b.

B.

57
BROWN ROBYN´S CONFESSION

The only known version of 'Brown Robyn's Confession' is the one printed in Ballads of the North of Scotland, the copy in Motherwell's MS. having been derived from Buchan.

The ballad, as we have it in English, celebrates a miracle of the Virgin, and is our only example of that extensive class of legends, unless we choose to include 'The Jew's Daughter,' and to take Robin Hood's view of the restoration of his loan, in the fourth Fit of the Little Gest. Of rescues on the sea, by which Mary "vere maris stella indiciis evidentissimis comprobatur," we have two in most of the collections of the Virgin's miracles, e. g., Vincent of Beauvais, 1. VII, cc 88,89, Gautier de Coincy, ed. Poquet, pp 515, 605. The deliverance, however, is for honor done to Mary, and not for a fair confession.

A fine ballad, very common in Sweden, and preserved by tradition also in Denmark and Norway, has the same story with a tragical termination for the hero, saving a single instance, in which there is also a supernatural interference in his behalf.

Swedish. 'Herr Peders Sjöresa.' A, Afzelius, II, 31, No 36, new ed. No 30, from oral traditions, compared with a printed copy of the date 1787. B, Atterbom's Poetisk Kalender, 1816, p. 52, apparently from Gyllenmärs' Visbok, after which it is given by Bergström, Afzelius, II, 158. C, Arwidsson, II, 5, No 67, one of three closely resembling copies. D, 'Herr Peder,' Wigström, Folkdiktning, I, 43, No 21. E, Fagerlund, p. 194, No 4. F, G, Aminson, IV, 20, 22.

Norwegian. 'Unge herr Peder pá sjöen,' Landstad, p. 617, No 82.

Danish. A, manuscript of the fifteenth century, in a copy communicated by Professor Grundtvig. B, 'Jon Rimaardssøns Skriftemaal,' Vedel, 1591, It Hundrede udvaalde Danske Viser, p. 3, No 2 (Bergström); Danske Viser, II, 220, No 92. C, 'Lodkastningen,' Kristensen, I, 16, No 6. D, 'Sejladsen,' the same, p. 322, No 119.

Swedish C-E, the Norwegian version, Danish C, D, are all from recent oral tradition.

With a partial exception of Danish A, B,[10] the story of these ballads is this. Sir Peter asks his foster-mother what death he shall die. You are not to die in your bed, she says, and not in fight, but beware of the waves. Peter cares not for the waves, and builds a splendid ship, the hulk and masts of whalebone (elm, Swedish D; walnut, Norwegian, Danish D), the flags of gold (oars, Danish A). Let us drink to-day, while we have ale, says Peter; to-morrow we will sail where gain shall guide. The skipper and helmsman push off, forgetful of God the Father, God's Son, and the Holy Ghost. They sail a year or two on the boiling sea, and when they come where water is deepest the masts begin to go, Swedish A; the ship stops, Swedish C, D, F, Norwegian, Danish A, C, D;[11] will not mind her helm, Danish B. They cast lots to see who is the sinner; the skipper and captain do this while Peter is in his cabin sleeping,[12] in Swedish D, Norwegian, Danish C, D. The lot falls on Peter. He makes his shrift, since there is no priest, before the mast (which, with the yard, forms a cross), Swedish A, B, Norwegian, Danish B, C; before an oar, on which Our Lord stands written, Danish A. "Churches have I plundered, and convents have I burned, and stained the honor of many a noble maid. I have roamed the woods and done both robbery and murder, and many an honest peasant's son buried alive in the earth:" Swedish A. He then says his last words, Danish C, D, and nearly all.

In Swedish C, D, Danish C, they throw Peter over, on the larboard in the first, and the ship resumes her course; in Swedish D, F, he wraps a cloak round him and jumps in himself; in Swedish A the ship goes down. In Danish B Jon Rimaardssøn binds three bags about him, saying, He shall never die poor that will bury my body.[14] It was a sad sight to see when he made a cross on the blue wave, and so took the wild path that lay to the sea's deep bottom. Sir Peter, in Danish A, made this cross and was ready to take this path; but when he reached the water the wild sea turned to green earth.

