Weep no more, lady, weep no more, Thy sorrowe is in vaine : For violets pluckt the sweetest showers Our joys as winged dreams doe flye, O say not soe, thou holy friar; For since my true-love dyed for mee, Will he ne'er come again? Ah! no, he is dead and laid in his grave, His cheek was redder than the rose; But he is dead and laid in his grave: Sigh no more, lady, sigh no more, One foot on sea and one on land, Hadst thou been fond, he had been false, For young men ever were fickle found, Now say not so, thou holy friar, I pray thee say not soe; My love he had the truest heart: O he was ever true! And art thou dead, thou much-lov'd youth, Then farewell home; for ever-more But first upon my true-loves grave And thrice I'll kiss the green-grass turf, VOL. I. Yet stay, fair lady; rest awhile See through the hawthorn blows the cold wind, O stay me not, thou holy friar ; Yet stay, fair lady, turn again, Here forc'd by grief, and hopeless love, But haply for my year of grace1 Is not yet past away, Might I still hope to win thy love, Now farewell grief, and welcome joy Once more unto my heart; For since I have found thee, lovely youth, We never more will part. As the foregoing song has been thought to have suggested to our late excellent poet, Dr. Goldsmith, the plan of his beautiful ballad of "Edwin and Emma" (first printed in his "Vicar of Wakefield "), it is but justice to his memory to declare, that his poem was written first, and that if there is any imitation in the case, they will be found both to be indebted to the beautiful old ballad "Gentle Herdsman," &c. printed in Series II. Book i. No. 14, of this work, which the Doctor had much admired in manuscript, and has finely improved. 1 The year of probation, or noviciate. BOOK III I. THE MORE MODERN BALLAD OF At the beginning of Series I. Book i. we gave the old original song of "Chevy Chace." The reader has here the more improved edition of that fine heroic ballad. It will afford an agreeable entertainment to the curious to compare them together, and to see how far the latter bard has excelled his predecessor, and where he has fallen short of him. For though he has every where improved the versification, and generally the sentiment and diction; yet some few passages retain more dignity in the ancient copy; at least the obsoleteness of the style serves as a veil to hide whatever may appear too familiar or vulgar in them. Thus, for instance, the catastrophe of the gallant Witherington is in the modern copy exprest in terms which never fail at present to excite ridicule: whereas in the original it is related with a plain and pathetic simplicity, that is liable to no such unlucky effect: See the stanza, which, in modern orthography, &c. would run thus: For Witherington my heart is woe, So again the stanza which describes the fall of Montgomery is some what more elevated in the ancient copy: The dint it was both sad and sore, He on Montgomery set: The swan-feathers his arrow bore With his hearts blood were wet. We might also add, that the circumstances of the battle are more clearly conceived, and the several incidents more distinctly marked in the old original, than in the improved copy. It is well known that the ancient English weapon was the long-bow, and that this nation excelled all others in archery; while the Scottish warriors chiefly depended on the use of the spear: this characteristic difference never escapes our ancient bard, whose description of the first onset is to the following effect : : "The proposal of the two gallant earls to determine the dispute by single combat being over-ruled; the English, says he, who stood with their bows ready bent, gave a general discharge of their arrows, which slew seven score spearmen of the enemy: but notwithstanding so severe a loss, Douglas like a brave captain kept his ground. He had divided his forces into three columns, who as soon as the English had discharged their first volley, bore down upon them with their spears, and breaking through their ranks reduced them to close fighting. The archers upon this dropt their bows and had recourse to their swords, and there followed so sharp a conflict, that multitudes on both sides lost their lives." In the midst of this general engagement, at length, 227 the two great earls meet, and after a spirited rencounter agree to breathe; upon which a parley ensues, that would do honour to Homer himself. Nothing can be more pleasingly distinct and circumstantial than this: whereas, the modern copy, though in general it has great merit, is here unluckily both confused and obscure. Indeed the original words seem here to have been totally misunderstood. "Yet bydys the yerl Douglas upon the bent," evidently signifies, “Yet the earl Douglas abides in the field:" whereas the more modern bard seems to have understood by bent, the inclination of his mind, and accordingly runs quite off from the subject: 1 To drive the deer with hound and horn One may also observe a generous impartiality in the old original bard, when in the conclusion of his tale