Ι 1 ewe-folding. "THE EWE-BUCHTIN'S BONNIE." THE ewe-buchtin's' bonnie, baith e'enin' and morn, When our blithe shepherds play on the bog-reed and horn; While we're milking, they're lilting, baith pleasant and clear; But my heart's like to break when I think on my dear. O the shepherds take pleasure to blow on the horn, But alas, my dear heart, all my sighing's for thee! LADY WARDLAW. 1677-1727. The earliest and in some respects most curious of the literary mysteries for which the eighteenth century remains notorious was that concerning the authorship of the ballad of Hardyknute. This composition, then, as now, a fragment, was published by James Watson at Edinburgh in 1719 in a neat folio edition of twelve pages. An apparently earlier, but undated and less finished, copy is known to have been in the possession of the well-known editor, David Laing. Regarding the piece Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie told a romantic story. She had discovered it, she said, written on some shreds of paper used for the bottoms of weaving clues. The statement was accepted in good faith, the ballad was hailed as a genuine antique poem by men of taste like Lord President Forbes and Elliot of Minto, the Lord Justice-Clerk, and was included by Allan Ramsay in his Evergreen in 1724, among the " poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600." In doing this, Ramsay took the liberty of altering the orthography to restore it, as he supposed, to something like its original antique shape. So the matter stood till 1767. As a contemporary account of an episode of the battle of Largs fought in 1263, “Hardyknute" was looked upon as the oldest extant historical ballad in the Scots tongue, taking precedence in this respect of "Sir Patrick Spens." But in 1767 Lord Hailes communicated a new piece of information for the second edition of Percy's Reliques. Certain critics, it appeared, had doubted the antiquity of the work. In consequence Lady Wardlaw had been questioned, had admitted the authorship, and, to put the matter beyond doubt, had added two fresh concluding stanzas. The question, nevertheless, did not rest here. In his Scottish Tragic Ballads in 1781, Pinkerton printed an amended version of the ballad, including a second part which completed the story. For this version and the conclusion he avowed indebtedness to 'the memory of a Lady in Lanarkshire." Later, in his 66 Select Scottish Ballads (1783) and in his Ancient Scottish Poems (1786), this unscrupulous editor admitted the added second part to be his own composition, but regarding the original poem he made a new statement upon the authority of an alleged communication of Lord Hales. The new story was that Sir John Bruce of Kinross, in a letter to Lord Binning, had narrated his finding of the MS. in an old vault in Dunfermline, and, desiring to screen his own connection with the fragment, had induced Lady Wardlaw to become its foster-parent. Pinkerton's new statement was accepted, apparently without question, by Bishop Percy, and, accordingly, in the fourth edition of the Reliques, "Hardyknute " is attributed directly to Sir John Bruce. These conflicting statements appear to have left some doubt in the mind even of the historian of Scottish poetry, Dr. Irving. It was not till the year 1830 that the question was finally cleared up. Among Pinkerton's correspondence, then published, appeared a letter from Lord Hailes, dated December 2, 1785, explicitly disavowing the new statement to which his name had been attached, and reasserting the authorship of Lady Wardlaw. Lord Hailes was of opinion that the ballad had been founded on some antique fragment, and he quoted a statement of Thomson, the editor of the Orpheus Caledonius of 1733, that he had heard parts of it repeated in his infancy, before Lady Wardlaw's copy was heard of. But against these considerations there exists the explicit statement of Lady Wardlaw's daughter that her mother was the author of the ballad, and from the internal evidence of the composition itself it is impossible now to believe that any part of it is ancient. Whatever may be thought of the method of its introduction to the public, there can be little doubt of the considerable merit of the ballad itself, though it must always appear somewhat affected and faint in colour beside folk-songs of more spontaneous origin. Gray and Warton both praised it very highly, and Irving terms it the most poetical production of its period. Sir Walter Scott in his Minstrelsy called it "a most spirited and beautiful imitation of the ancient ballad," and on the flyleaf of his сору of Ramsay's Evergreen was found written "Hardyknute' was the first poem I ever learned, the last that I shal} forget.' Lady Wardlaw, whose Christian name was Elizabeth, was the second daughter of Sir Charles Halket of Pitferran, and was married in 1696 to Sir Henry Wardlaw of Pitreavie, in Fife. Though Sir Charles Halket averred that she wrote other poems, no further composition from her pen is known to be extant. Robert Chambers, however, at one time took great critical pains to show that some twenty-five of the finest Scots ballads, including "Sir Patrick Spens," were of her authorship. In this idea, curiously enough, he has been recently supported by Professor Masson (in Edinburgh Sketches and Memories). But Chambers in a later volume abandoned the theory, and its arguments have been treated as insufficient by the editors of all ballad collections. In the present pages "Hardyknute" is restored for the first time to the style of the edition of 1719, of which a copy is preserved in the Advocates' Library, with the addition, of course, of the two final stanzas from the Evergreen. The stanzas in brackets are not included in the Advocates' Library edition. HARDYKNUTE. A FRAGMENT. STATELY stept he east the wa', And ay his sword tauld to their cost High on a hill his castle stood, Full thirteen sons to him she bare, All men of valour stout; In bloody fight, with sword in hand, Nine lost their lives but1 doubt. I without. I slender. Four yet remain, lang may they live To stand by liege and land; High was their fame, high was their might, Great love they bare to Fairly fair, Her girdle shaw'd her middle jimp1, The King of Norse in summertyde, With mony a hardy knight. With noble chiefs in brave Aray, "To horse, to horse, my royal liege, |