No explanation is offered of this marvel. In the light of the Scottish ballad, we should suppose that Sir Peter's deliverance in Danish A was all for the fair confession he made upon the sea.[16]

Saxo relates that, in the earlier part of Thorkill's marvellous voyage, the crews of his three ships, when reduced almost to starving, coming upon an island well stocked with herds, would not heed the warning of their commander, that if they took more than sufficed to mitigate their immediate sufferings they might be estopped from proceeding by the local divinities, but loaded the vessels with carcasses. During the night which followed, the ships were beset by a crowd of monsters, the biggest of whom advanced into the water, armed with a huge club, and called out to the seafarers that they would not be allowed to sail off till they had expiated the offence they had committed by delivering up one man for each ship. Thorkill, for the general safety, surrendered three men, selected by lot, after which they had a good wind and sailed on. Book VIII; p. 161, ed. 1644.

King Half on his way home from a warlike expedition encountered so violent a storm that his ship was nigh to foundering. A resolution was taken that lots should be cast to determine who should jump overboard. But no lots were needed, says the saga (implying, by the way, that a vicarious atonement was sufficient), for the men vied with one another who should go overboard for his comrade. Fornaldar Sögur, Rafn, II, 37 f.[17]

A very pretty Little-Russian duma, or ballad, also shows the efficacy of confession in such a crisis: 'The Storm on the Black Sea,' Maksimovitch, Songs of Ukraine, p. 14, Moscow, 1834, p. 48, Kief, 1849; translated by Bodenstedt, Die poetische Ukraine, p. 118. The Cossack flotilla has been divided by a storm on the Black Sea, and two portions of it have gone to wreck. In the third sails the hetman. He walks his deck in sombre composure, and says to the sailors, Some offence has been done, and this makes the sea so wild: confess then your sins to God, to the Black Sea, and to me your hetman; the guilty man shall die, and the fleet of the Cossacks not perish. The Cossacks stand silent, for no one knows who is guilty, when lo, Alexis, son of the priest of Piriatin, steps forth and says, Let me be the sacrifice; bind a cloth round my eyes, a stone about my neck, and throw me in; so shall the fleet of the Cossacks not perish. The men are astounded: how can a heavy sin be resting on Alexis, who reads them the sacred books, whose example has kept them from wickedness! Alexis left home, he says, without asking his father's and mother's blessing, and with an angry threat against his brother; he wrenched the last crust of bread from his neighbors; he rode along the street wantonly spurning the breasts of women and the foreheads of children; he passed churches without uncovering, without crossing himself: and now he must die for his sins. As he makes this shrift the storm begins to abate; to the amazement of the Cossacks, the fleet is saved, and not one man drowned.

The rich merchant Sadko, the very entertaining hero of several Russian popular epics, is nowhere more entertaining than when, during one of his voyages, his ship comes to a stop in the sea. He thinks he has run upon a rock or sand-bank, and tries to push off, but the vessel is immovable. Twelve years we have been sailing, says Sadko, and never paid tribute to the king of the sea. A box of gold is thrown in as a peace-offering, but floats like a duck. It is clear that the sea-king wants no toll; he requires a man. Every man is ordered to make a lot from pine-wood and write his name on it. These lots are thrown into the sea. Every one of them swims like a duck but Sadko's, and his goes down like a stone. That is not the proper wood for a lot, says Sadko: make lots of fir-wood. Fir lots are tried: Sadko's goes down like a stone, the rest swim like ducks. Fir is not right, either; alder, oak, are tried with the same result. We are quite wrong, says Sadko; we must take cypress, for cypress was the wood of the cross. They try cypress, and still Sadko's lot sinks, while all the others float. I am the man, says Sadko. He orders his men to get for him an oblation of silver, gold, and pearls, and with this, taking an image of St Nicholas in one hand and his gusli in the other, commits himself to the sea, and goes down like a stone. But not to drown. It was quite worth his while for the rare adventures that followed.[18]

The casting of lots to find out the guilty man who causes trouble to a ship occurs in William Guiseman, Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 156, Kinloch MSS, V, 43, a copy, improved by tradition, of the "lament" in 'William Grismond's Downfal,' a broadside of 1650, which is transcribed among the Percy papers, from Ballard's collection.

Captain Glen is thrown overboard without a lot, on the accusation of the boatswain, and with the happiest effect; broadside in the Roxburghe collection, Logan's Pedlar's Pack, p. 47, Kinloch MSS, V, 278.

