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A Collection of Ballads-Part34_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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From the BORDER MINSTRELSY. The ideas are mainly pre-Christian;

the Brig o' Dread occurs in Islamite and Iroquois belief, and in



almost all mythologies the souls have to cross a River. Music for

this dirge is given in Mr. Harold Boulton's and Miss Macleod's



SONGS OF THE NORTH.

THE LAIRD OF WARISTOUN



This version was taken down by Sir Walter Scott from his mother's

recitation, for Jamieson's book of ballads. Jamieson later



quarrelled bitterly with Sir Walter, as letters at Abbotsford

prove. A variant is given by Kinloch, and a longer, less poetical,



but more historically accurateversion is given by Buchan. The

House of Waristoun is, or lately was, a melancholy place hanging



above a narrow lake, in the northern suburbs of Edinburgh, near the

Water of Leith. Kincaid was the name of the Laird; according to



Chambers, the more famous lairds of Covenanting times were

Johnstons. Kincaid is said to have treated his wife cruelly,



wherefore she, or her nurse, engaged one Robert Weir, an old

servant of her father (Livingstone of Dunipace), to strangle the



unhappy man in his own bedroom (July 2, 1600). The lady was

beheaded, the nurse was burned, and, later, Weir was also executed.



The line

"I wish that ye may sink for sin"



occurs in an earlier ballad on Edinburgh Castle -

"And that all for the black dinner



Earl Douglas got therein."

MAY COLVEN



From Herd's MS. Versions occur in Polish, German, Magyar,

Portuguese, Scandinavian, and in French. The ballad is here



localised on the Carrick coast, near Girvan. The lady is called a

Kennedy of Culzean. Prof. Bugge regards this widely diffused



ballad as based on the Apocryphal legend of Judith and Holofernes.

If so, the legend is DIABLEMENT CHANGE EN ROUTE. More probably the



origin is a MARCHEN of a kind of RAKSHASA fatal to women. Mr.

Child has collected a vast mass of erudition on the subject, and by



no means acquiesces in Prof. Bugge's ingenious hypothesis.

JOHNIE FAA



From Pinkerton's Scottish Ballads. The event narrated is a legend

of the house of Cassilis (Kennedy), but is wholly unhistorical.



"Sir John Faa," in the fable, is aided by Gypsies, but, apparently,

is not one of the Earls of Egypt, on whom Mr. Crockett's novel, THE



RAIDERS, may be consulted. The ballad was first printed, as far as

is known, in Ramsay's TEA TABLE MISCELLANY.



HOBBIE NOBLE

The hero recurs in JOCK O' THE SIDE, and Jock o' the Mains is an



historicalcharacter, that is, finds mention in authentic records,

as Scott points out. The Armstrongs were deported in great



numbers, as "an ill colony," to Ulster, by James I. Sir Herbert

Maxwell's HISTORY OF DUMFRIES AND GALLOWAY may be consulted for



these and similar reivers.

THE TWA SISTERS



A version of "Binnorie." The ballad here ends abruptly; doubtless

the fiddler made fiddle-strings of the lady's hair, and a fiddle of



her breast-bone, while the instrument probably revealed the cruelty

of the sister. Other extant versions are composite or



interpolated, so this fragment (Sharpe's) has been preferred in

this place.



MARY AMBREE

Taken by Percy from a piece in the Pepys Collection. The girl



warrior is a favourite figure in popular romance. Often she slays

a treacherous lover, as in BILLY TAYLOR. Nothing is known of Mary



Ambree as an historicalpersonage; she may be as legendary as fair

maiden Lilias, of Liliarid's Edge, who "fought upon her stumps."



In that case the local name is demonstrably earlier than the

mythical Lilias, who fought with such tenacity.



ALISON GROSS

Jamieson gave this ballad from a manuscript, altering the spelling



in conformity with Scots orthography. Mr. Child prints the

manuscript; here Jamieson's more familiar spelling is retained.



The idea of the romance occurs in a Romaic MARCHEN, but, in place

of the Queen of Faery, a more beautiful girl than the sorceress



(Nereid in Romaic), restores the youth to his true shape. Mr.

Child regarded the tale as "one of the numerous wild growths" from



BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. It would be more correct to say that BEAUTY




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