[304] See the letter of Dr Anderson to Bishop Percy, December 29, 1800, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, VII, 178 f.

[305] Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, pp. 211-224. See, also, Scott's Minstrelsy, IV, 110-116, 129-151, ed. 1833. But, above all, Dr J. A. H. Murray's Introduction to The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, 1875.

[306] Hector Boece (1527) says the surname was Leirmont, but there is no evidence for this that is of value. See Murray, p. xiii.

[307] The five copies have been edited by Dr J. A. H. Murray, and printed by the Early English Text Society. A reconstructed text by Dr Alois Brandl makes the second volume of a Sammlung englischer Denkmäler in kritischen Ausgaben, Berlin, 1880.

[308] Murray, pp xxiv-xxvii. As might be expected, the Latin texts corrupt the names of persons and of places, and alter the results of battles. Dr Murray remarks: "The oldest text makes the Scots win Halidon Hill, with the slaughter of six thousand Englishmen, while the other texts, wise after the fact, makes the Scots lose, as they actually did." This, and the consideration that a question about the conflict between the families of Bruce and Baliol would not be put after 1400, when the Baliol line was extinct, disposes Dr Murray to think that verses 326-56 of the second fit, with perhaps the first fit, the conclusion of the poem, and an indefinite portion of fit third, may have been written on the eve of Halidon Hill, with a view to encourage the Scots.

[309] The poem, vv 675-80, says only that Thomas and the lady did not part for ever and aye, but that she was to visit him at Huntley banks.

[310] The relations of Thomas Rhymer and Ogier might, perhaps, be cleared up by the poem of The Visions of Ogier in Fairy Land. The book is thus described by Brunet, ed. 1863, IV, 173: Le premier (second et troisième) livre des visions d'Oger le Dannoys au royaulme de Fairie, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 48 ff. Brunet adds: A la suite de ce poëme, dans l'exemplaire de la Bibliothèque impériale, se trouve, Le liure des visions fantastiques, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 24 ff. The National Library is not now in possession of the volume; nor have all the inquiries I have been able to make, though most courteously aided in France, resulted, as I hoped, in the finding of a copy.

[311] Excepting the two satirical stanzas with which Scott's version (C) concludes. "The repugnance of Thomas to be debarred the use of falsehood when he should find it convenient," may have, as Scott says, "a comic effect," but is, for a ballad, a miserable conceit. Both ballad and romance are serious.

[312] Eildon Tree, the site of which is supposed now to be marked by the Eildon Tree Stone, stood, or should have stood, on the slope of the eastern of the three Eildon Hills. Huntly Banks are about half a mile to the west of the Eildon Stone, on the same hill-slope. Erceldoun, a village on the Leader, two miles above its junction with the Tweed, is all but visible from the Eildon Stone. Murray, pp l-lii.

[313] In B 2, absurdly, the lady holds nine bells in her hand. Ringing or jingling bridles are ascribed to fairies, Tam Lin, A 37, Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 298 ("manes hung wi whustles that the win played on," p. 299). The fairy's saddle has a bordure of bells in the English Launfal, Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, p. 31, but not in Marie's lai. The dwarf-king Antiloie, in Ulrich Von Eschenbach's Alexander, has bells on his bridle: Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, I, 385. These bells, however, are not at all distinctive of fairies, but are the ordinary decoration of elegant "outriders" in the Middle Ages, especially of women. In the romance of Richard Cœur de Lion, a messenger's trappings ring with five hundred bells. Besides the bridle, bells were sometimes attached to the horse's breastplate, to the saddle-bow, crupper, and stirrups. Conde Claros's steed has three hundred around his breastplate. See Weber's Metrical Romances, R.C. de Lion, vv 1514-17, 5712-14, cited by T. Wright, History of Domestic Manners in England, 214 f; Liebrecht, Gervasius, p. 122; Kölbing, Englische Studien, III, 105; Zupitza and Varnhagen, Anglia, III, 371, IV, 417; and particularly A. Schultz, Das höfische Leben zur Zeit der Minnesinger, I, 235, 388-91.

