A is one of the nine ballads transmitted to Alexander Fraser Tytler by Mrs. Brown in April, 1800, as written down from her recollection.[foot-note] This copy was printed by Jamieson, II, 7, in his preface to 'True Thomas and the Queen of Elfland.' B, never published as yet, has been corrupted here and there, but only by tradition. C being compounded of A and another version, that portion which is found in A is put in smaller type.
Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise Thomas the Rhymer, and in the popular style True Thomas, has had a fame as a seer, which, though progressively narrowed, is, after the lapse of nearly or quite six centuries, far from being extinguished. The common people throughout the whole of Scotland, according to Mr. Robert Chambers (1870), continue to regard him with veneration, and to preserve a great number of his propbetic sayings, which they habitually seek to connect with "dear years" and other notable public events.[foot-note] A prediction of Thomas of Erceldoune's is recorded in a manuscript which is put at a date before 1320, and he is referred to with other soothsayers in the Scalacronica, a French chronicle of English history begun in 1355. Erceldoune is spoken of as a poet in Robert Mannyng's translation of Langtoft's chronicle, finished in 1338; and in the Auchinleck copy of 'Sir Tristrem,' said to have been made about 1350, a Thomas is said to have been consulted at Erþeldoun touching the history of Tristrem. So that we seem safe in holding that Thomas of Erceldoune had a reputation both as prophet and poet in the earlier part of the fourteenth century. The vaticinations of Thomas are cited by various later chroniclers, and had as much credit in England as in Scotland. "During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries," says Chambers, "to fabricate a prophecy in the name of Thomas the Rhymer appears to have been found a good stroke or policy on many occasions. Thus was his authority employed to countenance the views of Edward III against Scottish independence, to favor the ambitious views of the Duke of Albany in the minority of James V, and to sustain the spirits of the nation under the harassing invasions of Henry VIII." During the Jacobite rising of 1745 the accomplishment of Thomas's as then unfulfilled predictions was looked for by many. His prophecies, and those of other Scotch soothsayers, were consulted, says Lord Hailes, "with a weak if not criminal curiosity." Even as late as the French revolutionary war a rhyme of Thomas's caused much distress and consternation in the border counties of Scotland, where people were fearing an invasion. The 'Whole Prophecie' of Merlin, Thomas Rymour, and others, collected and issued as early as 1603, continued to be printed as a chap-book down to the beginning of this century, when, says Dr. Murray, few farm-houses in Scotland were without a copy of it.
All this might have been if Thomas of Erceldoune had been not more historical than Merlin. But the name is known to have belonged to a real person. Thomas Rymor de Ercildune is witness to a deed whereby one Petrus de Haga obliges himself to make a certain payment to the Abbey of Melrose. Petrus de Haga is, in turn, witness to a charter made by Richard de Moreville. Unluckily, neither of these deeds is dated. But Moreville was constable of Scotland from 1162 to 1189. If we suppose Moreville's charter to have been given towards 1189, and Haga to have been then about twenty years old, and so born about 1170, and further suppose Haga to have made his grant to Melrose towards the end of a life of threescore, or three score and ten, the time of Thomas Rymer's signature would be about 1230 or 1240. If Thomas Rymer was then twenty years of age, his birth would have been at 1210 or 1220. In the year 1294 Thomas de Ercildoun, son and heir of Thomas Rymour de Ercildoun, conveyed to a religious house his inheritance of lands in Ercildoun. With Thomas Rhymer in mind, one naturally interprets Thomas Rymour as the prophet and Thomas de Ercildoun as his son. If Rymour was the surname of this family,[foot-note] it would have been better, for us at least, if the surname had been subjoined to the first Thomas also. As the language stands, we are left to choose among several possibilities. Thomas the Rhymer may have been dead in 1294; Thomas Rymour, meaning the same person, may have made this cession of lands in 1294, and have survived still some years. Thomas, the father, may, as Dr. Murray suggests, have retired from the world, but still be living, and it may be his son who resigns the lands. Blind Harry's Life of Wallace makes Thomas Rimour to be alive down to 1296 or 1297. A story reported by Bower in his continuation of Fordun, c. 1430, makes Thomas to have predicted the death of Alexander III in 1286, when, according to the previous (necessarily very loose) calculation, the seer would have been between sixty-six and seventy-six. Neither of these last dates is established by the strongest evidence, but there is no reason for refusing to admit, at least, that Thomas of Erceldoune may have been alive at the latter epoch.
