A Collection of Ballads | Page 3

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. Now only Sir Patrick Spens has so many widely different
variants as Mary Hamilton. These could hardly have been evolved
between 1719 and 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 1719 had not
knowledge or skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any
success.
We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard Mary
Hamilton 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 Lord
Bateman, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray. Their
form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the essence.
Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is beloved by the Turk's daughter (a
staple incident of old French romance), and by her released. The lady
after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he has just married a local
bride, but "orders another marriage," and sends home his bride "in a
coach and three." This incident is stereotyped in the ballads and occurs
in an example in the Romaic. {2}
Now Lord Bateman is Young Bekie in the Scotch ballads, who
becomes Young Beichan, Young Bichem, and so forth, and has

adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud
porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As
Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket,
Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard
how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester's
Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Percy Society. See Child's
Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, p. xv., 1827.)
The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of
ballad lore,