Part 8 (1/2)

Had we twa been upon the green, And never an eye to see, I should hae had ye flesh and fell, But your sword shall gae wi' me.

That rings true! Moreover, had either Hogg or Scott tampered here (Scott excised), either would have made Douglas carry off--not Percy's SWORD, but the historic captured PENNON of Percy. Scott really could not have resisted the temptation had he been interpolating a son devis.

But your PENNON shall gae wi' me!

It was easy to write in that!

Percy had challenged Douglas thus -

But gae ye up to Otterburn, And there wait days three (xi.),

as in the English (xiii.). In the English, Percy, we saw, promises game enough there; in Hogg, Douglas demurs (xii., xiii., xiv.). There are no supplies at Otterburn, he says -

To feed my men and me.

The deer rins wild frae dale to dale, The birds fly wild frae tree to tree, And there is neither bread nor kale, To fend my men and me.

These seem to me sound true ballad lines, like -

My hounds may a' rin masterless My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,

in Child's variant of Young Beichan. The speakers, we see, are ”inverted.” Percy, in the English, promises Douglas's men pheasants-- absurd provision for the army of 40,000 men of the English ballad. In the Ettrick text Douglas says that there are no supplies, merely ferae naturae, but he will wait at Otterburn to give Percy his chance.

Colonel Elliot takes the inversion of parts as a proof of modern pilfering and deliberate change to hide the theft; at least he mentions them, and the ”prettier verses,” with a note of exclamation (!). {73a} But there are, we repeat, similar inversions in the English and in Herd's old copy, and n.o.body says that Scott or Hogg or any modern faker made the inversions in Herd's text. The differences and inversions in the English and in Herd are very ancient; by 1550 ”the Percy and the Montgomery met,” in the line quoted in The Complaynte of Scotland. At about the same period (1550) it was the Percy and the Douglas who met, in the English version. Manifestly there pre-existed, by 1550, an old ballad, which either a Scot then perverted from the English text, or an Englishman from the Scots. Thus the inversions in the Ettrick and English version need not be due (they are not due) to a MODERN ”faker.”

In the Hogg MS. (xxiii.), Percy wounds Douglas ”till backwards he did flee.” Hogg was too good a Scot to interpolate the flight of Douglas; and Scott was so good a Scot that--what do you suppose he did?--he excised ”till backwards he did flee” from Hogg's text, and inserted ”that he fell to the ground” FROM THE ENGLISH TEXT!

In the Hogg MS. (xviii., xix.), in Scott xvii., xviii., Douglas, at Otterburn, is roused from sleep by his page with news of Percy's approach. Douglas says that the page lies (compare Herd, where Douglas doubts the page) -

For Percy hadna' men yestreen To dight my men and me.

There is nothing in this to surprise any one who knows the innumerable variants in traditional ballads. But now comes in a very curious variation (Hogg MS. xx., Scott, xix.). Douglas says (Hogg MS. xx.) -

But I have seen a dreary dream Beyond the Isle o' Skye, I saw a dead man won the fight, And I think that man was I.

Here is something not in Herd, and as remote from the manner of the English poet, with his

The Chronicle will not lie,