Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise Thomas the Rhymer, 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 prophetic sayings, which they habitually seek to connect with "dear years" and other notable public events. 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 hi 1338, and in the Auchinleck copy of 'Sir Tristrem,' thought to have been made about 1350, a Thomas is said to have been consulted at Erpeldoun 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 late chroniclers, and had as much credit in England as in Scotland. All this might have been if Thomas of Erceldoune had not been more historical than Merlin. But the name is known to have belonged to a real person. Just when he lived is not certain, but it was somewhere between 1210 and 1296 or 1297.
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 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. 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. This 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 with Thomas's return to fairy-land after a certain time passed in this world. The story of Thomas and the Elf-queen is but another version of what is related of Ogier le Danois and Morgan the Fay. 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, and must be of considerable age, though the earliest version (A) can be traced at furthest only into the first half of the eighteenth century.
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