The ballad was first published by Sir Walter Scott, under the title 'The Laird of Laminton,' in the first edition of the Minstrelsy, 1802, 1, 216. , This copy was fashioned by the editor from two in Herd's Manuscripts, A, B. In later editions of the Minstrelsy (III, 122, 1833), the ballad was given, with the title Katharine Janfarie, "in a more perfect state, from several recited copies." Twelve stanzas out of twenty-one, however, are repeated from the first edition. Much the larger part of what is not in Herd is taken from C; the name Lochinvar is adopted from D.[foot-note] A few peculiar readings may be from copies now not known, or may be the editor's.
The ballad in Christie, II, 16, is Scott's later copy, with the omission of the 16th stanza. That in Nimmo's Songs and Ballads of Clydesdale, p. 141, is J, from Motherwell's Minstrelsy.
A Scots laird wooes a Scots maid and wins her favor. An English laird or lord, very liberal as to gowd and gear, comes to court the same lass, gains the consent of her friends (who had at least made no opposition to the earlier suit), and sets the wedding-day. The first lover comes to the wedding, backed by a strong body of armed men, whom he keeps out of sight. He is asked why he has come; it is for a sight of the bride or a word with her, or to take a glass of wine with her or the bridegroom, and this had he will go away. Getting near the bride on this pretence, he swings her on to his horse and is off. A bloody fight follows, but the bride is not retrieved. Englishmen may take warning by this not to seek wives in Scotland; it will always end in their being tricked and balked: The attitude of the young woman to her first lover is not distinctly brought out in several copies. That she had jilted him in favor of a wealthier Englishman would probably not lessen the Scot's pleasure in carrying her off. In B 18, she does not go willingly; she greets and wrings her hands, and says it 's foul play.[foot-note] In F 2, G 2, the first lover openly charges her with changing and foul play, and such is the implication in E 13. In B 14, the bride, seeing the bloodshed, exclaims, Wae's me for foul play! and her lover replies, Wae to your wilful will for causing so much good blood to be spilt! from which we must infer a fault on her part. I 2 has the ambiguous line 'and his love drew away,' which cannot be interpreted to mean that the first lover was inconstant without flying in the face of all the other copies. D, J, K, unequivocally represent the lass as faithful to her first love. The bridegroom, in these versions, arranges the match with the family, arid does not mention the matter to the lass until the wedding-day: so in C, H.[foot-note] She sends word to her lover that if he will come for her she will go with him, D; writes 'to let him understand,' J, K, and not to pay him the cold compliment of an invitation to see her wed the man that has supplanted him, as in B 3, E 5, F 5, I 3.
In E 7-9, while the first lover is drinking with his comrades they incite him to carry off the bride on her wedding-day; so G 6, without explanation of the circumstances. In E 7-9, 12-15, he goes to the bridal-house, and sitting at a table vents words which the other guests cannot understand: there was a young man who loved a lass that to-day goes another man's bride, and plays her old love foul play; had he been so served, he would take the bride away. Upon this the English ask if he wishes a fight. There is something of this in B 7-10, F 13, 14, G 11-14.
The lover would wish to keep the strong body of men that he had brought with him quite in the background until their cue came. When, therefore, in I 8, 9, the bridegroom's friends ask him what was that troop of younkers they had seen, he puts them off with the phrase, It must have been the Fairy Court; so in L. In B 5, 6 (where a stanza, and more, has dropped out), when the bridegroom sees this troop from a high window, the bride (from incredulity, it must be, and not because she is in concert with her old lover) says he must have seen the Fairy Court. G 15, 16, where the phrase comes in again, seems to have suffered corruption; any way, the passage is not quite intelligible to me.
Katharine Jaffray (Jamphray, Janfarie) is the lass's name in A, C-G, K, L; Katharine Johnstone[foot-note] in J; in B, H, I, she is nameless.
The lover is Lochinvar in E, F, G, I, K, L (note); Lamington in D, H, J; Lauderdale in A, C; he has no name in B. The bridegroom is Lochinvar in D, H; Lamington in B, Lymington, K; Lauderdale in F, G; Lochinton A, Lamendall E, Limberdale I (obvious mixtures of the preceding); Faughanwood in C; in J he has no name. The bridegroom should be an Englishman, but Lochinvar, Lamington, and Lauderdale are all south-Scottish names. B puts a Scot from the North Country in place of the titular Englishman of the other copies, but this Norland man is laird of Lamington.
The place of the fight is Cadan bank and Cadan brae, C, D; Cowden bank (banks) and Cowden brae (braes), A, H, J, the variation being perhaps due to the very familiar Cowdenknows; Callien, Caylin, Caley bank (buss) and brae, in E, I, F; Foudlin dyke and Foudlin stane in K. No place is named in B, G.[foot-note] In I, the lass lives in Bordershellin.
A copy from the recitation of a young Irishwoman living in Taunton, Massachusetts (learned from print, I suppose, and in parts imperfectly remembered), puts the scene of the story at Edenborough town. A squire of high degree had courted a comely country girl. When her father came to hear of this, he was an angry man, and "requested of his daughter dear to suit his company," or to match within her degree. The only son of a farmer in the east had courted this girl until he thought he had won her, and had got the consent of her father and mother. The girl writes the squire a letter to tell him that she is to be married to the farmer's son. He writes in answer that she must dress in green at her wedding (a color which no Scots girl would wear, for ill luck), and he will wear a suit of the same, and wed her 'in spite of all that's there.' He mounts eight squire-men on milk-white steeds, and rides 'to the wedding-house, with the company dressed in green.' (See the note to L.)
She fills him a glass of new port wine, which he drinks to all the company, saying, Happy is the man that is called the groom, but another may love her as well as he and take her from his side.
Scott's Lochinvar, in the fifth canto of Marmion, was modelled on 'Katharine Jaffray.'
Another ballad (but a much later and inferior) in which a lover carries off a bride on her wedding-day is 'Lord William,' otherwise 'Lord Lundy,' to be given further on.
A Norse ballad of the same description is 'Magnus Algotsøn,' Grundtvig, No 181, III, 734,[foot-note] Syv, No 77, = 'Ungen Essendal,' Kristensen, Jydske Folkeminder, I, 104, No 41, 'Hr. Essendal,' X, 247, No 61, A, B. Syv's version is translated by Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 335.
Scott's ballad is translated by Schubart, p. 198, Doenniges, p. 15. Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 65, translates Aytoun.
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