Translated by Gerhard, p. 66, Knortz, L. u. R. Altenglands, p. 155, No 40. Swedish A by the Howitts, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 276; Danish B by Prior, II, 227.

58
SIR PATRICK SPENS

Stanzas of E and of L, a little altered, are given by Motherwell in his Introduction, pp xlv, xlvi. The ballad in the Border Minstrelsy, H, was made up from two versions, the better of which was G, and five stanzas, 16-20, recited by Mr Hamilton, sheriff of Lanarkshire. Mr Hamilton is said to have got his fragment "from an old nurse, a retainer of the Gilkerscleugh family," when himself a boy, about the middle of the last century.[19] The copy in Finlay's Scottish Ballads, I, 49, is Scott's, with the last stanza exchanged for the last of A, and one or two trifling changes. The imperfect copies K, stanzas 6-10, M 1, 3, show admixture with the more modern ballad of 'Young Allan.' L 1, with variations, is found in 'Fair Annie of Lochroyan,' Herd, 1776, I, 150, and may not belong here. But ballad-ships are wont to be of equal splendor with Cleopatra's galley: see, for a first-rate, the Scandinavian 'Sir Peter's Voyage,' cited in the preface to 'Brown Robyn's Confession.'[20]

This admired and most admirable ballad is one of many which were first made known to the world through Percy's Reliques. Percy's version remains, poetically, the best. It may be a fragment, but the imagination easily supplies all that may be wanting; and if more of the story, or the whole, be told in H, the half is better than the whole.

The short and simple story in A-F is that the king wants a good sailor to take command of a ship or ships ready for sea. Sir Patrick Spens[21] is recommended, and the king sends him a commission. This good sailor is much elated by receiving a letter from the king, but the contents prove very unwelcome.[22] He would hang the man that praised his seamanship, if he knew him, B; though it had been the queen herself, she might have let it be, F; had he been a better man, he might ha tauld a lee, D. The objection, as we learn from A 5, C 5, is the bad time of year. Percy cites a law of James III, forbidding ships to be freighted out of the realm with staple goods between the feast of Simon and Jude and Candlemas, October 28-February 2. There is neither choice nor thought, but prompt obedience to orders. The ship must sail the morn, and this without regard to the fearful portent of the new moon having been seen late yestreen with the auld moon in her arm. They are only a few leagues out when a furious storm sets in. The captain calls for a boy to take the steer in hand while he goes to the topmast to spy land, B; or, more sensibly, sends up the boy, and sticks to the rudder, C, E. The report is not encouraging, or is not waited for, for the sea has everything its own way, and now the nobles, who were loath to wet their shoes, are overhead in water, and now fifty fathoms under. It would be hard to point out in ballad poetry, or other, happier and more refined touches than the two stanzas in A which portray the bootless waiting of the ladies for the return of the seafarers.[23]

In G-J we meet with additional circumstances. The destination of the ship is Norway. The object of the voyage is not told in G; in H it is to bring home the king of Norway's daughter; in J to bring home the Scottish king's daughter; in I to take out the Scottish king's daughter to Norway, where she is to be queen. The Scots make the passage in two days, or three, G, H, I. After a time the Norwegians begin to complain of the expense caused by their guests, G, H; or reproach the Scots with staying too long, to their own king's cost, I. Sir Patrick tells them that he brought money enough to pay for himself and his men, and says that nothing shall induce him to stay another day in the country. It is now that we have the omen of the new moon with the old moon in her arm, in G, H. In I this comes before the voyage to Norway,[24] and in G the stanza expressing apprehension of a storm, without the reason, occurs twice,[25] before the voyage out as well as before the return voyage. In J, as in A-F, the ship is lost on the voyage out. In G, therefore, and I as well, two different accounts may have been blended.

Whether there is an historical basis for the shipwreck of Scottish nobles which this ballad sings, and, if so, where it is to be found, are questions that have been considerably discussed. A strict accordance with history should not be expected, and indeed would be almost a ground of suspicion.[26] Ballad singers and their hearers would be as indifferent to the facts as the readers of ballads are now; it is only editors who feel bound to look closely into such matters. Motherwell has suggested a sufficiently plausible foundation. Margaret, daughter of Alexander III, was married, in 1281, to Eric, King of Norway. She was conducted to her husband, "brought home," in August of that year, by many knights and nobles. Many of these were drowned on the return voyage,[27] as Sir Patrick Spens is in G, H, I.

