And give yoa sutherne folk a frey! Why should I lose, the right is mine? My date is not to die this day."" Who can doubt, for a moment, that this refers to the battle of Flodden, and to the popular reports concerning the doubtful fate of James IV. Allusion is immediately afterwards made to the death of George Douglas, heir apparent of Angus, who fought and fell with his sovereign :— "The sternes three that day shall die, That bears the harte in silver sheen." The well-known arms of the Douglas family are the heart and three stars. In another place, the battle of Pinkie is expressly mentioned by name : "At Pinken Cluch there shall be spilt To the end of all this allegorical and mystical rhapsody, is interpolated, in the later edition by Andro Hart, a new edition of Berlington's verses, before quoted, altered and manufactured, so as to bear reference to the accession of James VI., which had just then taken place. The insertion is made with a peculiar degree of awkwardness, betwixt a question, put by the narrator, concerning the name and abode of the person who showed him these strange matters, and the answer of the prophet to that question: "Then to the Beirne could I say, Where dwells thou, or in what countrie? I frained fast what was his name, Thomas Rymour men cals me." be proper Take tent to Merling truely Then shall the wars ended be, In that yere there shall a king, A duke, and no crown'd king: Becaus the prince shall be yong, And tender of yeares." The date, above hinted at, seems to be 1549, when the Scottish Regent, by means of some succours derived from France, was endeavouring to repair the consequences of the fatal battle of Pinkie. Allusion is made to the supply given to the "Moldwarte [England] by the fained hart," (the Earl of Angus.) The Regent is described by his bearing the antelope; large supplies are promised from France, and complete conquest predicted to Scotland and her allies. Thus was the same hackneyed stratagem repeated, whenever the interest of the rulers appeared to stand in need of it. The Regent was not, indeed, till after this period, created Duke of Chatelherault; but that honour was the object of his hopes and expectations. The name of our renowned soothsayer is liberally used as an authority, throughout all the prophecies published by Andro Hart. Besides those expressly put in his name, Gildas, another assumed personage, is supposed to derive his knowledge from him; for he concludes thus: "True Thomas me told in a troublesome time, The Prophecy of Gildas. In the prophecy of Berlington, already quoted, we are told, "Marvellous Merlin, that many men of tells, And Thomas's sayings comes all at once." While I am upon the subject of these prophecies, may I be permitted to call the attention of antiquaries to Merdwynn Wyllt, or Merlin the Wild, in whose name, and by no means in that of Ambrose Merlin, the friend of Arthur, the Scottish prophecies are issued? That this personage resided at Drummelziar, and roamed, like a second Nebuchadnezzar, the woods of Tweeddale, in remorse for the death of his nephew, we learn from Fordun. In the Scotichronicon, lib. 3. cap. 31, is an account of an interview betwixt St. Kentigern and Merlin, then in this distracted and miserable state. He is said to have been called Lai There is surely no one, who will not conclude, with Lord Hailes, that the eight lines, enclosed in brackets, are a clumsy interpolation, borrowed from Berlington, with such alterations as might render the supposed prophecy applicable to the union of the crowns. While we are on this subject, it may briefly to notice the scope of some of the other predic-loken, from his mode of life. On being commanded tions, in Hart's Collection. As the prophecy of Ber- by the saint to give an account of himself, he says, lington was intended to raise the spirits of the nation, that the penance which he performs was imposed on during the regency of Albany, so those of Sybilla and Eltraine refer to that of the Earl of Arran, afterwards Duke of Chatelherault, during the minority of Mary, a period of similar calamity. This is obvious from the following verses : "Take a thousand in calculation, him by a voice from heaven, during a bloody contest betwixt Lidel and Carwanolow, of which battle he had been the cause. According to his own prediction, he perished at once by wood, earth, and water; for, being pursued with stones by the rustics, he fell from a rock into the river Tweed, and was transfixed by a sharp stake, fixed there for the purpose of extending a fishing-net : "Sude perfossus, lapide percussus, et unda, Sicque ruit, mersusque fuit lignoque prehensus, But, in a metrical history of Merlin of Caledonia, compiled by Geoffrey of Monmouth, from the traditions of the Welsh bards, this mode of death is attributed to a page, whom Merlin's sister, desirous to convict the prophet of falsehood, because he had betrayed her intrigues, introduced to him, under three various disguises, enquiring each time in what manner the person should die. To the first demand Merlin