Part 14 (1/2)

My own opinion has been antic.i.p.ated by Mr. Frank Miller in his The Poets of Dumfriess.h.i.+re (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well equipped. He says: ”The balance of probability seems to be in favour of the originality of Kinmont Willie,” rather than of Satch.e.l.ls (he means, not of our Kinmont Willie as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning the Kinmont). ”Captain Walter Scott's” (of Satch.e.l.ls) ”True History was certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as out of formal histories, and his account of the a.s.sault on the Castle reads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay.”

Does Satch.e.l.ls' version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay?

Undoubtedly it does.

Satch.e.l.ls' prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie -

It fell about the Martinmas When kine was in the prime

that Willie ”brought a prey out of Northumberland.” The old ballad, disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula.

Lord Scrope vowed vengence:-

Took Kinmont the self-same night.

If he had had but ten men more, That had been as stout as he, Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta'en With all his company.

Scott's ballad (stanza i.) says that ”fause Sakelde” and Scrope took Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby DID), and

Had Willie had but twenty men, But twenty men as stout as he, Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta'en, Wi' eight score in his c.u.mpanie.

Manifestly either Satch.e.l.ls is here ”pirating” a verse of a ballad (as Scott holds) or Scott, if he had NO ballad fragments before him, is ”pirating” a verse from Satch.e.l.ls, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.

In my opinion, Satch.e.l.ls had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like Jamie Telfer, ”It fell about the Martinmas tyde,” or, like Otterburn, ”It fell about the Lammas tide,” and he opened with this formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, ”If he had had but ten men more,” which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott's ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satch.e.l.ls is again reminiscent of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.

In the ballad (iii.-viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table.

Satch.e.l.ls also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises to ”take his leave” of Scrope before he quits the Castle.

In Scott's ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).

Before ye cross my castle yate, I trow ye shall take fareweel o' me.

Willie replies -

I never yet lodged in a hostelrie, But I paid my lawing before I gaed.

In Satch.e.l.ls, Lord Scrope says -

”Before thou goest away thou must Even take thy leave of me?”

”By the cross of my sword,” says Willie then, ”I'll take my leave of thee.”