Margaret, Eric's queen, died in 1283, leaving a newly born daughter; and Alexander III, having been killed by being thrown from his horse, in 1286, the crown fell to the granddaughter. A match was proposed between the infant Margaret, called the Maid of Norway, and the eldest son of Edward I of England. A deputation, not so splendid as the train which accompanied the little maid's mother to Norway, was sent, in 1290, to bring the Princess Margaret over, but she died on the way before reaching Scotland. The Scalacronica speaks of only a single envoy, Master Weland, a Scottish clerk. If "the chronicle will not lie," the Maid of Norway and the Scottish clerk perished, we must suppose in a storm, on the coasts of Boghan[28] (Buchan?). This is not quite enough to make the ballad out of, and there is still less material in the marriage of James III with the daughter of the king of Norway in 1469, and no shipwreck chronicled at all.

No such name as Patrick Spens is historically connected with any of these occurrences. Spens has even been said not to be an early Scottish name. Aytoun, however, points to a notable exploit by one Spens as early as 1336, and Mr Macmath has shown me that the name occurred in five charters of David II, therefore between 1329 and 1370. We might allege that Spens, though called Sir Patrick in later days, was in reality only a skeely skipper,[29] and that historians do not trouble themselves much about skippers. But this would be avoiding the proper issue. The actual name of the hero of a ballad affords hardly a presumption as to who was originally the hero. This ballad may be historical, or it may not. It might be substantially historical though the command of the ship were invariably given to Sir Andrew Wood, a distinguished admiral, who was born a couple of centuries after the supposed event; and it might be substantially historical though we could prove that Patrick Spens was only a shipmaster, of purely local fame, who was lost off Aberdour a couple of hundred years ago. For one, I do not feel compelled to regard the ballad as historical.

A mermaid appears to the navigators in J, L, P, Q, and informs them, J, that they will never see dry land, or are not far from land, L, P, Q, which, coming from a mermaid, they are good seamen enough to know means the same thing. The appearance of a mermaid to seamen is a signal for despair in a brief little ballad, of no great antiquity to all seeming, given further on under the title of 'The Mermaid.' If nothing worse, mermaids at least bode rough weather, and sailors do not like to see them: Faye, Norske Folke-Sagn, ed. 1844, p. 55 (Prior). They have a reputation for treachery: there is in a Danish ballad, Grundtvig, II, 91, No 42, B 14, one who has betrayed seven ships.

The place where the ship went down was half owre to Aberdour, A, C, F?; ower by Aberdour, I, J, N; forty miles off Aberdeen, G, H (H may only repeat G); nore-east, nore-west frae Aberdeen, D; between Leith and Aberdeen, K. B and E transfer the scene to St Johnston (Perth), and P to the Clyde, down below Dumbarton Castle. We may fairly say, somewhere off the coast of Aberdeenshire, for the southern Aberdour, in the Firth of Forth, cannot be meant.

The island of Papa Stronsay is said to be about half way between Aberdour in Buchan and the coast of Norway, half owre to Aberdour; and on this island there is a tumulus, which Mr Maidment informs us is known now, and has always been known, as the grave of Sir Patrick Spens. Nothing more has been transmitted, we are assured, but only the name as that of a man buried there: Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, Historical and Traditionary, I, 31 f. "The Scottish ballads were not early current in Orkney, a Scandinavian country," says Aytoun, "so it is very unlikely that the poem could have originated the name." With regard to this Orcadian grave of Patrick Spens, it may first be remarked that Barry, who, in 1808, speaks of the Earl's Knowe in Papa Stronsay, says not a word of the tradition now affirmed to be of indefinite long-standing (neither does Tudor in 1883). The ballad has been in print for a hundred and twenty years. There are Scots in the island now, and perhaps there "always" have been; at any rate, a generation or two is time enough for a story to strike root and establish itself as tradition.[30]

A a is translated by Herder, Volkslieder, I, 89, Bodmer, I, 56, Döring, p. 157, Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 16, 1; G, by Loève-Veimars, p. 340; H, by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 2, Schubart, p. 203, Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 60, Fiedler, Geschichte der schottischen Liederdichtung, I, 13; I, by Gerhard, p. 1. Aytoun's ballad, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 16, 2.

A

B

C