answered, the party should perish by a fall from a rock; to the second, that he should die by a tree; and to the third, that he should be drowned. The youth perished, while hunting, in the mode imputed by Fordun to Merlin himself. Fordun, contrary to the French authorities, confounds this person with the Merlin of Arthur; but concludes by informing us, that many believed him to be a different person. The grave of Merlin is pointed out at Drummelziar, in Tweeddale, beneath an aged thorn-tree. On the east-side of the churchyard, the brook, called Pausayl, falls into the Tweed; and the following prophecy is said to have been current concerning their union :— "When Tweed and Pausayl join at Merlin's grave, Scotland and England shall one monarch have." He answers briefly to Waldhave's enquiry concerning bis name and nature, that he "drees his weird," i. e. does penance in that wood; and, having hinted that questions as to his own state are offensive, he pours forth an obscure rhapsody concerning futurity, and concludes, "Go musing upon Merlin if thou wilt: For I mean no more, man, at this time." This is exactly similar to the meeting betwixt Merlin and Kentigern in Fordun. These prophecies of Merlin seem to have been in request in the minority Sir David Lindsay diverted that prince during his of James V.; for, among the amusements with which infancy, are, "The prophecies of Rymer, Bede, and Merlin." SIR DAVID LINDSAY'S Epistle to the King. And we find, in Waldhave, at least one allusion to the very ancient prophecy, addressed to the Countess of Dunbar : "This is a true token that Thomas of tells, When a ladde with a ladye shall go over the fields." The original stands thus :-- "When laddes weddeth lovedies." On the day of the coronation of James VI., the Another prophecy of Merlin seems to have been Tweed accordingly overflowed, and joined the Pau- current about the time of the Regent Morton's exesayl at the prophet's grave.-PENNYCUICK'S History cution. When that nobleman was committed to the of Tweeddale, p. 26. These circumstances would charge of his accuser, Captain James Stewart, newly seem to infer a communication betwixt the south-created Earl of Arran, to be conducted to his trial at west of Scotland and Wales, of a nature peculiarly Edinburgh, Spottiswoode says, that he asked, “Who intimate; for I presume that Merlin would retain was Earl of Arran?' and being answered that Capsense enough to choose for the scene of his wander- tain James was the man, after a short pause, he said, ings, a country having a language and manners simi- And is it so? I know then what I may look for?' lar to his own. meaning, as was thought, that the old prophecy of the Falling of the heart 3 by the mouth of Arran,' should then be fulfilled. Whether this was his mind or not, it is not known; but some spared not, at the time when the Hamiltons were banished, in which business he was held too earnest, to say, that he stood in fear of that prediction, and went that course only to disappoint it. But if so it was, he did find himself now deluded; for he fell by the mouth of another Arran than he imagined."-SPOTTISWOODE, 313. The fatal words alluded to seem to be these in the prophecy of Merlin : Be this as it may, the memory of Merlin Sylvester, or the Wild, was fresh among the Scots during the reign of James V. Waldhave,' under whose name a set of prophecies was published, describes himself as lying upon Lomond Law; he hears a voice, which bids him stand to his defence; he looks around, and beholds a flock of hares and foxes 2 pursued over the mountain by a savage figure, to whom he can hardly give the name of man. At the sight of Waldhave, the apparition leaves the objects of his pursuit, and assaults him with a club. Waldhave defends himself with his sword, throws the savage to the earth, and refuses to let him arise till he swear, by the law and lead he lives upon, "to do him no harm." This done, he permits him to arise, and marvels at his strange appearance : "He was formed like a freike [man] all his four quarters; 1 I do not know whether the person here meant be Waldhave, an abbot of Melrose, whic died in the odour of sanctity, about 1160. "In the mouthe of Arrane a selcouth shall fall, Two bloodie hearts shall be taken with a false traine, To return from these desultory remarks, into which I have been led by the celebrated name of Merlin, the style of all these prophecies, published by Hart, is very much the same. The measure is alliterative, 2 See Appendix, Note D. 3 The heart was the cognizance of Morton. and somewhat similar to that of Pierce Plowman's Visions; a circumstance which might entitle us to ascribe to some of them an earlier date than the reign of James V., did we not know that Sir Galloran of Galloway and Gawaine and Gologras, two romances rendered almost unintelligible by the extremity of affected alliteration, are perhaps not prior to that period. Indeed, although we may allow that, during much earlier times, prophecies, under the names of those celebrated soothsayers, have been