Part 5 (1/2)
”I, Donald, chief of the Macdonalds, give here, in my castle, a right to Mackay, to Kilmahumag, from this day till to-morrow and so on for ever.”
”Mise Donull nau Donull, Am shuidh air Dun Donuill, Toirt cir do Mhac-aigh air Kilmahumaig, O'n diugh gus a maireach 'S gu la bhrath mar sin.”[138]
At Scarborough there is an old proverbial saying as to ”Scarborough Warning,” which has had various accounts given of its origin,[139] but the true explanation of which is that it is the fragment of an ancient legal formula of the kind we are investigating. Abraham De la Pryme describes it in his seventeenth-century diary as follows:--
”Scarburg Warning is a proverb in many places of the north, signifying any sudden warning given upon any account. Some think it arose from the sudden comeing of an enemy against the castle there, and haveing dischargd a broad side, then commands them to surrender. Others think that the proverb had it's original from other things, but all varys. However, this is the true origin thereof.
”The town is a corporation town, and tho' it is very poor now to what it was formerly, yet it has a ... who is commonly some poor man, they haveing no rich ones amongst them. About two days before Michilma.s.s day the sayd ... being arrayed in his gown of state he mounts upon horseback, and has his attendants with him, and the macebear[er] carrying the mace before him, with two fidlers and a base viol. Thus marching in state (as bigg as the lord mare of London) all along the sh.o.r.e side, they make many halts, and the cryer crys thus with a strange sort of a singing voyce, high and low:--
”'Whay! Whay! Whay!
Pay your gavelage, ha!
Between this and Michaelmas Day, Or you'll be fined I, say!'
”Then the fiddlers begins to dance, and caper and plays, fit to make one burst with laughter that sees and hears them. Then they go on again and crys as before, with the greatest majesty and gravity immaginable, none of this comical crew being seen so much as to smile all the time, when as spectators are almost bursten with laughing. This is the true origin of the proverb, for this custome of gavelage is a certain tribute that every house pays to the ... when he is pleased to call for it, and he gives not above one day warning, and may call for it when he pleases.”[140]
Rhyming tenures have been frequently noted but never understood. They occur in many parts of the country. The t.i.thingman of Combe Keynes, in Dorsets.h.i.+re, is obliged to do suit at Winforth Court, and after repeating the following incoherent lines, pays threepence and goes away without saying another word:--
”With my white rod And I am a fourth post That three pence makes three G.o.d bless the King, and the lord of the franchise Our weights and our measures are lawful and true Good morrow Mr. Steward I have no more to say to you.”[141]
It is hardly necessary to quote more examples. They are not unknown to the historian, but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily a.s.sumed to be spurious or even burlesque.[142] But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and has then become gradually altered.
All these rhyming tenures, indeed, find their place among the traditional examples of legal formulae. They are the local offshoots preserved because of their legal significance, preserved by those interested from their legal side. Because they are not preserved in the formal codes they need not be neglected, and they must not be misunderstood. They are not to be put on one side by the historian as freaks of local landowners. They are real descendants by traditional lines from the times when laws were not written, but kept alive in the memory by means of such a.s.sistance as rhyme could supply, and from the tribesmen who thus treasured the law they obeyed.[143]
That this branch of recorded law is not only early but tribal is undoubted, but perhaps it will be well to refer to tribal rhyming formulae of an independent kind in order to show by parallel evidence the tribal characteristics. In 1884 Mr. Posnett drew attention to this important subject, and noted that
”Dr. Brown, in an attempt to sketch the origin of poetry--an attempt which attracted the attention of Bishop Percy in his remarks introductory to the _Reliques_--proposed more than one hundred years ago to discover the source of the combined dance, song, melody, and mimetic action of primitive compositions in the common festivals of clan life. The student of comparative literature will probably regard Dr.
Brown's theory as a curious antic.i.p.ation of the historical method in a study which, in spite of M.
Taine's efforts, has made so little progress as yet.
The clan ethic of inherited guilt and vicarious punishment has attracted considerable attention. But the clan poetry of the ancient Arabs and of the bard-clans, surviving in the Hebrew sons of Asaph or the Greek Homeridae, has not received that light from comparative inquiry which the closely connected problems of primitive music and metre would alone amply deserve.”[144]
Not much has been done since this was penned. Max Muller had previously, in 1847, declared that the Rig Veda consisted of the clan songs of the Hindu people,[145] but the importance of such a conclusion has been entirely neglected. In the meantime evidence is acc.u.mulating that in Britain there are still preserved many examples of clan songs. Thus Lord Archibald Campbell has published, in the first volume of his _Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition_, some sixteen or seventeen sagas. Some of these are clan-traditions; and the editor notes as evidence of their antiquity the fact that none of them makes any mention of firearms. These clan-traditions all relate to feuds and vendettas; and in one case it is expressly recorded that the descendants of one of the foes of the clan, in their account of the incident narrated, ”altered this tradition and reversed the main facts.” This has been followed by a volume definitely devoted to ”clan-traditions,”[146] while in the _Carmina Gadelica_ and many of the Highland incantations there are preserved specimens of ancient clan songs.
The most interesting of the tribal songs is that preserved at the Hawick Common riding. The burgh officers form the van of a pageant which insensibly carries us back to ancient times, and in some verses sung on the occasion there is a refrain which has been known for ages as the slogan of Hawick. It is ”Teribus ye teri Odin,” which is probably a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon, ”Tyr habbe us, ye Tyr ye Odin”--May Tyr uphold us, both Tyr and Odin.
Fortunately Dr. Murray has investigated this formula, and I will quote what he says:--
”A relic of North Anglian heathendom seems to be preserved in a phrase which forms the local slogan of the town of Hawick, and which, as the name of a peculiar local air, and the refrain, or 'owerword' of a.s.sociated ballads, has been connected with the history of the town back to 'fable-shaded eras.'
Different words have been sung to the tune from time to time, and none of those now extant can lay claim to any antiquity; but a.s.sociated with all, and yet identified with none, the refrain '_Tyr-ibus ye Tyr ye Odin_,' Tyr haeb us, ye Tyr ye Odin! Tyr keep us, both Tyr and Odin! (by which name the tune also is known) appears to have come down, scarcely mutilated, from the time when it was the burthen of the song of the gleo-mann or scald, or the invocation of a heathen Angle warrior, before the northern Hercules and the blood-red lord of battles had yielded to the 'pale G.o.d' of the Christians.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AULD CA-KNOWE: CALLING THE BURGESS ROLL]
[Ill.u.s.tration: HAWICK MOAT AT SUNRISE]
And in a note Dr. Murray adds:--
”The ballad now connected with the air of 'Tyribus'
commemorates the laurels gained by the Hawick youth at and after the disastrous battle, when, in the words of the writer,
”'Our sires roused by ”Tyr ye Odin,”