First printed in Scott's Minstrelsy, 1802, I, 1.
A a, b, c (disregarding Scott's interpolations in b), do not differ more than transcripts of one original may be expected to do, remembering that copyists are apt to indulge in trivial verbal improvements.[foot-note] a was sent David Herd, with a letter dated January 12, 1795, by Andrew Plummer, Sheriff-Depute of Selkirk, as received by carrier from a lady, who neglected to impart how she came by the copy. In this instance, contrary to what I believe to be the general rule, the second volume of Herd's Manuscripts seems to have the original text.[foot-note] a was printed, but not with absolute fidelity, by Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 66. For b, "the copy principally resorted to," says Scott, "is one, apparently of considerable antiquity, which was found among the papers of the late Mrs. Cockburn of Edinburgh." Scott made occasional use of Herd's Manuscript and of Glenriddell's, inserted some stanzas which he had received from Sheriff Plummer, and in the second edition (otherwise slightly altered) two stanzas from the recitation of Mungo Park. Mrs. Cockburn's Manuscript evidently agreed very nearly with the copy in Herd, so far as the latter goes. I much regret that exertions made to secure the Cockburn Manuscript did not result successfully, c. "From a note appended to the ballad, explanatory of its circumstances, in which reference is made to Lord Philiphaugh (a judge of Session) as being then alive," says Aytoun, "the manuscript must have been written between the years 1689 and 1702."[foot-note] The original manuscript, unfortunately and inexplicably, is no longer in the Philiphaugh archives, and has not come to light after search. The text, if earlier transcribed, shows no internal evidence of superior age, and exhibits several inferior readings, two that are highly objectionable.[foot-note] d, the copy actually preserved among the Philiphaugh papers, is evinced by a watermark to be not older than 1848. It shows variations from Aytoun's printed text which cannot be other than wilful alterations.
B, which is both defective, corrupted, and chargeable with flat repetition, and C, a few fragmentary verses, are all that have been retrieved from tradition, although Scott says that the ballad "has been for ages a popular song in Selkirkshire."
A manuscript copy was understood to be in possession of the late Mr. George Wilson, S.S.C., Edinburgh, but, as in the case of the original of the Philiphaugh Manuscript and in that of Mrs. Cockburn's copy, inquiry and search were fruitless.
The king of Scotland is informed that there is an Outlaw in Ettrick Forest who makes no account of him; the king vows that he will be king of Ettrick Forest, or the Outlaw shall be king of Scotland. Earl Hamilton advises that an envoy be sent to the Outlaw to ascertain whether he is willing to do homage to the king and hold the forest of him; if the Outlaw should refuse, then they will proceed to extremities with him. The king sends Boyd, Earl of Arran, to announce his terms: the Outlaw is to do homage; otherwise he and his lands will be subjugated, his castle levelled, his wife made a widow, and his men be hanged. The messenger demands of the Outlaw, in the king's name, of whom he holds his lands; the Outlaw replies that the lands are his own, won by himself from the Southron, and that he recognizes no king in Christendom. The messenger intimates that it will nevertheless be necessary for the Outlaw to do homage to the king of Scotland, under the penalties before mentioned. Many of the king's nobles shall lie cold first, he replies. Boyd reports to his master that the Outlaw claims to hold the forest by his own right, which he will maintain against all kings in Christendom; the king prepares to enforce his sovereignty with five thousand men.
The Outlaw vows that the king shall pay dear for his coming, and sends for succor to three of his kinsmen, all of whom promise help. As the king approaches the forest, Hamilton ventures to give further advice: that the Outlaw should be summoned to come with four of his best men to meet the king and five earls; fire, sword, and forfeiture to follow upon refusal. The Outlaw bethinks himself of his children, and complies. He and his company fall on their knees and implore the king's mercy; his mercy shall be the gallows, says the king. The Outlaw protests again that he won his lands from the enemy, and as he won them so will he keep them, against all kings in Christendom; but having indulged in this vaunt asks mercy again, and offers to give up the keys of his castle if the king will constitute him and his successors sheriffs of the forest. The king, on his part, is equally ready for a compromise. The Outlaw, on surrendering the keys of his castle, shall be made sheriff of Ettrick Forest, and shall never be forfeited as long as he continues loyal, and his men shall have pardon if they amend their lives. After all the strong language on both sides, the Outlaw has only to name his lands (but gives a very imperfect list), and the king (waiving complete particulars) renders him whatever he is pleased to claim, and makes him sheriff of Ettrick Forest while upwards grows the tree.
