In the romantic class,we may take TAMLANE.Here the idea of fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular;they also steal young men as lovers,and again,men may win fairy brides,by clinging to them through all transformations.A classical example is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus,and Child quotes a modern Cretan example.The dipping in milk and water,I may add,has precedent in ancient Egypt (in THE TWO BROTHERS),and in modern Senegambia.The fairy tax,tithe,or teind,paid to Hell,is illustrated by old trials for witchcraft,in Scotland.(1)Now,in literary forms and romance,as in OGIER LE DANOIS,persons are carried away by the Fairy King or Queen.But here the literary romance borrows from popular superstition;the ballad has no need to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance.On the whole subject the curious may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves,Fauns,and Fairies,"by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle,himself,according to tradition,a victim of the fairies.
Thus,in TAMLANE,the whole DONNEE is popular.But the current version,that of Scott,is contaminated,as Scott knew,by incongruous modernisms.Burns's version,from tradition,already localizes the events at Carterhaugh,the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow.But Burns's version does not make the Earl of Murray father of the hero,nor the Earl of March father of the heroine.
Roxburgh is the hero's father in Burns's variant,which is more plausible,and the modern verses do not occur.This ballad apparently owes nothing to literary romance.
In MARY HAMILTON we have a notable instance of the Historical Ballad.No Marie of Mary Stuart's suffered death for child murder.
She had no Marie Hamilton,no Marie Carmichael among her four Maries,though a lady of the latter name was at her court.But early in the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen's was hanged,with her paramour,an apothecary,for slaying her infant.Knox mentions the fact,which is also recorded in letters from the English ambassador,uncited by Mr.Child.Knox adds that there were ballads against the Maries.Now,in March 1719,a Mary Hamilton,of Scots descent,a maid of honour of Catherine of Russia,was hanged for child murder (CHILD,vi.383).It has therefore been supposed,first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long ago,later by Professor Child,and then by Mr.Courthope,that our ballad is of 1719,or later,and deals with the Russian,not the Scotch,tragedy.
To this we may reply (1)that we have no example of such a throwing back of a contemporary event,in ballads.(2)There is a version (CHILD,viii.507)in which Mary Hamilton's paramour is a "pottinger,"or apothecary,as in the real old Scotch affair.(3)The number of variants of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to its antiquity and wide distribution.
These could hardly have been evolved between 1719and 1790,when Burns quotes the poem as an old ballad.(4)We have no example of a poem so much in the old ballad manner,for perhaps a hundred and fifty years before 1719.The style first degraded and then expired:
compare ROB ROY and KILLIECRANKIE,in this collection,also the ballads of LOUDOUN HILL,THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH,and others much earlier than 1719.New styles of popular poetry on contemporary events as SHERRIFFMUIR and TRANENT BRAE had arisen.(5)The extreme historic inaccuracy of MARY HAMILTON is paralleled by that of all the ballads on real events.The mention of the Pottinger is a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian affair,and there is no room,says Professor Child,for the supposition that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist,to tally with the narrative in Knox's History.
On the other side,we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a tragic event of 1719,but then the name does not uniformly appear in the variants of the ballad.The lady is there spoken of generally as Mary Hamilton,but also as Mary Myle,Lady Maisry,as daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart),as Marie Mild,and so forth.
Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom,she is not abroad,but in Edinburgh town.Nothing can be less probable than that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719,telling the tale of a yesterday's tragedy in Russia,should throw the time back by a hundred and fifty years,should change the scene to Scotland (the heart of the sorrow would be Mary's exile),and,above all,should compose a ballad in a style long obsolete.This is not the method of the popular poet,and such imitations of the old ballad as HARDYKNUTE show that literary poets of 1719had not knowledge or skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.
We may,therefore,even in face of Professor Child,regard MARYHAMILTON as an old example of popular perversion of history in ballad,not as "one of the very latest,"and also "one of the very best"of Scottish popular ballads.
ROB ROY shows the same power of perversion.It was not Rob Roy but his sons,Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail),and James Mohr (alternately the spy,the Jacobite,and the Hanoverian spy once more),who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly.Indeed a kind of added epilogue,in a different measure,proves that a poet was aware of the facts,and wished to correct his predecessor.
Such then are ballads,in relation to legend and history.They are,on the whole,with exceptions,absolutely popular in origin,composed by men of the people for the people,and then diffused among and altered by popular reciters.In England they soon won their way into printed stall copies,and were grievously handled and moralized by the hack editors.
No ballad has a stranger history than THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORDBATEMAN,illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray.