand that three brothers get into a brawl with a man who has surreptitiously married their sister. Only one brother is spoken of in A (6), from whom treachery is looked for, E 2.
In I-L the father makes the servant-lad fight with the nine high-born suitors.
The wife tries to keep her husband at home, A-E, I; but he is confident that all will go well, and that he shall come back to her early, A, B, C, I. She kisses (washes) and combs him, and helps to arm him, B, C, E, F, G, I; so J, K. He finds nine armed men awaiting him on the braes or houms of Yarrow, A, E-G, I-M, ten B, D.[foot-note] They ask if he has come to hawk, hunt (drink), or fight; he replies that he has come to fight, C, E, I; cf. A 5, 6. Five (four) he slays and four (five) he wounds, A, B, D, E, I, J, K; in F he kills all the nine; in L he gets no further than the seventh; in G he kills all but one.
These nine, after the way of ballads, should be the lady's brothers, and such they are in A 7, 8. Three of them, but only three, should be the lady's brothers according to B 1-5, C 1-5. Three brethren are charged by the husband with a message to his lady in D 8, and these might be his brothers-in-law. The message is sent in B 9 by a good-brother, or wife's brother, John, who clearly was not in the fight in B, though the husband says he is going to meet this brother John in A 6. This brother-in-law of B is probably intended by brother in I 8.
After the hero has successively disposed of his nine or ten antagonists (he takes them 'man for man'), he is stabbed from behind in a cowardly way, A, B, C, E, I, L, N, by somebody. The tradition is much blurred here; it is a squire out of the bush, a cowardly man, a fause lord. An Englishman shoots him with an arrow out of a bush in D. But other reports are distinct. The lady's father runs him through (not from behind) in J, K. Her brother springs from a bush behind and runs him through, L. Her brother John comes behind him and slays him, N. Up and rose her brother James and slew him, M. In I "that stubborn knight" comes behind him and runs his body through, and that (a) "stubborn lord" is the author of his death in G, F. Taking E 2, 8, 9 together, the stubborn knight, at least in E, may be interpreted as good-brother John, whose treachery is feared in E 2, who is prominent in A 6, and who is expressly said to slay his sister's true-love in N. On the whole, the preponderance of tradition is to the effect that the hero was treacherously slain by his wife's (love's) brother.
Word of her husband's death is sent or carried to the wife by her brother, brother John, A, E, L, N; her or his three brothers, D 8; her or his brother, I 8; his man John, C 12, by mistake; her father (?), J, K; her sister Anne, F, G, H. The wife has had a dream that she, her lord or true-love and she, had been pulling green heather (birk) in Yarrow, A, C-F, I-M, O.[foot-note] The dream is explained to signify her lord's death, and she is enjoined to fetch him home. In A, the dream occurs before the fight and is double, of pulling green heather and of her love coming headless home; in B, the lady dreams that her lord was sleeping sound in Yarrow, and in the highly vitiated N that 'he had lost his life.'
The wife hurries to Yarrow;[foot-note] up a high, high hill and down into the valley, where she sees nine (ten) dead men, E, F, G, M (nine well-armed men, wrongly, H).[foot-note] She sees her true-love lying slain, finds him sleeping sound, in Yarrow, A, B, J, K. She kisses him and combs his hair, A, E, F, G, I, L, M; she drinks the blood that runs from him, E 12, F 11, G 7, M 9.[foot-note]
Her hair is five quarters long; she twists it round his hand and draws him home, C; ties it round his middle and carries him home, D. She takes three lachters of her hair, ties them tight round his middle and carries him home, B. His hair is five quarters long! she ties it to her horse's mane and trails him home, K.[foot-note] The carrying strikes one as unpractical, the trailing as barbarous. In L, after the lover is slain, the surviving lords and her brother trail him by the heels to Yarrow water and throw him into a whirlpool. The lady, searching for him, sees him 'deeply drowned.' His hair, which we must suppose to float, is five quarters long; she twines it round her hand and draws him out. Raising no petty questions, it appears enough to say that this is the only version of fourteen in which the drowning occurs, and that the drowning of the lover is the characteristic of No 215, the next following ballad, which has otherwise been partly confused with this.[foot-note]
The lady's father urges her to restrain her grief; he will wed her with as good a lord as she has lost, or a better; she rejects his suggestions. Her heart breaks, B, I; she dies in her father's arms, D, F-H, J-L, being at the time big with child, B, D, F-H, J.
The lady tells her father to wed his sons, B 12; his seven sons, J 18. So 'Clerk Saunders' (of which this may be a reminiscence, for we do not hear of seven sons in this ballad), No 69, G 28; cf. A 26, B 19.
She bids him take home his ousen and his kye, E 15, F 12, G 8, H 9. This I conceive to be an interpolation by a reciter who followed the tradition cited from Hogg further on.