So far all the copies of A concur, as to the story, except that c 22, 33, by an absurd corruption, makes the Outlaw to have won his lands, not from the Soudron, the Soudronie, but from Soldan Turk, the Soldanie; in which respect A c is followed by B 26, C 3, 5. Between 52 and 53, b introduces this passage:
B represents that the king, after appointing a meeting with the Outlaw 'in number not above two or three,' comes with a company of three hundred, which violation of the mutual understanding naturally leads the Outlaw to expect treachery. The king, however, not only proceeds in good faith, but, without any stipulations, at once makes the Outlaw laird of the Forest.
From the note, otherwise of no value, which accompanies the Philiphaugh Manuscript, it is clear that the ballad was known before 1700; how much earlier it is to be put we can neither ascertain nor safely conjecture, but we may say that there is nothing in the language of the piece as it stands which obliges us to assign it a much higher antiquity.[foot-note]
As to James Murray, laird of Traquair, whose lands the king had gifted lang syne, A 453, 481, Sheriff Plummer remarks in Herd's Manuscript: "Willielmus de Moravia had forfeited the lands of 'trakware' ante annum 1464. As of that date I have a charter of these lands, proceeding upon his forfeiture, granted Willielmo Douglas de Cluny." Thomas Boyd was created Earl of Arran after his marriage with the eldest sister of James III, 1467. The Earl of Hamilton is mentioned A 71, 501. Sheriff Plummer observes that there was an earl of that surname till 1503.
Scott, in his preface in the Border Minstrelsy, after professing himself unable to ascertain the foundation of the tale, goes on to state the following historical possibilities:
"This ballad ... commemorates a transaction supposed to have taken place betwixt a Scottish monarch and an ancestor of the ancient family of Murray of Philiphaugh in Selkirkshire. ... It is certain that during the civil wars betwixt Bruce and Baliol the family of Philiphaugh existed and was powerful, for their ancestor, Archibald de Moravia, subscribes the oath of fealty to Edward I, A.D. 1296. It is therefore not unlikely that, residing in a wild and frontier country, they may have, at one period or other during these commotions, refused allegiance to the feeble monarch of the day, and thus extorted from him some grant of territory or jurisdiction. It is also certain that, by a charter from James IV, dated November 30, 1509, John Murray of Philiphaugh is vested with the dignity of heritable Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, an office held by his descendants till the final abolition of such jurisdictions by 28th George II, cap. 23. But it seems difficult to believe that the circumstances mentioned in the ballad could occur under the reign of so vigorous a monarch as James IV. It is true that the dramatis personæ introduced seem to refer to the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century; but from this it can only be argued that the author himself lived soon after that period. It may therefore be supposed (unless further evidence can be produced tending to invalidate the conclusion) that the bard, willing to pay his court to the family, has connected his grant of the sheriffship by James IV with some former dispute betwixt the Murrays of Philiphaugh and their sovereign, occurring either while they were engaged upon the side of Baliol, or in the subsequent reigns of David II and Robert II and III, when the English possessed great part of the Scottish frontier, and the rest was in so lawless a state as hardly to acknowledge any superior.
"At the same time, this reasoning is not absolutely conclusive. James IV had particular reasons for desiring that Ettrick Forest, which actually formed part of the jointure-lands of Margaret, his queen, should be kept in a state of tranquillity: Rymer, vol. xiii, p. 66. In order to accomplish this object, it was natural for him, according to the policy of his predecessors, to invest one great family with the power of keeping order among the rest. It is even probable that the Philiphaugh family may have had claims upon part of the lordship of Ettrick Forest, which lay intermingled with their own extensive possessions, and in the course of arranging, not, indeed, the feudal superiority, but the property of these lands, a dispute may have arisen of sufficient importance to be the groundwork of a ballad.