current in Scotland, yet those published by Hart have obviously been so often vamped and re-vamped, to serve the political purposes of different periods, that it may be shrewdly suspected, that, as in the case of Sir John Cutler's transmigrated stockings, very little of the original materials now remains. I cannot refrain from indulging my readers with the publisher's title to the last prophecy, as it contains certain curious information concerning the Queen of Sheba, who is identified with the Cumaan Sibyl: "Here followeth a prophecie, pronounced by a noble queene and matron, called Sybilla, Regina Austri, that came to Solomon. Through the which she compiled four bookes, at the instance of the said King Sol, and others divers and the fourth book was directed to a noble king, called Baldwine, King of the broad isle of Britain; in the which she maketh mention of two noble princes and emperours, the which is called Leones. How these two shall subdue and overcome all earthlie princes to their diademe and crowne, and also be glorified and crowned in the heaven among saints. The first of these two is Constantinus Magnus; that was Leprosus, the son of Saint Helena, that found the croce. The second is the sixt king of the name of Steward of Scotland, the which is our most noble king." With such editors and commentators, what wonder that the text became unintelligible, even beyond the usual oracular obscurity of prediction? If there still remain, therefore, among these predictions, any verses having a claim to real antiquity, it seems now impossible to discover them from those which are comparatively modern. Nevertheless, as there are to be found, in these compositions, some uncommonly wild and masculine expressions, the Editor has been induced to throw a few passages together, into the sort of ballad to which this disquisition is prefixed. It would, indeed, have been no difficult matter for him, by a judicious selection, to have excited, in favour of Thomas of Ercildoune, a share of the admiration bestowed by sundry wise persons upon Mass Robert Fleming. For example : 1 "But then the lilye shal be loused when they least think; Thereafter, on every side, sorrow shal arise; 1 The Rev. R. Fleming, pastor of a Scotch congregation in London, published in 1701, "Discourses on the Rise and Fall of Papacy," in which he expressed his belief, founded on a The barges of clear barons down shal be sunken; Seculars shall sit in spiritual seats, Occupying offices anointed as they were." Taking the lily for the emblem of France, can there be a more plain prophecy of the murder of her monarch, the destruction of her nobility, and the desolation of her hierarchy? But, without looking farther into the signs of the times, the Editor, though the least of all the prophets, cannot help thinking, that every true Briton will approve of his application of the last prophecy quoted in the ballad. Hart's collection of prophecies was frequently reprinted during the last century, probably to favour the pretensions of the unfortunate family of Stuart. For the prophetic renown of Gildas and Bede, see Fordun, lib. 3. Before leaving the subject of Thomas's predictions, it may be noticed, that sundry rhymes, passing for his prophetic effusions, are still current among the vulgar. Thus, he is said to have prophesied of the very ancient family of Haig of Bemerside, "Betide, betide, whate'er betide, Haig shall be Haig of Bemerside." The grandfather of the present proprietor of Bemerside had twelve daughters, before his lady brought him a male heir. The common people trembled for the credit of their favourite soothsayer. The late Mr. Haig was at length born, and their belief in the prophecy confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt. Another memorable prophecy bore, that the Old Kirk at Kelso, constructed out of the ruins of the Abbey, should "fall when at the fullest." At a very crowded sermon, about thirty years ago, a piece of lime fell from the roof of the church. The alarm, for the fulfilment of the words of the seer, became universal; and happy were they who were nearest the door of the predestined edifice. The church was in consequence deserted, and has never since had an opportunity of tumbling upon a full congregation. I hope, for the sake of a beautiful specimen of SaxoGothic architecture, that the accomplishment of this prophecy is far distant. Another prediction, ascribed to the Rhymer, seems to have been founded on that sort of insight into futurity, possessed by most men of a sound and combining judgment. It runs thus: "At Eldon Tree if you shall be, A brigg ower Tweed you there may see." The spot in question commands an extensive prospect of the course of the river; and it was easy to foresee, that when the country should become in the least degree improved, a bridge would be somewhere thrown over the stream. In fact, you now see no less than three bridges from that elevated situation. text in the Apocalypse, that the French Monarchy would undergo some remarkable humiliation about 1794.-ED. |