[314] The original I suppose to be the very cheerful tale of Ogier, with which the author of Thomas of Erceldoune has blended a very serious one, without any regard to the irreconcilableness of the two. He is presently forced to undo this melancholy transformation of the fairy, as we shall see. Brandl, 'Thomas of Erceldoune,' p. 20, cites from Giraldus Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriæ, I, 5, a story about one Meilyr, a Welshman, the like of which our poet had in mind. This Meilyr was a great soothsayer, and "owed his skill to the following adventure:" Being in company one evening with a girl for whom he had long had a passion, desideratis amplexibus atque deliciis cum indulsisset, statim loco puellæ formosæ formam quamdam villosam, hispidam et hirsutam, adeoque enormiter deformem invenit, quod in ipso ejusdem aspectu dementire cœpit et insanire. Meilyr recovered his reason after several years, through the merits of the saints, but always kept up an intimacy with unclean spirits, and by their help foretold the future. It is not said that they gave him the tongue that never could lie, but no other tongue could lie successfully in his presence: he always saw a little devil capering on it. He was able, by similar indications, to point out the lies and errors of books. The experiment being once tried of laying the Gospel of John in his lap, every devil instantly decamped. Geoffrey of Monmouth's history was substituted, and imps swarmed all over the book and him, too.

[315] B 8^3,4 "It was a' that cursed fruit o thine beggared man and woman in your countrie:" the fruit of the Forbidden Tree.

[316] Purgatory is omitted in the Cotton MS. of the romance, as in the ballad.

[317] Ogier le Danois hardly exceeded the proportion of the ordinary hyperbole of lovers: two hundred years seemed but twenty. The British king Herla lived with the king of the dwarfs more than two hundred years, and thought the time but three days: Walter Mapes, Nugæ Curialium, ed. Wright, p. 16 f (Liebrecht). The strongest case, I believe, is the exquisite legend, versified by Trench, of the monk, with whom three hundred years passed, while he was listening to a bird's song—as he thought, less than three hours. For some of the countless repetitions of the idea, see Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Oesterley, No 562, and notes, p. 537; Liebrecht's Gervasins, p. 89; W. Hertz, Deutsche Sage im Elsass, pp 115-18, 263; A. Graf, La Leggenda del Paradiso Terrestre, pp 26-29, 31-33, and notes; J. Koch, Die Siebenschläferlegende, kap. ii.

[318] In an exquisite little ballad obtained by Tommaseo from a peasant-girl of Empoli, I, 26, a lover who had visited hell, and there met and kissed his mistress, is told by her that he must not hope ever to go thence. How the lover escaped in this instance is not explained. Such things happen sometimes, but not often enough to encourage one to take the risk.

[319] A 8, 9, R 34, 35. It was not that Thomas was about to pluck fruit from the Forbidden Tree, though B understands it so: cf. R 32, 33. The curse of this tree seems, however, to have affected all Paradise. In modern Greek popular poetry Paradise occurs sometimes entirely in the sense of Hades. See B. Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 249.

[320] Jamieson, in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 398: 'Child Rowland and Burd Ellen.'

[321] Niedersächsische Sagen und Märchen, Schambach und Müller, p. 373. Shakspere has this: "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall die;" Falstaff, in Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 5. Ancient Greek tradition is not without traces of the same ideas. It was Persephone's eating of the pomegranate kernel that consigned her to the lower world, in spite of Zeus and Demeter's opposition. The drinking of Circe's brewage and the eating of lotus had an effect on the companions of Ulysses such as is sometimes ascribed to the food and drink of fairies, or other demons, that of producing forgetfulness of home: Odyssey, X, 236, IX, 97. But it would not be safe to build much on this. A Hebrew tale makes the human wife of a demon charge a man who has come to perform, a certain service for the family not to eat or drink in the house, or to take any present of her husband, exactly repeating the precautions observed in Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, Nos 41, 49: Tendlan, Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden jüdischer Vorzeit, p. 141. The children of Shem may probably have derived this trait in the story from the children of Japhet. Aladdin, in the Arabian Nights, is to have a care, above all things, that he does not touch the walls of the subterranean chamber so much as with his clothes, or he will die instantly. This again, by itself, is not very conclusive.

[322] Historia Danica, l. viii: Müller et Velschow, I, 420-25.