XII. EDOM O' GORDON. A SCOTTISH BALLAD. This was printed at Glasgow, by Robert and Andrew Foulis, MDCCLV. 8vo. 12 pages. We are indebted for its publication (with many other valuable things in these volumes) to Sir David Dalrymple, Bart. who gave it as it was preserved in the memory of a lady, that is now dead. The reader will here find it improved, and enlarged with several fine stanzas, recovered from a fragment of the same ballad, in the Editor's folio manuscript. It is remarkable that the latter is intitled "Captain Adam Carre," and is in the English idiom. But whether the author was English or Scotch, the difference originally was not great. The English ballads are generally of the north of England, the Scottish are of the south of Scotland, and of consequence the country of balladsingers was sometimes subject to one crown, and sometimes to the other, and most frequently to neither. Most of the finest old Scotch songs have the scene laid within twenty miles of England, which is indeed all poetic ground, green hills, remains of woods, clear brooks. The pastoral scenes remain: of the rude chivalry of former ages happily nothing remains but the ruins of the castles, where the more daring and successful robbers resided. The house or castle of the Rodes stood about a measured mile south from Duns, in Berwickshire: some of the ruins of it may be seen to this day. The Gordons were anciently seated in the same county: the two villages of East and West Gordon lie about ten miles from the castle of the Rodes.*. The fact, however, on which the ballad is founded, happened in the north of Scotland (see below, pp. 241, 242.), yet it is but too faithful a specimen of the violences practised in the feudal times in every part of this island, and indeed all over Europe. From the different titles of this ballad, it should seem that the old strolling bards or minstrels (who gained a livelihood by reciting these poems) made no scruple of changing the names of the personages they introduced, to humour their hearers. For instance, if a Gordon's conduct was blame-worthy in the opinion of that age, the obsequious minstrel would, when among Gordons, change the name to Car, whose clan or sept lay further west, and vice versa. The foregoing observation, which I owed to Sir David Dalrymple, will appear the more perfectly well founded, if, as I have since been informed (from Crawford's Memoirs), the principal commander of the expedition was a Gordon, and the immediate agent a Car, or Ker; for then the reciter might, upon good grounds, impute the barbarity here deplored, either to a Gordon, or a Car, as best suited his purpose. In the third volume the reader will find a similar instance. See the song of "Gil Morris," wherein the principal character introduced had different names given him, perhaps for the same cause. It may be proper to mention, that in the folio manuscript, instead of the "Castle of the Rodes," it is the "Castle of Brittons-borrow," and also "Diactours" or "Draitours-borrow," (for it is very obscurely written,) and "Capt. Adam Carre" is called the "Lord of Westerton-town." Uniformity required that the additional stanzas supplied from that copy should be clothed in the Scottish orthography and idiom: this has therefore been attempted, though perhaps imperfectly. * This ballad is well known in that neighbourhood, where it is intitled "Adam o' Gordon." It may be observed, that the famous freebooter, whom Edward I. fought with, hand to hand, near Farnham, was named Adam Gordon. IT fell about the Martinmas, Quhen the wind blew shril and cauld, Said Edom o' Gordon to his men, And quhat a hauld sall we draw till, We wul gae to the house o' the Rodes, The lady stude on her castle wa', O see ze nat, my mirry men a'? She weend it had been hir luvely lord, It was the traitor Edom o' Gordon, She had nae sooner buskit hirsel, But Edom o' Gordon and his men They had nae sooner supper sett, The lady ran up to hir towir head, But quhan he see this lady saif, Cum doun to me, ze lady gay, Cum doun, cum doun to me: This night sall ye lig within mine armes, To-morrow my bride sall be. I winnae cum doun ze fals Gordòn, Give owre zour house, ze lady fair, I winnae give owre, ze false Gordòn, And if ze brenn my ain dear babes, But reach my pistoll, Glaud my man*, She stude upon hir castle wa', She mist that bluidy butchers hart, Set fire to the house, quo' fals Gordòn, Fals lady, ze sall rue this deid, Wae worth, wae worth ze, Jock my man, Quhy pu' ze out the ground-wa' stane, And ein wae worth ze, Jock my man, * These three lines are restored from Foulis's edition, and the folio manuscript, which last reads "the bullets" in ver. 58. |