A Bundle of Ballads. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ of Robyn Hood," printed in London by Wynken de Worde, and again in Edinburgh by Chepman and Myllar in 1508, in the first year of the establishment of a printing-press in Scotland.

      "King Edward IV. and the Tanner of Tamworth" is a ballad of a kind once popular; there were "King Alfred and the Neatherd," "King Henry and the Miller," "King James I. and the Tinker," "King Henry VII. and the Cobbler," with a dozen more. "The Tanner of Tamworth" in another, perhaps older, form, as "The King and the Barker," was printed by Joseph Ritson in his "Ancient Popular Poetry."

      "Sir Patrick Spens" was first published by Percy in his "Reliques of Ancient English Poetry" (1757). It was given by Sir Walter Scott in his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and with more detail by Peter Buchan in his "Ancient Ballads of the North." Buchan took it from an old blind ballad-singer who had recited it for fifty years, and learnt it in youth from another very old man. The ballad is upon an event in Scottish history of the thirteenth century, touching marriage of a Margaret, daughter of the King of Scotland, to Haningo, son of the King of Norway. The perils of a winter sea-passage in ships of the olden time were recognised by an Act of the reign of James III. of Scotland, prohibiting all navigation "frae the feast of St. Simon's Day and Jude unto the feast of the Purification of our Lady, called Candlemas."

      "Edom o' Gordon" was first printed at Glasgow by Robert and Andrew Foulis in 1755. Percy ascribed its preservation to Sir David Dalrymple, who gave it from the memory of a lady. The incident was transferred to the border from the North of Scotland. Edom o' Gordon was Sir Adam Gordon of Auchindown, Lieutenant-Depute for Queen Mary in the North in 1571. He sent Captain Ker with soldiers against the Castle of Towie, which was set on fire, and the Lady of Towie, with twenty-six other persons, "was cruelly brint to the death." Other forms of the ballad ascribe the deed, with incidents of greater cruelty, to Captain Carr, the Lord of Estertowne.

      "The Children in the Wood" was entered in the books of the Stationers' Company on the 15th of October 1595 to Thomas Millington as, "for his Copie vnder th[e h]andes of bothe the wardens a ballad intituled, The Norfolk gent his will and Testament and how he Commytted the keepinge of his Children to his owne brother whoe delte moste wickedly with them and howe God plagued him for it." It was printed as a black-letter ballad in 1670. Addison wrote a paper on it in "The Spectator" (No. 85), praising it as "one of the darling songs of the common people."

      "The Blind Beggar of Bednall Green" is in many collections, and was known in Elizabeth's time, another Elizabethan ballad having been set to the tune of it. "This very house," wrote Samuel Pepys in June 1663 of Sir William Rider's house at Bethnal Green, "was built by the blind beggar of Bednall Green, so much talked of and sung in ballads; but they say it was only some outhouses of it." The Angels that abounded in the Beggar's stores were gold coins, so named from the figure on one side of the Archangel Michael overcoming the Dragon. This coin was first struck in 1466, and it was used until the time of Charles the First.

      "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington," or "True Love Requited," is a ballad in Pepys's collection, now in the Bodleian. The Islington of the Ballad is supposed to be an Islington in Norfolk.

      "Barbara Allen's Cruelty" was referred to by Pepys in his Diary, January 2, 1665–6 as "the little Scotch song of Barbary Allen." It was first printed by Allan Ramsay (in 1724) in his "Tea-Table Miscellany." In the same work Allan Ramsay was also the first printer of "Sweet William's Ghost."

      Fragments of "The Braes o' Yarrow" are in old collections. The ballad has been given by Scott in his "Minstrelsy of the Border," and another version is in Peter Buchan's "Ancient Ballads of the North."

      "Kemp Owyne" is here given from Buchan's "Ballads of the North of Scotland." Here also Professor F. J. Child has pointed to many Icelandic, Danish, and German analogies. Allied to "Kemp Owyne" is the modern ballad of "The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heughs," written before 1778 by the Rev. Mr. Lamb of Norham; but the "Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea" is an older cousin to "Kemp Owyne."

      "O'er the Water to Charlie" is given by Buchan as the original form of this one of the many songs made when Prince Charles Edward made his attempt in 1745–6. The songs worked scraps of lively old tunes, with some old words of ballad, into declaration of goodwill to the Pretender.

      "Admiral Hosier's Ghost" was written by Richard Glover in 1740 to rouse national feeling. Vice-Admiral Vernon with only six men-of-war had taken the town of Portobello, and levelled its fortifications. The place has so dangerous a climate that it is now almost deserted. Admiral Hosier in 1726 had been, in the same port, with twenty ships, restrained from attack, while he and his men were dying of fever. He was to blockade the Spanish ports in the West Indies and capture any Spanish galleons that came out. He left Porto Bello for Carthagena, where he cruised about while his men were being swept away by disease. His ships were made powerless through death of his best officers and men. He himself at last died, it was said, of a broken heart. Dyer's ballad pointed the contrast as a reproach to the Government for half-hearted support of the war, and was meant for suggestion of the success that would reward vigorous action.

      "Jemmy Dawson" was a ballad written by William Shenstone on a young officer of Manchester volunteers who was hanged, drawn, and quartered in 1746 on Kennington Common for having served the Pretender. He was engaged to a young lady, who came to the execution, and when it was over fell back dead in her coach.

      "William and Margaret," by David Mallet, published in 1727, is another example of the tendency to the revival of the ballad in the eighteenth century.

      "Elfinland Wood," by the Scottish poet William Motherwell, who died in 1835, aged thirty-seven, is a modern imitation of the ancient Scottish ballad. Mrs. Hemans, who wrote "Casabianca," died also in 1835. But the last ballad in this bundle, Lady Anne Barnard's "Auld Robin Gray," was written in 1771, and owes its place to a desire that this volume, which begins with the best of the old ballads, should end with the best of the new. Lady Anne, eldest daughter of the fifth Earl of Balcarres, married Sir Andrew Barnard, librarian to George III., and survived her husband eighteen years. While the authorship of the piece remained a secret there were some who attributed it to Rizzio, the favourite of Mary Queen of Scots. Lady Anne Barnard acknowledged the authorship to Walter Scott in 1823, and told how she came to write it to an old air of which she was passionately fond, "Bridegroom grat when the sun gaed down." When she had heaped many troubles on her heroine, and called to a little sister to suggest another, the suggestion came promptly, "Steal the cow, sister Anne." And the cow was stolen.

      H. M.

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       Table of Contents

      The Percy out of Northumberland, and avow to God made he

       That he would hunt in the mountains of Cheviot within days three,

       In the maugre of doughty Douglas and all that ever with him be,

       The fattest harts in all Cheviot he said he would kill and carry them

       away.

       "By my faith," said the doughty Douglas again, "I will let that

       hunting if that I may!"

       Then the Percy out of Bamborough came, with him a mighty mean-y;

       With fifteen hundred archers, bold of blood and bone, they were chosen

       out of shires three.

       This began on a Monday, at morn, in Cheviot, the hillis so hie,

       The child may rue that is unborn, it was the СКАЧАТЬ