which the name "Bekie" occurs. In "Young Bekie," the scene of the captivity is France, and the heroine is a Christian lady;—the father of Thomas à-Becket was a captive in Syria, and the lady by whom he was liberated, and whom he afterwards espoused, was a Mahommedan. In the broadside of "Lord Bateman" (the only ancient form in which the ballad has existed in print) the hero is represented as a Northumbrian, and having large possessions in his native county, which the family of à-Becket certainly never had, and, therefore, if the narrative be not altogether a fic_ titious one, we must come to the conclusion that it details the adventures of a Northumbrian. Jamieson was convinced that the ballad was of English border origin, and so far from connecting it with the à-Becket family, he thought “ Beichan" was a corruption of "Buchan," a common Border sirname, not being aware of the Northumbrian tradition, that the hero was one of the ancient and noble Border family of Bartram or Bertram, a race now extinct, but of whom (as in the common broadside) it could have been truly asserted in their palmy days, that "half Northumberland belonged to them." To one unacquainted with the peculiarity of Northumbrian accent, it may seem strange how such a word as Bartram" could get corrupted to "Bateman." In the word “Bartram” the letter r occurs twice, a letter which the Northumbrian peasantry have great difficulty to pronounce in common conversation, but which they have still greater difficulty to articulate when singing. Ask a Northumbrian peasant to pronounce "Bartram" and he will say "Bwhaatam." The editor speaks from experience. It may, therefore, without any great stretch of imagination, be conceived, that the first printed broadside was made from the oral recitation of some ignorant minstrel, and the transcriber noted down "Bateman" as the nearest approach to the strange mode in which

the hero's name was pronounced. An English traditional version of the ballad, communicated by the editor of these pages, may be found in the first volume of The Local Historian's Table-Book, Newcastle, 1842: like other traditional versions, it no doubt contains much that is ancient, mixed up with modern interpolations and additions. For Scottish versions the reader is referred to Jamieson's work above quoted,―to Kinloch's Ancient Ballads, 1826,-to Chambers's Scottish Ballads, Edinburgh, 1829,—and to the Book of Scottish Ballads, Edinburgh, 1844.

P. 2, v. 1.-Borrow.] Free. The two verses in which this expression occurs, are intended for the prisoner's song. In some copies his song is introduced by a few lines, evidently the composition of a modern hand.

P. 3, v. 4.—Caen.] In the MS. the word is printed Cain, but, as in "Young Bekie" (the version which most resembles the one in the present work) the scene of the captivity is France, we have substituted Caen, the name of the capital of Normandy, that portion of France with which an old minstrel would have most sympathy.

P.3, v. 5.—Shorten.] To while away the time.
P. 4, v. 1.— Win up.] Get up.

The term

P. 4, v. 3-Your Maries.] Your maidens. "Mary" is frequently, in ancient Scottish poetry, applied to a young female. Its origin is to be found in the name of the mother of our Lord.

P. 4, v. 6.-Then in it came.]

mon Scottish idiom.

Then there came. A com

This is, no doubt, an in

P. 5, v. 1.-Turtle frae the sea.] correct reading, but we have no means of arriving at the true one.

P. 6, v. 5.-Proud.] This epithet occurs in all the copies, both English and Scotch. When applied to a "porter," as

we find it in many old ballads, it sounds strange to a modern ear; but to a poor minstrel, who had probably often suffered from the contumely of such an important personage, the term would not seem so inappropriate.

P. 10, v.3.-Air.] Early.

Tam a Line.

