'The Tayl of the ȝong Tamlene' is spoken of as told among a company of shepherds, in Vedderburn's Complaint of Scotland, 1549. 'Thom of Lyn' is mentioned as a dance of the same party, a little further on, and 'Young Thomlin' is the name of an air in a medley in Wood's Manuscript, inserted, as David Laing thought, between 1600 and 1620, and printed in Forbes's Cantus, 1666 (Stenhouse's ed. of The Scots Musical Museum, 1853, rv, 440). 'A ballett of Thomalyn' is licensed to Master John Wallye and Mistress Toye in 1558 (Arber, Registers of the Company of Stationers, 1, 22).
This fine ballad stands by itself, and is not, as might have been expected, found in possession of any people but the Scottish. Yet it has connections, through the principal feature in the story, the retransformation of Tam Lin, with Greek popular tradition older than Homer. There is a Cretan fairy tale cited by Bernhard Schmidt (Volksleben der Neugriechen, pp. 115-117) which comes surprisingly near to the principal event of the Scottish ballad. A young peasant, who was a good player on the rote, used to be taken by the nereids into their grotto, for the sake of his music. He fell in love with one of them, and, not knowing how to help himself, had recourse to an old woman of his village. She gave him this advice: that just before cock-crow he should seize his beloved by the hair, and hold on, unterrified, till the cock crew, whatever forms she should assume. The peasant gave good heed, and the next time he was taken into the cave fell to playing, as usual, and the nereids to dancing. But as cock-crow drew nigh, he put down his instrument, sprang upon the object of his passion, and grasped her by her locks. She instantly changed shape; became a dog, a snake, a camel, fire. But he kept his courage and held on, and presently the cock crew, and the nereids vanished, all but one. His love returned to her proper beauty, and went with him to his home. After the lapse of a year she bore a son, but in all this time never uttered a word. The good husband was fain to ask counsel of the old woman again, who told him to heat the oven hot, and say to his wife that if she would not speak he would throw the boy into the oven. He acted upon this prescription; the nereid cried out, 'Let go my child, dog!' tore the infant from his arms, and vanished.
This Cretan tale, recovered from tradition even later than our ballad, repeats all the important circumstances of the forced marriage of Thetis with Peleus (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, m, 13, 5, 6). The Cretan tale does not differ from the one repeated by Apollodorus frc-.a earlier writers a couple of thousand years ago more than two versions of a story gathered from oral tradition in these days are apt to do. Whether it has come down to our time from mouth to mouth through twenty-four centuries or more, or whether, having died out of the popular memory, it was reintroduced through literature, is a question that cannot be decided with certainty; but there will be nothing unlikely in the former supposition to those who bear in mind the tenacity of tradition among people who have never known books.
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