Specimens of English literature from the 'Ploughmans crede' to the ...

VII.CHEVY CHASE.393misled by a statement by Dempster and others, who assigned to it thedate 1 36 1. I suspect that 3 is here a mere slip for 4, and I thereforeadopt the date 146 1 as probably the correct one. Most writers say,abo2it 1 460. Several passages from Henry the Minstrel are quoted inthe notes to the poem of ' William Wallace' by Joanna Baillie.VII.CHEVY CHASE.'The whole of the Ashmole MS. 48, in which the oldest copy ofChevy Chase* occurs, was printed by Mr. T. Wright for the RoxburgheClub, with the title ' Songs and Ballads of the Reign of Philip andMary.' Several of these have the name of Richard Sheale attachedto them, shewing that he was the person from whose recitation mostof them were written down. Some lines of his own composition areextant, of a lugubrious character and without merit, so that we are notsurprised to find him complaining of the neglect which he suffered.The MS. itself is a mere scribble, and the spelling very unsatisfactorybut I have thought it best to reproduce it, nevertheless, as exactly aspossible, since it is the sole authority. It is very probable that theoriginal ballad was a good deal better than appears from this copy.Many of the lines, as they here stand, will hardly scan, and are manifestlyfaulty, so that the true form of what must once have been a mostspirited and well-written poem has wellnigh perished. The 'moremodern' version is often smoother, but at the same time weaker, andis of small assistance in helping us to imagine what the original balladwas like.Line i. An avowe, a vow; see 1. 129. In Old English the form avowis very common, as e.g. in Chaucer (Knightes Tale, 1379)'That make I myn avovj, so ye me helpe 'whereas the form vow does not occur.Richard Sheale, who had probablylearnt the ballad by ear, very naturally turned an avow into and a vow,which is nonsense. It is very likely that the popularity of this balladhas induced many to believe that and could sometimes be thrown inas an expletive at the beginning of a sentence, but this is merely animpression, and not borne out by the usage of good writers. If anyother instances occur, they are ignorant imitations. This remark doesnot apply to Byron's poem, beginning ' A?id thou art dead, as youngand fair'—which is a natural expression enough.3. In the magger, a mistake for in maugre, more frequently maugre(without in) ; i.e. in spite of, Fr. mal gre. Dogles, Douglas.