"It is farther probable that the Murrays, like other Border clans, were in a very lawless state, and held their lands merely by occupancy, without any feudal right. Indeed, the lands of the various proprietors in Ettrick Forest (being a royal demesne) were held by the possessors, not in property, but as the kindly tenants, or rentallers, of the crown. ... This state of possession naturally led to a confusion of rights and claims. The kings of Scotland were often reduced to the humiliating necessity of compromising such matters with their rebellious subjects, and James himself even entered into a sort of league with Johnnie Faa, the king of the gypsies. Perhaps, therefore, the tradition handed down in this way may have had more foundation than it would at present be proper positively to assert."
In the way of comment upon these surmises of Scott, which proceed mainly upon what we do not know, it may be alleged that we have a fairly good record of the relations of Selkirkshire to the Scottish crown during the fourteenth century, when this district was so often changing hands between the English and the Scotch, and that there is no indication of any Murray having been concerned in winning it from the Southron, as is pretended in the ballad, either then or at any time, so that this part of the story may be set down as pure invention.[foot-note] Hardly less fictitious seems to be the dispute between the Scottish king and a Murray, in relation to the tenure. The Murrays first became connected with Selkirkshire in 1461. John de Moravia then acquired the lands of Philiphaugh, and was afterwards appointed Gustos of Newark Castle, and came into possession of Hangingshaw and Lewinshope. All of these are attributed to the Outlaw in the ballad. This John Murray was a contemporary of Boyd, Earl of Arran, and of the forfeited Murray of Traquair, but, with all this, nobody has pitched upon him for the Outlaw; and it would not have been a happy idea, for he was on perfectly good terms, and even in great favor, with the court under James III. His grandson, John Murray, was in equal or greater favor with James IV, and was made hereditary Sheriff of Selkirk in 1509, and for this last reason has been proposed for the Outlaw, though " nothing could be more improbable than that this orderly, 'circumspect,' and law-enforcing officer of the crown should ever take up an attitude of rebellious defiance so diametrically opposed to all we really know of his character and conduct."[foot-note]
Scott thought that light might be thrown upon the history of the ballad by the Philiphaugh family papers. Mr. Craig-Brown gave them the accurate examination which Scott suggested, and came to the same conclusion as Aytoun, that the story told in the ballad is, if not altogether fictitious, at least greatly exaggerated. He is inclined to think that "some clue to the date of the ballad lies in the minstrel's animus against the house of Buccleuch" (shown only in A b). "James Murray, tenth laird," he says, "is the last mentioned in the family Manuscripts as possessor of Newark, which castle passed into the hands of Buceleuch either in his lifetime or that of his successor, Patrick Murray. After the death of James IV at Flodden, the Queen-Regent complained loudly of Buccleuch's encroachment upon her dowry lands of Ettrick Forest, the Gustos of which domain had Newark for a residence. Buceleuch continued to keep his hold, and, as he could only do so by displacing Murray, the ill-will of the latter family was a natural consequence. By way of showing the earlier and superior title of the Murrays, the ballad-writer has either invented the story in toto, or has amplified the tradition of an actual visit paid to a former Murray by the king. Both Sir Walter Scott and the compiler of the Family Records are of opinion that John Murray, eighth laird, is the presumptive Outlaw of the song; and, as he was undoubtedly in great favor with King James IV, nothing is more likely than that the young monarch may have ended one of his hunting-expeditions to the Forest by confirming John in his hereditary sheriffship, interrupted for a few years by the appointment of Lord Home. As a matter of fact, John Murray did in 1509 obtain a royal charter from his sovereign, of the sheriffship; but, as the office had been vacant since 1506, there is Hothing improbable in the supposition that he had already claimed the family rights and taken possession of the castle. Indeed, in 1503, he acted as sheriff at the queen's infeftment in her dowry-lands of Ettrick Forest. It would have been in thorough keeping with all that is known of James IV if his Majesty had taken the opportunity to give his favorite a half-jesting reproof for his presumption; but that Murray was ever seriously outlawed is out of the question. His king heaped honors on him; and only eighty years after his death his descendant obtained a feudal precept of his lands for gratuitous services rendered to the crown by his family, ' without default at any time in their due obedience as became faithful subjects.' So that, granted a royal progress to Newark, followed by Murray's investiture with the sheriffship, the poet remains chargeable with considerable embellishment. A glorification of the family of Philiphaugh and a sneer at the rapacity of Buceleuch are the evident motives of his rhyme."[foot-note]