Thomas of Erceldoune's prophetic power was a gift of the queen of the elves; the modern elves, equally those of northern Europe and of Greece, resembling in respect to this attribute the nymphs of the ancient Hellenic mythology. How Thomas attained this grace is set forth in the first of three fits of a poem which bears his name. This poem has come down in four somewhat defective copies: the earliest written a little before the middle of the fifteenth century, two others about 1450, the fourth later. There is a still later manuscript copy of the second and third fits.[foot-note] All the manuscripts are English, but it is manifest from the nature of the topics that the original poem was the work of a Scotsman. All four of the complete versions speak of an older story: "gyff it be als the storye sayes, v. 83, 'als the storye tellis full ryghte,' v. 123. The older story, if any, must be the work of Thomas. The circumstance that the poem, as we have it, begins in the first person, and after a long passage returns for a moment to the first person, though most of the tale is told in the third, is of no importance; nor would it have been important if the whole narrative had been put into Thomas's mouth, since that is the simplest of literary artifices.
Thomas, having found favor with the queen of Elfland, was taken with her to that country, and there he remained more than three [seven] years. Then the time came round when a tribute had to be paid to hell, and as Thomas was too likely to be chosen by the fiend, the elf queen conducted him back to the world of men. At the moment of parting Thomas desires some token which may authenticate his havillg spoken with her. She gives him the gift of soothsaying. He presses her to stay and tell him some ferly. Upon this she begins a train of predictions, which Thomas more than once importunes her to continue. The first two of these, the failure of Baliol's party and the battle of Halidon Hill, 1333, stand by themselves, but they are followed by a series in chronological order, extending from the battle of Falkirk to the battle of Otterbourn, 1298-1388. The third fit, excepting, perhaps, a reference to Henry IV's invasion of Scotland in 1401, seems to consist, not of predictions made after the event, but of "adaptations of legendary prophecies, traditionally preserved from far earlier times, and furbished up anew at each period of national trouble and distress, in expectation of their fulfilment being at length at hand."[foot-note]
The older "story," which is twice referred to in the prologue to the prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, was undoubtedly a romance which narrated the adventure of Thomas with the elf queen simply, without specification of his prophecies. In all probability it concluded, in accordance with the ordinary popular tradition, with Thomas's return to fairy-land after a certain time passed in this world.[foot-note] For the story of Thomas and the Elf-queen is but another version of what is related of Ogier le Danois and Morgan the Fay. Six fairies made gifts to Ogier at his birth. By the favor of five he was to be the strongest, the bravest, the most successful, the handsomest, the most susceptible, of knights: Morgan's gift was that, after a long and fatiguing career of glory, he should live with her at her castle of Avalon, in the enjoyment of a still longer youth and never wearying pleasures. When Ogier had passed his hundredth year, Morgan took measures to carry out her promise. She had him wrecked, while he was on a voyage to France, on a loadstone rock conveniently near to Avalon, which Avalon is a little way this side of the terrestrial paradise. In due course he comes to an orchard, and there he eats an apple, which affects him so peculiarly that he looks for nothing but death. He turns to the east, and sees a beautiful lady, magnificently attired. He takes her for the Virgin; she corrects his error, and announces herself as Morgan the Fay. She puts a ring on his finger which restores his youth, and then places a crown on his head which makes him forget all the past. For two hundred years Ogier lived in such delights as no worldly being can imagine, and the two hundred years seemed to him but twenty. Christendom was then in danger, and even Morgan thought his presence was required in the world. The crown being taken from his head, the memory of the past revived, and with it the desire to return to France. He was sent back by the fairy, properly provided, vanquished the foes of Christianity in a short space, and after a time was brought back by Morgan the Fay to Avalon.[foot-note]
The fairy adventures of Thomas and of Ogier have the essential points in common, and even the particular trait that the fairy is taken to be the Virgin. The occurrence of this trait again in the ballad, viewed in connection with the general similarity of the two, will leave no doubt that the ballad had its source in the romance. Yet it is an entirely popular ballad as to style,[foot-note] and must be of considerable age, though the earliest version (A) can be traced at furthest only into the first half of the last century.
The scene of the meeting of Thomas with the elf queen is Huntly Banks and the Eildon Tree in versions B, C of the ballad, as in the romance.[foot-note] Neither of these is mentioned in A, the reciter of which was an Aberdeen woman. The elf-lady's costume and equipment, minutely given in the romance (henceforth referred to as R), are reduced in the ballad to a skirt of grass-green silk and a velvet mantle, A, and a dapple-gray horse, B 2 (R 5), with nine and fifty bells on each tett of its mane, A 2 (three bells on either side of the bridle, R 9).[foot-note] Thomas salutes the fairy as queen of heaven, A 3, R 11. B 3 has suffered a Protestant alteration which makes nonsense of the following stanza. She corrects his mistake in all, and in B 4 tells him she is out hunting, as in R 16. As C 5 stands, she challenges Thomas to kiss her, warning him at the same time, unnaturally, and of course in consequence of a corrupt reading, of the danger; which Thomas defies, C 6. These two stanzas in C represent the passage in the romance, 17-21, in which Thomas embraces the fairy queen, and are wanting in A, B, though not to be spared. It is contact with the fairy that gives her the power to carry her paramour off; for carry him off she does, and he is in great fright at having to go. The ballad is no worse, and the romance would have been much better, for the omission of another passage, impressive in itself, but incompatible with the proper and original story. The elf-queen had told Thomas that he would ruin her beauty, if he had his will, and so it came to pass: her eyes seemed out, her rich clothing was away, her body was like the lead; and it is while thus disfigured that she bids Thomas take leave of sun and moon, so that his alarm is not without reasoll.[foot-note] He must go with her for seven years, A, B; only for a twelvemonth, R. Sbe takes him up behind her, A; she rides and he runs, B; she leads him in at Eldon hill, R; they cross a water, he wading up to the knee, B, R. The water is subterranean in R, and for three days naught is heard but the soughing of the flood. Then they come to an orchard, A, B, R, and Thomas, like to tyne for lack of food, is about to pull fruit, but is told that the fruit is cursed, A 9, B 8;[foot-note] if he plucks it, his soul goes to the fire of hell, R 35. The fairy has made a provision of safe bread and wine for him in the ballad, A 10, B 9, but he has still to fast a while in the romance. C, which lacks this passage, makes them ride till they reach a wide desert, and leave living land behind, 9; and here (but in A, B, and R in the vicinity of the orchard) the fairy bids Thomas lay his head on her knee, and she will show him rare sights. These are the way to heaven, A 12, B 11, R 38; the way to hell, A 13, B 10, R 41; the road to Elfland, whither they are going, A 14. R does not point out the road to Elfland, but the elf-queen's castle on a high hill; and there are two additional ferlies, the way to paradise and the way to purgatory,[foot-note] 39, 40. Thomas, in A. 15, is now admonished that he must hold his tongue, for if he speaks a word he will never get back to his own country; in R 44 he is told to answer none but the elf-queen, whatever may be said to him, and this course he takes in B 12. But before they proceed to the castle the lady resumes all the beauty and splendor which she had lost, and no explanation is offered save the naive one in the Lansdowne copy, that if she had not, the king, her consort, would have known that she had been in fault. Now follows in A 15 (as recited, here 7), C 15, 16, the passage through the subterranean water, which should come before they reach the orchard, as in B 6, R 30, 31. There is much exaggeration in the ballad: they wade through rivers in darkness and hear the sea roaring, C 15, A 7, as in R, but they also wade through red blood to the knee, A 7, C 16, and the crossing occupies not three days, as in R 31, but forty days, A 7. In C they now come to the garden. Stanzas 15, 16 are out of place in C, as just remarked, and 17 is entirely perverted. The cursed fruit which Thomas is not to touch in A 9, B 8, R 35, is offered him by the elf-queen as his wages, and will give him the tongue that can never lie, — a gift which is made him in the romance at the beginning of the second fit, when the fairy is preparing to part with him. Stanzas 18, 19 of C are certainly a modern, and as certainly an ill-devised, interpolation. B has lost the conclusion. In A, C, Thomas gets a fairy costume, and is not seen on earth again for seven years.
The romance, after some description of the life at the elf-castle, informs us that Thomas lived there more than three years [Cambridge Manuscript, seven], and thought the time but a space of three days, an almost moderate illusion compared with the experience of other mortals under analogous circumstances.[foot-note] The fairy queen then hurried him away, on the eve of the day when the foul fiend was to come to fetch his tribute. He was a mickle man and hend, and there was every reason to fear that he would be chosen. She brought him again to Eldon Tree, and was bidding bim farewell. Thomas begged of her a token of his conversation with her, and she gave him the gift of true speaking. He urged her further to tell him some ferly, and she made him several predictions, but he would not let her go without more and more. Finally, with a promise to meet him on Huntly Banks when she might, she left him under the tree.
