Pp. 294, 520. St. George Our Lady's Knight. 'Swete Sainct George, our ladies knyght,' Skelton, 'Against the Scottes,' v. 141, Dyce, I, 186; 'Thankyd be Saynte Gorge our ladyes knythe,' in the 'Ballade of the Scot- tysche Kynge,' p. 95 of the fac-simile edition by J. Ashton, 1882 (where the passage is somewhat different). In his note, II, 220, to the poem 'Against the Scottes,' Dyce remarks that St. George is called Our Lady's Knight "in a song written about the same time as the present poem, Cott. Manuscript Domit. A. xviii. fol. 248." This appears to be the song quoted from the same Manuscript by Sir H. Ellis, Original Letters, First Series, I, 79:
In his Chorus de Dis, super triumphali victoria contra Gallos, etc., Skelton speaks of St. George as Gloria Cappadocis divæ milesque Mariæ, v. 13; Dyce, I, 191. See also John Anstis, The Register of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, London, 1724, 1, 122; II, 27, 48 f. (G.L.K.)
299. C. First published in the second edition of the Minstrelsy, 1803, I, 27. 13,4 there read The doughty earl of Douglas rode Into England, to catch a prey; 311, Yield thee, O yield thee, etc., and 313, Whom to shall I yield, said, etc.
For his later edition of 'The Battle of Otterburn,' Scott says he used "two copies ... obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest." James Hogg sent Scott, in a letter dated September 10 (1802?), twenty-nine stanzas "collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind," and subsequently recovered, by "pumping" his "old friends' memory," other lines and half lines out of which (using the necessary cement, and not a little) he built up eleven stanzas more, and these he seems to have forwarded in the same letter. These two communications are what is described by Scott as two copies. They will be combined here according to Hogg's directions, and the second set of verses bracketed for distinction.
The materials out of which C was constructed can now easily be separated. We must bear in mind that Scott allowed himself a liberty of alteration; this he did not, however, carry very far in the present instance. 1-13, 15-19, 23 are taken, with slight change or none, from Hogg's first "copy" of verses; 24, 26-29 from the second; 30-35 are repeated from Scott's first edition. 14 is altered from A 16; 20 = Hogg 211,2 + Scott; 21 = Hogg 221 + Hogg 352-4; 22 = Hogg 231,3 + Scott; 25 = Hogg 281 + B 82-4. Scott did well to drop Hogg 9, and ought to have dropped Hogg 8.
"Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy," No 132, Abbotsford, stanzas 1-24, 35-38, 40; the same, No 5, stanzas 25-34, 39. Communicated to Scott, in a letter, by James Hogg.
Hogg writes:
"As for the scraps of Otterburn which I have got, they seem to have been some confused jumble, made by some person who had learned both the songs which you have, and in time had been straitened to make one out of them both. But you shall have it as I had it, saving that, as usual, I have sometimes helped the measure, without altering one original word."
After 24: "This ballad, which I have collected from two different people, a crazy old man and a woman deranged in her mind, seems hitherto considerably entire; but now, when it becomes most interesting, they have both failed me, and I have been obliged to take much of it in plain prose. However, as none of them seemed to know anything of the history save what they had learned from the song, I took it the more kindly. Any few verses which follow are to me unintelligible.
"He told Sir Hugh that he was dying, and ordered him to conceal his body, and neither let his own men nor Piercy's know; which he did, and the battle went on headed by Sir Hugh Montgomery, and at length" (35, etc.).
After 38: "Piercy seems to have been fighting devilishly in the dark; indeed, my relaters added no more, but told me that Sir Hugh died on the field, but that" (40).
In the postscript, Hogg writes:
"Not being able to get the letter away to the post, I have taken the opportunity of again pumping my old friends' memory, and have recovered some more lines and half lines of Otterburn, of which I am become somewhat enamourd. These I have been obliged to arrange somewhat myself, as you will see below; but so mixed are they with original lines and sentences that I think, if you pleased, they might pass without any acknowledgment. Sure no man will like an old song the worse of being somewhat harmonious. After [24] you may read [25-34]. Then after [38] read [39]."
Of Almonshire [32] Hogg writes: "Almon shire may probably be a corruption of Banburgh shire, but as both my relaters called it so, I thought proper to preserve it."
Andrew Livingston writes to Scott, Airds by Castle Douglas, 28th April, 1806, Letters, I, No 183: "My mother recollects seven or eight verses of the ballad of 'The Battle of Otterburn' different from any I have seen either in the first and second editions of the Minstrelsy or in Percy's Reliques... In several parts they bear a great resemblance to the copy in the first edition of the Minstrelsy."
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