"The tradition of Ettrick Forest," says Scott, Minstrelsy, 2d ed., 1803, I, 4, "bears that the Outlaw was a man of prodigious strength, possessing a batton or club with which he laid lee (i. e. waste) the country for many miles round, and that he was at length slain by Buceleuch or some of his clan."[foot-note] This account is not in keeping with the conception of the Outlaw given by the ballad, but indicates the ferocious robber and murderer, the Cacus of popular story, of whom no doubt the world was actually once very guilty, and of whom there are many specimens in British tradition as elsewhere.[foot-note] As such he seems to turn up again in Galloway, where he haunts a forest of Kirkcudbrightshire, called the Black Morrow wood, from which he sallies out "in the neighboring country at night, committing horrible outrages." Of this personage, Mactaggart, in his Gallovidian Encyclopedia, p. 73, says:
"Tradition has him a Blackimore, ... but my opinion is that he was no Blackimore; he never saw Africa; his name must have been Murray, and as he must have been, too, an outlaw and a bloody man, gloomy with foul crimes,[foot-note] Black prefaced it, as it did Black Douglass, and that of others; so he became Black Murray." And he adds that this pest was disposed of by the people pouring a barrel of spirits into a spring one night when he was out on his rambles, whereof drinking the next day, he was made drunk and fell asleep, in which condition his foes dirked him; or according to others, one of the McLellans of Kirkcudbright took to the wood single-handed, found the outlaw sleeping, and drove a dirk through his head, whence the head on the dagger in the McLellans' coat of arms.[foot-note]
2. The castle, says Scott, is supposed by the common people to have been the castle of Newark; but "this is highly improbable, because Newark was always a royal fortress." The only important point, however, would seem to be who was the keeper of the castle. The Douglasses are spoken of as holding it from about 1326 to 1455; John de Moravia was Gustos after 1462. The Outlaw's five hundred men are shooting on Newark lee in A b 184, and Newark lee is twice mentioned elsewhere in that copy. Sheriff Plummer in his letter to Herd says: This I take to be the castle of New-wark, on the west end of which are the arms of Scotland supported by two unicorns. But in Scott's preface we are told that Sheriff Plummer has assured the editor that he remembered the insignia of the unicorns, etc., so often mentioned in the ballad, in existence upon the old tower at Hangingshaw. Whether the etc. covers the picture of the knight and the lady bright, and Sheriff Plummer had therefore changed his opinion, does not appear.
153. "Birkendale brae, now commonly called Birkendailly [see C 21], is a steep descent at the south side of Minchmoor, which separates Tweed-dale from the Forest, at the top of which you come first in sight of New-wark Castle." Plummer's letter to Herd.
19. Mr. MacRitchie, II, 141 ff., considers that the Lincoln green dresses of the Outlaw's men, and perhaps the purple of the Outlaw and his wife, show that they were "gypsies," not perhaps of a swarthy color, but still people "living a certain archaic 'heathen' life," at any rate a "wild and lawless life," and "refusing to follow the course of civilization." This inference from the costume seems to be not quite necessary, unless, or even if, all outlaws are "gypsies." Robin Hood, in 'Robin Hood and Queen Katherine,' is dressed in scarlet red, and his men in Lincoln green (III, 199, 201). But green is the regular attire for men who shoot with the bow, III, 76 f., 91. Johnie Cock, when going out to ding the dun deer down, puts on Lincoln green, III, 3 ff. Will Stewart, even, when only going to a ball-match, clothes his men in green, and himself in scarlet red, II, 434, 437.
51. "Penman's core, generally called Perman's core [Permanscore in Scott, ed. 1833], is a nick or hollow on the top of a high ridge of hills a little to the east of Minchmoor." Plummer, as before. In B 50, poor man's house; 52, poor man's score.[foot-note]
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