"The neist curse lights on Branxton hills: "A Scottish King shall come full keen, The ruddy lion beareth he; A feather'd arrow sharp, I ween, Shall make him wink and warre to see. "When he is bloody, and all to bledde, Thus to his men he still shall say'For God's sake, turn ye back again, And give yon southern folk a fray! Why should I lose, the right is mine? My doom is not to die this day.' 3 "Yet turn ye to the eastern hand, And woe and wonder ye sall see; How forty thousand spearmen stand, Where yon rank river meets the sea. "There shall the lion lose the gylte, And the libbards bear it clean away; At Pinkyn Cleuch there shall be spilt Much gentil bluid that day." THOMAS THE RHYMER was renowned among his contemporaries, as the author of the celebrated romance of Sir Tristrem. Of this once-admired poem only one copy is now known to exist, which is in the Advocates' Library. The Editor, in 1804, published a small edition of this curious work; which, if it does not revive the reputation of the bard of Ercildoune, is at least the earliest specimen of Scottish poetry hitherto published. Some account of this romance has already been given to the world in Mr. ELLIS's Specimens of Ancient Poetry, vol. i. p. 165, iii. p. 410; a work to which our predecessors and our posterity are alike obliged; the former, for the preservation of the best-selected examples of their poetical taste; and the latter, for a history of the English language, which will only cease to be interesting with the existence of our mother-tongue, and all that genius and learning have recorded in it. It is sufficient here to mention, that so great was the reputation of the romance of Sir Tristrem, that few were thought capable of reciting it after the manner of the author-a circumstance alluded to by Robert de Brunne, the annalist : "I see in song, in sedgeyng tale, Of Erceldoun, and of Kendale, If men it said as made Thomas," &c. It appears, from a very curious MS. of the thirteenth century, penes Mr. Douce of London, containing a French metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that the work of our Thomas the Rhymer was known, and re ferred to, by the minstrels of Normandy and Bretagne Having arrived at a part of the romance where reciters were wont to differ in the mode of telling the story, the French bard expressly cites the authority of the poet of Ercildoune: " Plusurs de nos granter ne volent, The tale of Sir Tristrem, as narrated in the Edinburgh MS., is totally different from the voluminous romance in prose, originally compiled on the same subject by Rusticien de Puise, and analyzed by M. de Tressan; but agrees in every essential particular with the metrical performance just quoted, which is a work of much higher antiquity. The following attempt to commemorate the Rhymer's poetical fame, and the traditional account of his marvellous return to Fairy Land, being entirely modern, would have been placed with greater propriety among the class of Modern Ballads, had it it not been for its immediate connexion with the first and second parts of the same story. THOMAS THE RHYMER. PART THIRD. WHEN seven years more were come and gono, Then all by bonny Coldingknow,? Pitch'd palliouns took their room, And crested helms, and spears a-rowe, Glanced gaily through the broom. The Leader, rolling to the Tweed, They roused the deer from Caddenhead, The spot is rendered classical by its having given name to the beautiful melody called the Broom o' the Cowdenknows. 3 Ensenzie-War-cry, or gathering word. 4 Torwoodlee and Caddenhead are places in Selkirkshire; both the property of Mr. Pringle of Torwood lea The feast was spread in Ercildoune, In Learmont's high and ancient hall : And there were knights of great renown, And ladies, laced in pall. Nor lacked they, while they sat at dine, True Thomas rose, with harp in hand, Hush'd were the throng, both limb and tongue, And harpers for envy pale; And armed lords lean'd on their swords, In numbers high, the witching tale No after bard might e'er avail Yet fragments of the lofty strain He sung King Arthur's Table Round: How courteous Gawaine met the wound," But chief, in gentle Tristrem's praise, For Marke, his cowardly uncle's right, No art the poison might withstand; Till lovely Isolde's lily hand Had probed the rankling wound. With gentle hand and soothing tongue And, while she o'er his sick-bed hung, O fatal was the gift, I ween! For, doom'd in evil tide, The maid must be rude Cornwall's queen, Their loves, their woes, the gifted bard Where lords, and knights, and ladies bright, The Garde Joyeuse, amid the tale, Brangwain was there, and Segramore, Through many a maze the winning song Till bent at length the listening throng His ancient wounds their scars expand, O where is Isolde's lilye hand, And where her soothing tongue? She comes! she comes!-like flash of flame She comes! she comes!-she only came She saw him die; her latest sigh Join'd in a kiss his parting breath, There paused the harp: its lingering sound The silent guests still bent around, Then woe broke forth in murmurs weak: On Leader's stream, and Learmont's tower, In camp, in castle, or in bower, 1 Quaighs-Wooden cups, composed of staves hooped toge- 1804, as a noble contrast to the ordinary humility of the ge ther. 2 See Introduction to this ballad. nuine ballad diction.-ED. 4 Sce, in the Fabliaux of Monsieur le Grand, elegantly translated by the late Gregory Way, Esq., the tale of the 3 This stanza was quoted by the Edinburgh Reviewer, of Knight and the Sword. [Vol. ii. p. 3.] NOTE B.-P. 574. The reader is here presented, from an old, and unfortunately an imperfect MS., with the undoubted original of Thomas the Rhymer's intrigue with the Queen of Faery. It will afford great amusement to those who would study the nature of traditional poetry, and the changes effected by oral tradition, to compare this ancient romance with the foregoing ballad. The same incidents are narrated, even the expression is often the same; yet the poems are as different in appearance, as if the older tale had been regularly and systematically modernized by a poet of the present day. Incipit Brophesia Thomæ de Erseldoun. In the gryking of the day, Ay alone as I went, In Huntle bankys me for to play; I saw the throstyl, and the jay, It beth neuyer discryuyd for mc. Bryht with mony a precyous stone, A while she blew, a while she sang, On euery syde forsothe hang bells thre, He sayd Yonder is Mary of Might, That bar the child that died for me, Certes bot I may speke with that lady bright, I schal me hye with all my might, Queen of Heaven as you may well be, I ride after the wild fee, And yet bot you may haf your will, Trow you well, Thomas, you cheuyst ye warre; She sayd, Man, you lyst thi play, What berde in bouyr may dele with thee, That maries me all this long day; I pray ye, Thomas, let me be. Her heyre hang down about hyr hede, This twelmonth sall you with me gone, Alas, he seyd, ful wo is me, I trow my dedes will werke me care, Whedir so euyr my body sal fare. It was as derke as at midnizt, The figge and als fylbert tre; The throstylcock sang wald hate no rest. |