Part 7 (1/2)

The Percy and the Douglas met, That either of other was fain, They swapped together while that they sweat, With swords of fine Collayne. (Cologne steel.)

Douglas bids Percy yield, but Percy slays Douglas (as in Walsingham's and other contemporary chronicles, stanzas li.-lvi.). The Scottish losses are then enumerated (only eighteen Scots were left alive!), and stanza lix. runs -

This fray began at Otterburn Between the night and the day.

There the Douglas lost his life, And the Percy was led away.

Herd ends -

This deed was done at Otterburn, About the breaking of the day, Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush, And Percy led captive away.

Manifestly, either the maker of Herd's version knew the English, and altered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered at pleasure. The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably. But when Scott's original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in a part of the ballad missing in Herd's brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes that NOW the exchanges are by a modern ballad- forger, shall we say Sir Walter? By Sir Walter they certainly are NOT!

One tiny hint of Scots originality is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men ”win their hay” at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be NORTHUMBRIAN, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin.

If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.

The Scots version (Herd's) insists on Douglas's burial ”by the bracken bush,” to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender. This is obviously done to hide his body and keep his death secret from both parties, AS IN FROISSART HE BIDS HIS FRIENDS DO. The verse of the English (l.) on the fight between Douglas and Percy, is borrowed by, or is borrowed from, the Scottish stanza (ix.) in Herd, where Sir Hugh Montgomery fights Percy.

Then Percy and Montgomery met, And weel a wot they warna fain; They swaped swords, and they twa swat, And ay the blood ran down between.

The Persses and the Mongomry met,

as quoted, is already familiar in The Complaynte of Scotland (about 1549), and this line is not in the English ballad. So far it seems as if the English balladist borrowed the scene from a Scots version, and perverted it into a description of a fight, between Percy, who wins, and Douglas--in place of the Scots version, the victory over Percy of Sir Hugh Montgomery.

This transference of incidents in the English and Scottish ballads is a phenomenon which we are to meet again in the ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead. One ”maker” or the other has, in old times, pirated and perverted the ballad of another ”maker.”

SCOTT'S TRADITIONAL COPY AND HOW HE EDITED IT

As early as December 1802-January 1803, Scott was ”so anxious to have a complete Scottish Otterburn that I will omit the ballad entirely in the first volume (of 1803), hoping to recover it in time for insertion in the third.” {67a}

The letter is undated, but is determined by Scott's expressed interest ”about the Tus.h.i.+elaw lines, which, from what you mention, must be worth recovering.” In a letter (Abbotsford MSS.) from Hogg to Scott (marked in copy, ”January 7, 1803”) Hogg encloses ”the Tus.h.i.+elaw lines,” which were popular in Ettrick, but were verses of the eighteenth century.

They were orally repeated, but literary in origin.

Scott, who wanted ”a complete Scottish Otterburn” in winter 1802, did not sit down and make one. He waited till he got a text from Hogg, in 1805, and published an edited version in 1806.

SCOTT'S PUBLISHED stanza i. is Herd's stanza i., with slight verbal changes taken from the Hogg MS. text of 1805. (?) Hogg's MS. and Scott, in stanza ii., give Herd's lines on the Lindsays and Gordons, adding the Grahams, and, in place of Herd's

The Earl of Fife, And Sir Hugh Montgomery upon a grey,

they end thus -