A Bundle of Ballads | Page 4

towards their conquest by the kings of England, and many French
words were used with a homely turn in Scottish common speech. Even
that national source of joy, "great chieftain of the pudding-race," the
haggis, has its name from the French hachis. At the end of the old
ballad of "Chevy Chase," which reads the corrupted word into a new
sense, as the Hunting on the Cheviot Hills, there is an identifying of the
Hunting of the Cheviot with the Battle of Otterburn:--
"Old men that knowen the ground well enough call it the Battle of

Otterburn.
At Otterburn began this spurn upon a Monenday;
There was the
doughty Douglas slain, the Percy never went away."
The Battle of Otterburn was fought on the 19th of August 1388. The
Scots were to muster at Jedburgh for a raid into England. The Earl of
Northumberland and his sons, learning the strength of the Scottish
gathering, resolved not to oppose it, but to make a counter raid into
Scotland. The Scots heard of this and divided their force. The main
body, under Archibald Douglas and others, rode for Carlisle. A
detachment of three or four hundred men-at-arms and two thousand
combatants, partly archers, rode for Newcastle and Durham, with
James Earl of Douglas for one of their leaders. These were already
pillaging and burning in Durham when the Earl of Northumberland first
heard of them, and sent against them his sons Henry and Ralph Percy.
In a hand-to-hand fight between Douglas and Henry Percy, Douglas
took Percy's pennon. At Otterburn the Scots overcame the English but
Douglas fell, struck by three spears at once, and Henry was captured in
fight by Lord Montgomery. There was a Scots ballad on the Battle of
Otterburn quoted in 1549 in a book--"The Complaynt of Scotland"--
that also referred to the Hunttis of Chevet. The older version of "Chevy
Chase" is in an Ashmole MS. in the Bodleian, from which it was first
printed in 1719 by Thomas Hearne in his edition of William of
Newbury's History. Its author turns the tables on the Scots with the
suggestion of the comparative wealth of England and Scotland in men
of the stamp of Douglas and Percy. The later version, which was once
known more widely, is probably not older than the time of James I.,
and is the version praised by Addison in Nos. 70 and 74 of "The
Spectator."
"The Nut-Brown Maid," in which we can hardly doubt that a woman
pleads for women, was first printed in 1502 in Richard Arnold's
Chronicle. Nut-brown was the old word for brunette. There was an old
saying that "a nut-brown girl is neat and blithe by nature."
"Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslie" was first

printed by Copland about 1550. A fragment has been found of an
earlier impression. Laneham, in 1575, in his Kenilworth Letter,
included "Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of Cloudeslie"
among the light reading of Captain Cox. In the books of the Stationers'
Company (for the printing and editing of which we are deeply indebted
to Professor Arber), there is an entry between July 1557 and July 1558,
"To John kynge to prynte this boke Called Adam Bell etc. and for his
lycense he giveth to the howse." On the 15th of January 1581-2 "Adam
Bell" is included in a list of forty or more copyrights transferred from
Sampson Awdeley to John Charlewood; "A Hundred Merry Tales" and
Gower's "Confessio Amantis" being among the other transfers. On the
16th of August 1586 the Company of Stationers "Alowed vnto Edward
white for his copies these fyve ballades so that they be tollerable:" four
only are named, one being "A ballad of William Clowdisley, never
printed before." Drayton wrote in the "Shepheard's Garland" in 1593:--
"Come sit we down under this hawthorn tree,
The morrow's light shall lend us day enough--
And tell a tale of
Gawain or Sir Guy,
Of Robin Hood, or of good Clem of the Clough."
Ben Jonson, in his "Alchemist," acted in 1610, also indicates the
current popularity of this tale, when Face, the housekeeper, brings
Dapper, the lawyer's clerk, to Subtle, and recommends him with--
"'slight, I bring you
No cheating Clim o' the Clough or Claribel."
"Binnorie," or "The Two Sisters," is a ballad on an old theme popular
in Scandinavia as well as in this country. There have been many
versions of it. Dr. Rimbault published it from a broadside dated 1656.
The version here given is Sir Walter Scott's, from his "Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border," with a few touches from other versions given in
Professor Francis James Child's noble edition of "The English and
Scottish Popular Ballads," which, when complete, will be the chief
storehouse of our ballad lore.
"King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid"