A was No 2 of the fifteen ballads in William Tytler's lost Brown Manuscript: Nichols's Illustrations, VII, 176. There is a copy of A in the Abbotsford Manuscript, "Scottish Songs," fol. 24, with many wilful alterations and a few readings from tradition. The ballad printed in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 204, is a compound of C, D, E, and the one in Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 77, is made up from I, J, "recited versions obtained in the north and west" of Scotland, with some slight changes.
The story of 'Willie o Winsbury,' No 100, has considerable resemblance to that of 'Johnie Scot,' but Willie's extreme beauty moves the king, the lady's father, to offer his daughter to him in marriage, without a combat. Mrs. Brown's version of 'Willie o Douglas Dale,' No 101, A, begins with the first stanza of her version of 'Johnie Scot,' A. So does 'Young Betrice,' another ballad of hers, No 5 of William Tytler's Manuscript:
Young Betrice was as brave a knight As ever saild the sea, And he 's taen him to the court of France, To serve for meat and fee.
Anderson, who cites this stanza, Nichols's Illustrations, as above, remarks: "The conduct of the story is different from that of No 2 ['Jack, the Little Scot'], which it resembles. Some of the lines are in 'Gil Morrice.'" 'Young Betrice' may possibly be a variety of 'Hugh Spencer:' see 'Hugh Spencer,' C.
There is resemblance to 'Child Maurice,' No 83, besides the commonplace of the messenger-boy, in the sending of a token to the lady, A 12, 13, D 6, B 2, H 4, 5, J 4, M 8, N 11, 12; 'Child Maurice,' A 7, 8, B 3, 4, C 3, 4, 5, D, E 6, 7, F 17, 18. In the present ballad the token is a sark of silk (M 8, simply shirt); so in 'Child Maurice,' D 7, F 18. The blessing on the errand-boy, A 8, is found in 'Fair Mary of Wallington,' No 91, B 9.
While John, the Scot, is in service at the English court, the king's daughter becomes with child to him. She is thrown into prison. Johnie, who has fled to Scotland, sends a messenger to her with a token which she will recognize, urging her to come to him. An answer is returned that she is in chains. Johnie resolves to go to the rescue. He is warned of the danger, but a body of Scots attends him, five hundred men, A-D, O, twenty-four, E, G, I; all unmarried, B, D, E, G, H, I, O. When he arrives at the English court, the king asks his name. His name is Pitnachton, A 26; McNaughtan, B 17, B 14, cf. C 16; Auchney, H 21; Buneftan, I 14; Jolinie Scot, Love John, C 17, K 12, L 13, N 26; Earl Hector, D 18. The king will hang the Scot on his daughter's account. Resistance is threatened by Johnie's friends. The king has a champion who will fight them three by three, A 29, B 20, E 18, F 17, N 30. This champion is an Italian, A 29, I 17, L 16, N 31, O 8; an Itilian, H 27; Talliant, Tailliant, C 22, D 23, F 17, G 16. The Scot kills the Italian in a duel. In C 24, D 25, F 19, G 18, the Italian jumps over Johnie's head, skims over it like a swallow, and is apparently run through while so doing. Johnie calls for a priest to marry his love and him, the king for a clerk to write the tocher. But tocher is refused by the Scot, who wants only his dearly won lady.
The champion is described in A 31 as a gurious (grugous, gruous?) ghost; in H 27 as a greecy (frightful) ghost; in L 18 he is a fearsome sight, with three women's-spans between his brows and three yards between his shoulders; in the Abbotsford copy of A, 29, 30, a grisly sight, with a span between his eyes, between his shoulders three and three, and Johnie scarcely reaching his knee. These points are probably taken from another and a later ballad, which is perhaps an imitation, and might almost be called a parody, of Johnie Scot, 'Lang Johnny Moir:' see Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 248.
The process of striping a sword oer a stane or to the stran, N 28, H 28, striking it across the plain, A 32, K 14, is that of whetting or wiping, already noted under No 81, II, 243 f. To the places cited there may be added 'Child Maurice,' F 30, 'Jellon Grame,' No 90, B 8, 21, C 14, 'The Baffled Knight,' No 112, A 10. G 202 is a manifest corruption, a repetition of 172; K 14 has been corrected, in conformity with A 32.
The Rev. Andrew Hall, in his Interesting Roman Antiquities recently discovered in Fife, 1823, p. 216, relates the following story, on traditional authority.[foot-note] James Macgill, of Lindores, had killed Sir Robert Balfour, of Denmiln, in a duel which he had wished to avoid, about the year 1679. Macgill "immediately went up to London in order to procure his pardon, which it seems the king, Charles the Second, offered to grant him upon condition of his fighting an Italian gladiator or bravo, or, as he was then called, a bully; which, it is said, none could be found to do... Accordingly a large stage was erected for the exhibition before the king and court... Sir James, it is said, stood on the defensive till the bully had spent himself a little, being a taller man than Sir James. In his mighty gasconading and bravadoing he actually leaped over the knight as if he would swallow him alive, but in attempting to do this a second time Sir James run his sword up through him, and then called out, 'I have spitted him; let them roast him who will.' This not only procured his pardon, but he was also knighted on the spot."
The exploit of Johnie Scot, and, if you please, of Sir James Macgill, has been achieved as well on the south side of the English Channel. The Breton seigneur Les Aubrays, or Lizandré, of St. Brieux, is ordered by the French king to undertake a combat with his wild Moor. Les Aubrays asks a page, who brings the king's command, about the Moor's fashion of fighting. The Moor is master of devilish magic, and has herbs about him by virtue of which any wounds he may get are soon healed. The Breton is told, among other things, that he must throw holy water at the Moor the moment the savage draws, and when the Moor makes a leap in the air he must receive him on the point of his sword. These instructions are followed with perfect success. When the Moor is "swimming" in the air, Lizandré so disposes his sword as to take him on it. Luzel, 'Lezobre,' etc., 'Les Aubrays et le More du Roi,' second and third versions, I, 300-03, 294, 295; 'Le Géant Lizandré' II, 568-71, 'Le Géant Les Aubrays,' 57679; Poésies populaires de la France, Manuscript, vol. i, near the beginning. Though the brave Breton is called giant in the title of Luzel's last two versions, nothing is said in the ballads of his being of unusual proportions. He is victorious in nineteen fights, but it is because of his profuse liberal ity to St Anne; it borders on the irreligious, therefore, to call him a giant.[foot-note]
The copy in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 204, is translated by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 15, Hausschatz, p. 210.
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