Popular tradition, as Sir Walter Scott represents, held that, though Thomas was allowed to revisit the earth after a seven years' sojourn in fairy-land, he was under an obligation to go back to the elf-queen whenever she should summon him. One day while he "was making merry with his friends in the town of Erceldoune, a person came running in, and told, with marks of fear and astonishment, that a hart and hind had left the neighboring forest, and were composedly and slowly parading the street of the village. The prophet instantly arose, left his habitation, and followed the wonderful animals to the forest, whence he was never seen to return." He is, however, expected to come back again at some future time.
What we learn from the adventures of Thomas concerning the perils of dealing with fairies, and the precautions to be observed, agrees with the general teaching of tradition upon the subject. In this matter there is pretty much one rule for all "unco" folk, be they fairies, dwarfs, water-sprites, devils, or departed spirits, and, in a limited way, for witches, too. Thomas, having kissed the elf-queen's lips, must go with her. When the dead Willy comes to ask back his faith and troth of Margaret, and she says he must first kiss her, cheek and chin, he replies, "If I should kiss your red, red lips, your days would not be long."[foot-note] When Thomas is about to pull fruit in the subterranean garden, or paradise, the elf bids him let be: all the plagues of hell light on the fruit of this country; "if thou pluck it, thy soul goes to the fire of hell."[foot-note] The queen had taken the precaution of bringing some honest bread and wine with her for Thomas's behoof. So when Burd Ellen's brother sets out to rescue his sister, who had been carried off by the king of Elfland, his sage adviser enjoins him to eat and drink nothing in fairy-land, whatever his hunger or thirst; "for if he tasted or touched in Elfland, he must remain in the power of the elves, and never see middle-eard again."[foot-note] Abstinence from speech is equally advisable, according to our ballad and to other authority: Gin ae word you should chance to speak, you will neer get back to your ain countrie, A 15. They've asked him questions, one and all, but he answered none but that fair ladie, B 12. What so any man to thee say, look thou answer none but me, R 44.
That eating and drinking, personal contact, exchange of speech, receiving of gifts, in any abode of unearthly beings, including the dead, will reduce a man to their fellowship and condition might be enforced by a great number of examples, and has already been abundantly shown by Professor Wilhelm Müller in his beautiful essay, Zur Symbolik der deutschen Volkssage.[foot-note] The popular belief of the northern nations in this matter is more completely shown than anywbere else in Saxo's account of King Gormo's visit to Guthmund, and it will be enough to cite that. The Danish King Gormo, having heard extraordinary things of the riches of Geruth (the giant Geirröðr), determines to verify the reports with his own eyes, under the guidance of Thorkill, from whom he has received them. The land of Geruth is far to the northeast, beyond the sun and stars, and within the realm of Chaos and Old Night. It is, in fact, a very dismal and terrific sort of Hades. The way to it lies through the dominion of Guthmund, Geruth's brother, which is described as a paradise, but a paradise of the same dubious attractions as that in Thomas of Erceldoune. Guthmund, himself a giant, receives the travellers, a band of about three hundred, very graciously, and conducts them to his palace. Thorkill takes his comrades apart, and puts them on their guard: they must eat and drink nothing that is offered them, but live on the provisions which they have brought, must keep off from the people of the place and not touch them; if they partake of any of the food, they will forget everything, and have to pass their lives in this foul society. Guthmund complains that they slight his hospitality, but Thorkill, now and always, has an excuse ready. The genial monarch offers Gormo one of his twelve beautiful daughters in marriage, and their choice of wives to all the rest of the train. Most of the Danes like the proposition, but Thorkill renews his warnings. Four take the bait, and lose all recollection of the past. Guthmund now commends the delicious fruits of his garden, and tries every art to make the king taste them. But he is again foiled by Thorkill, and clearly perceiving that he has met his match, transports the travellers over the river which separates him and his brother, and allows them to continue their journey.[foot-note]
C is translated by Talvj, Versuch, etc., p. 552; by Doenniges, p. 64; by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 246; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 14; by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen, p. 1; by Edward Barry, Cycle populaire de Robin Hood, p. 92; and by F.H. Bothe, Janus, p. 122, after Barry.
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