This ballad, like the preceding one, is found in a variety of forms and under different names, as "The Young Tamlane," "Tam Lin," "Tom Lin," "Kerton Ha," &c. &c. It can be satisfactorily shown, that in some form or other, it existed centuries ago as a popular poem. Sir Walter Scott, in reference to the version which he inserted in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, observes that the poem is of “much greater antiquity than its phraseology, gradually modernized as transmitted by tradition, would seem to denote." A recent editor of the ballad (Mr. Whitelaw), after quoting Sir Walter Scott's remark, goes on to say that he "has been enabled to add several verses of beauty and interest to his edition of Tamlane, in consequence of a copy obtained from a gentleman residing near Langholm, which is said to be very ancient, though the diction is somewhat of a modern cast!" The name of the "gentleman" is not given by Mr. Whitelaw, but he is well known to the Borderers as an elegant and accomplished local poet, and the verses are too much in the style of his acknowledged productions, for us to doubt their origin. Who can believe that any very old bard wrote as follows?

"We sleep in rosebuds soft and sweet,

We revel in the stream;

We wanton lightly on the wind,

Or glide on a sun-beam."

or

"Their oaten pipes blew wond'rous shrill,

The hemlock small blew clear;
And louder notes from hemlock large,

And bog-reed, struck the ear;

But solemn sounds, or solemn thoughts,

The fairies cannot bear.

They sing, inspired with love and joy,
Like sky-larks in the air;

Of solid sense, or thought that's grave,
You'll find no traces there."

We have carefully compared our oral version of "Tam a Line" with different published ones, and, judging from internal evidence, are of opinion that it is a more genuine relic of antiquity, than any hitherto published.

66

The dance of Thom Lyn is mentioned in the Complaynt of Scotland, a curious work published in 1549, and of which an imperfect copy is in the British Museum. The author, Wedderburn, in "the sext cheptor," alludes to dances, and after saying: nor Judius that was the fyrst dansar of rome culd nocht hev bene comparit to thir scheipherdis," he proceeds to name several dances, and amongst others "robene hude, thom of lyn." In another part of the same work is mentioned, the "tayl of the yong tamlene." The dancing tune, which at one time was very popular, is believed to be the air to which the ballad was originally sung, and which, Leyden says, is similar to that of "The Jew's daughter." Like every popular story, "Tamlane" seems to have been burlesqued. The ballad "Tom o' the Linn was a Scotsman born" is well known.

The Irish, we may observe, have burlesque ballads, and nursery rhymes, of which Tam-lane is the hero, sometimes figuring under his more usual name of Tom-a-Lin, and at others, under those of Paddy and Bryan o' Lin. A verse of

one of these productions, is quoted by Halliwell in the preface to his Nursery Rhymes of England, pp. vi. and vii.; Percy Society's Publications, No. XVII. Though the story of Tam-a-line is, as will be shown, completely localized in Scotland, the Scottish origin of the tale is very doubtful. Many of the incidents are the same as those in the ancient Danish ballad of "The Elfin Gray," in the "Kæmpe Viser," of which an elegant and strictly literal version by Jamieson, may be found in the notes to Scott's "Lady of the Lake." The "Kæmpe Viser" was first published in 1591, but none of the ballads contained in it were productions of that era, but of a long anterior date.

The meaning of the epithet "true," as applied to Tam-alane, and to Thomas the Rhymer, who was also for many years a sojourner in Elfin land, seems to be given them, in consequence of the popular notion, that those mortals who had lived with the fairies, and been permitted by them to return to earth, were gifted with prophetic powers, and were holy men, and truth-speaking.

The Scottish language, perhaps, more than any other, (nor even excepting the Danish), abounds with legends, ancient and modern, of mortals carried away to fairy land. Amongst the most beautiful of the modern fictions may be named Hogg's Kilmeney, and Wilson's Lay of Fairy Land. "The Scottish ballad is completely localized in Selkirkshire. "Carterhaugh," [in our version, Charterswood], observes Sir Walter Scott, "is a plain at the conflux of the Ettrick and Yarrow, in Selkirkshire, about a mile above Selkirk, and two miles below Newark Castle, a romantic ruin which overhangs the Yarrow, and which is said to have been the habitation of our heroine's father, though others place his residence in the tower of Oakwood. The peasants point out upon the plain, those electrical rings which vulgar