he represents both nations as quitting the field, without any reproachful reflection on either: though he gives to his own countrymen the credit of being the smaller number. Of fifteen hundred archers of England Of twenty hundred spearmen of Scotland, He attributes flight to neither party, as hath been done in the modern copies of this ballad, as well Scotch as English. For, to be even with our latter bard, who makes the Scots to flee, some reviser of North Britain has turned his own arms against him, and printed an edition at Glasgow, in which the lines are thus transposed: Of fifteen hundred Scottish speirs And to countenance this change he has suppressed the two stanzas between ver. 240 and 249. From that edition I have here reformed the Scottish names, which in the modern English ballad appeared to be corrupted. When I call the present admired ballad modern, I only mean that it is comparatively so; for that it could not be writ much later than the time of Queen Elizabeth, I think may be made appear; nor yet does it seem to be older than the beginning of the last century.2 1 In the present edition, instead of the unmeaning lines here censured, an insertion is made of five stanzas modernized from the ancient copy. 2 A late writer has started a notion that the modern copy 66 was written to be sung by a party of English, headed by a Douglas in the year 1524; which is the true reason why, at the same time that it gives the advantage to the English soldiers above the Scotch, it gives so lovely and so manifestly superior a character to the Scotch commander above the English." See Say's Essay on the Numbers of Paradise Lost, 4to. 1745, p. 167. This appears to me a groundless conjecture: the language seems too modern for the date above mentioned; and, had it been printed even so early as Queen Elizabeth's reign, I think I should have met with some copy wherein the first line would have been, God prosper long our noble queen, as was the case with "The Blind Beggar of Bednal Green." See Series II. Book ii. No. x. Sir Philip Sidney, when he complains of the antiquated phrase of Chevy Chace, could never have seen this improved copy, the language of which is not more ancient than he himself used. It is probable that the encomiums of so admired a writer excited some bard to revise the ballad, and to free it from those faults he had objected to it. That it could not be much later than that time, appears from the phrase "doleful dumps;" which in that age carried no ill sound with it, but to the next generation became ridiculous. We have seen it pass uncensured in a sonnet that was at that time in request, and where it could not fail to have been taken notice of, had it been in the least exceptionable (see above, Book ii. Song 5. ver. 2.): yet, in about half a century after it was become burlesque. Vide Hudibras, Part I. c. iii. ver. 95. This much premised, the reader that would see the general beauties of this ballad set in a just and striking light, may consult the excellent criticism of Mr. Addison.1 With regard to its subject: it has already been considered. The conjectures there offered will receive confirmation from a passage in the Memoirs of Carey Earl of Monmouth, 8vo. 1759, p. 165; whence we learn that it was an ancient custom with the borderers of the two kingdoms, when they were at peace, to send to the Lord Wardens of the opposite Marches for leave to hunt within their districts. If leave was granted, then towards the end of summer they would come and hunt for several days together "with their grey-hounds for deer:" but if they took this liberty unpermitted, then the Lord Warden of the border so invaded, would not fail to interrupt their sport and chastise their boldness. He mentions a remarkable instance that happened while he was Warden, when some Scotch gentlemen coming to hunt in defiance of him, there must have ensued such an action as this of Chevy Chace, if the intruders had been proportionably numerous and well armed for, upon their being attacked by his men at arms, he tells some hurt was done, tho' he had given especiall order that they should shed as little blood as possible." They were in effect overpowered and taken prisoners, and only released on their promise to abstain from such licentious sporting for the future. us, The following text is given from the Editor's folio manuscript, compared with two or three others printed in black-letter. In the second volume of Dryden's Miscellanies may be found a translation of Chevy-Chace into Latin rhymes. The translator, Mr. Henry Bold, of New College, undertook it at the command of Dr. Compton, Bishop of London; who thought it no derogation to his episcopal character, to avow a fondness for this excellent old ballad. See the preface to Bold's Latin songs, 1685, 8vo. GOD prosper long our noble king, Our lives and safetyes all; A woefull hunting once there did To drive the deere with hound and horne, Erle Percy took his way, The child may rue that is unborne, The hunting of that day. 1 In the Spectator, No. 70. 74. |