The message to the mother to come take up her son in I 8 may possibly be a reminiscence from 'Johnie Cock,' No 114. It occurs in no other copy, and comes in awkwardly.
'The Braes of Yarrow' ('Busk ye, busk ye, my bony, bony bride'), written by William Hamilton of Bangour "in imitation of the ancient Scottish manner," was suggested by this ballad.[foot-note]
'The Dowy Dens,' Evans's Old Ballads, 1810, III, 342, has the same foundation. 'The Haughs o Yarrow,' a modern piece in Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 211, repeats with a slight change the third stanza of O, and has further on half a stanza from 'Willie's rare,' No 215.
James Hogg, in sending E a to Sir Walter Scott, wrote as follows: "Tradition placeth the event on which this song is founded very early. That the song hath been written near the time of the transaction appears quite evident, although, like others, by frequent sing ing the language is become adapted to an age not so far distant. The bard does not at all relate particulars, but only mentions some striking features of a tragical event which everybody knew. This is observable in many of the productions of early times; at least the secondary bards seem to have regarded their songs as purely temporary.
"The hero of the ballad is said to have been of the name of Scott, and is called a knight of great bravery. He lived in Ettrick, some say at Oakwood, others Kirkhope; but was treacherously slain by his brother-in-law, as related in the ballad, who had him at ill will because his father had parted with the half of all his goods and gear to his sister on her marriage with such a respectable man. The name of the murderer is said to be Annand, a name I believe merely conjectural from the name of the place where they are said both to be buried, which at this day is called Annan's Treat, a low muir lying to the west of Yarrow church, where two huge tall stones are erected, below which the least child that can walk the road will tell you the two lords are buried that were slain in a duel."
Sir Walter Scott, in the revised edition of his Minstrelsy, expressed a conviction that this ballad referred to a duel fought between John Scott of Tushielaw and his brother-in-law Walter Scott of Thirlestane, in which the hitter was slain.[foot-note] Contemporary entries in the records of the Presbytery of Selkirk show that John Scott, son to Walter of Tushielaw, killed Walter Scott, brother of Sir Robert of Thirlestane, in 1609. The slain Walter Scott was not, however, the brother-in-law of John of Tushielaw, for his wife was a daughter of Sir Patrick Porteous. A violent feud ensued, as might be expected, between the Scotts of Thirlestane and of Tushielaw. Seven years later, in 1616, a Walter Scott of Tushielaw made " an informal and inordinat marriage with Grizel Scott of Thirlestane without consent of her father." The record of the elopement is three months after followed by an entry of a summons to Simeon Scott of Bonytoun (an adherent of Thirlestane) and three other Scotts "to com pear in Melrose to hear themselves excommunicat for the horrible slaughter of Walter Scott" [of Tushielaw]. Disregarding the so-called duel, we have a Walter Scott of Tushielaw carrying off a wife from the Scotts of Thirlestane, with which family he was at feud; and a Walter Scott of Tushielaw horribly slaughtered by Scotts of Thirlestane. These facts correspond rather closely with the incidents of the ballad. We do not know, to be sure, that the two Walter Scotts of Tushielaw were the same person. There were Walter Scotts many; but tradition is capable of confounding the two or the three connected with this series of events. On the other hand, there is nothing in the ballad to connect it preferably with the Scotts; the facts are such as are likely to have occurred often in history, and a similar story is found in other ballads.
In the Scandinavian ballad 'Herr Helmer,' Helmer has married a lady whose family are at feud with him for the unatoned slaughter of her uncle; he meets her seven brothers, who will now hear of no satisfaction; there is a fight; Helmer kills six, but spares the seventh, who treacherously kills him: Afzelius, ed. Bergström, I, 264, Arwidsson, I, 155 (etc., see 11, 170 of this collection, note J). Other forms make the last of the brothers willing to accept an arrangement: 'Herr Helmer Blau,' Danske Viser, IV, 251, No 209, 'Herr Hjælm,' Grundtvig, Danske Folkeminder, 1861, p. 8 1. 'Jomfruen i Skoven,' Danske Viser, HI, 99, No 123, has also several features of our ballad. The hero, on parting from a lady with whom he has passed the night in a wood, is warned by her to avoid her seven brothers. This he is too brave to do, and he meets them. They ask him where are his hawk and his hound. He tries, unsuccessfully, to induce them to give him their sister for wife; they fight; he kills all the seven brothers, and is slain himself, in some way not explained. (These ballads are translated in Prior, III, 371, 230.)
The next ballad has been partially confused with this.
B b, Scott's ballad, is translated by Doenniges, p. 237; by Loève-Veimars, p. 347. Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 92, translates Allingham's ballad.
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