A New Version of "Musselburgh Field"
A New Version of "Musselburgh Field"
by Albert B. Friedman
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 66, No. 259 (Jan. - Mar., 1953), pp. 74-77
A NEW VERSION OF "MUSSELBURGH FIELD":
The single version of "Musselburgh Field" which F. J. Child prints in his collection (no. 172) is incomplete due to a missing half page in the Percy Folio MS., Child's only source for the ballad. Unknown to Child and Kittredge, another and complete version, or perhaps merely copy, of the ballad is available in a low-grades eventeenth-century miscellany, Choyce Drollery: S ongs and Sonnets (London, 1656), pages 78-80, an unique exemplar of which is preserved among Edmond Malone's books in the Bodleian (Malone 378). The contents of this volume and pieces from other drolleries were reprinted in Choyce Drollery, ed. J. W. Ebsworth (Boston, Lincs., 1876). The primary virtue of the Choyce Drollery ballad of course is that it fills out the fragmentary Child copy. But its importance does not end there, for it also enables us to establish for a certainty that Shakespeare a lluded to this ballad on one occasion, and, most importantly perhaps, it throws additional light on the traditional qualities of a set of Percy Folio MS. ballads derived apparently, like "Musselburgh Field," from broadside sources. In Choyce Drollery the ballad is entitled "Upon the Scots being beaten at Muscleborough field." It is printed here with an interpolateds tanza (differentiated by italics) supplied from the Percy Folio MS. copy.
1. On the twelfth day of December,
In the fourth year of King Edwards reign
Two mighty Hosts (as I remember)
At Muscleborough did pitch on a Plain.
For a down, down, derry derry down, Hey down a.
Down, down, down a down derry.
2. All night our English men they lodged there,
So did the Scots both stout and stubborn,
But well-away was all their cheere,
For we have served them in their own turn.
For a down, &c.
3. All night they carded for our English mens Coats,
(They fished before their Nets were spun)
A white for Six-pence, a red for two Groats;
Wisdome would have stayd till they had been won.
For a down, &c.
Wee feared not but that they wold fight,
Yett itt was turned vnto their owne paine;
Thoe against one of vs that they were eight,
Yett with their owne weapons wee did them beat.
4. On the tewelfth day all in the morn,
They made a fere as if they would fight;
But many a proud Scot that day was down born,
And many a rank Coward was put to his flight.
For a down, &c.
5. And the Lord Huntley, we hadden him there,
With him he brought ten thousand men:
But God be thanked, we gave him such a Banquet,
He carryed but few of them home agen.
For a down, &c.
6. For when he heard our great Guns crack,
Then did his heart fall untill his hose,
He threw down his Weapons, he turned his back,
He ran so fast that he fell on his nose.
For a down, &c.
7. We beat them back till Edenborough,
(There's men alive can witnesse this)
But when we lookt our English men through,
Two hundred good fellowes we did not misse.
For a down, &c.
8. Now God preserve Edward our King,
With his two Nuncles and Nobles all,
And fend us Heaven at our ending:
For we have given Scots a lusty fall.
For a down, down, derry derry down, Hey,
Down a down down, down a down derry.
From the explicit it is clear that the drollery ballad is a broadside of the reign of Edward VI, the two "nuncles" being the Protector Somerset and Lord Thomas Seymour. The piece can be dated 1548 and was doubtless written not long after the news of Somerset's victory had been received in the south. It is thus among the dozen oldest English broadsides preserved, though not in its original format unfortunately. How the compiler of Choyce Drollery obtained the century-old sheet we cannot know, and it is always possible of course that he had it from some intermediate source-a written source, almost certainly, for the ballad shows no signs of a traditional provenance. A comparison of the drollery text and that printed by Child reveals far fewer changes than one might have expected of a piece that had been in tradition for a hundred years. In the assumedly traditional copy, the refrain has been dropped altogether, but this loss may be unreal. Quite possibly the refrain was still being sung at the time the ballad was recorded, only the compiler of the Percy Folio MS., with his usual tendency toward abbreviation, may have regarded it as an unnecessary flourish in a written copy, however vital to the ballad when sung. The metrics of the broadside are markedly more regular than those of the traditional ballad; similarly, the ABAB rhyme-scheme of the original is sometimesv iolated in no. 172, as in stanza 2 and the interpolated lines. That these lines are actually interpolated and not matter that had fallen out between the broadsheet and the drollery print is suggested by the faulty rhymes and by the fact that one line of this somewhat pallid stanza anticipates a later verse. The "fere" in the repeated line, incidentally, an archaic use of "fear," is altered by tradition to something more usual and more readily understood. On the whole, however, the verbal differences are slight, but where differences do occur, particularlyi n the use and placing of connectivesa nd adversativest, he drollery text is the more logical and precise. The major structural change, one will notice, is that the demoralization of the Scots is generalized in the traditional ballad whereas the broadside focuses on the plight of the enemy commander.
Kittredge thought that "perhaps" Shakespeare quoted "Musselburgh Field" in Twelfth Night (II, iii), his "perhaps" deferring to the fact that "Musselburgh Field" in the Percy Folio MS. version begins "On the tenth day of December" while Sir Toby sings, before he is hushed, "O, the twelfth day of December." See English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge (Boston, I904), p. 420. Since this remark occurs only in the abridgment of Child's collection, one assumes Kittredge is responsiblef or it. Cf. Twelfth Night, ed. G. L. Kittredge (Boston, 1941), pp. I14-II5. The drollery text of the initial line of the song allows us to sweep away any uncertainty as to what song Shakespeare had in mind. Unfortunately, Brome does not quote the "old Song" of the "Battaile of Muscleborough Field" which Sir Ferdinand sings and acts out madly in The Court Beggar (IV, iii), but almost certainly it was this very ballad.
Between the two versions of "Musselburgh Field" there exists the same relationship as between "The Great Treason Conspired Against the Young King of Scots," an Elderton broadside printed by Child in English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston and New York, I882-98), III, 445-446, as an appendix to "King James and Brown" (no. 18o), and "Bishoppe and Browne" in the Percy Folio MS. (ed. J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall, II, 265-268). H. E. Rollins in "William Elderton, Elizabethan Actor and Ballad-Writer," Studies in Philology, 17 (I920), 225-227, has argued that "King James and Brown" itself is "indisputably" derived from an Elderton ballad no longer extant, a companionp iece to "The Great Treason."C onsiderabled ifficultiess tand in the way of this assumption, however. It is hardly credible that two ballads evolved from broadsides written by the same hand at about the same time, ballads moreover which deal with similar matter and which were recorded in the same MS. seventy years after their appearance on broadsheets, could be so unlike as are "King James and Brown" and "Bishoppe and Browne." For though Rollins points to "Bishoppe and Browne" as evidence of the lines along which the hypothetical Elderton broadside was transformed into "King James and Brown," a careful study of the two pieces reveals, in my opinion, that tradition has done infinitely more for "King James and Brown" than for "Bishoppe and Brown." The former has every mark of the traditional style; Child (I882-98, III, 445) received it into his collection without reservation. "Bishoppe and Brown," on the other hand, he regarded as no more than "an imperfect and incorrect copy" of "The Great Treason." Nonetheless, one must grant that Child's tact in this matter may not have been impeccable." Musselburgh Field" and "Bishoppe and Browne" stand at nearly the same distance from their respective originals; it would be hard to say which has been traditionalized or adapted the less; yet Child canonized "Musselburgh Field" and summarily rejected the other. One begins to wonder whether Child would not also have rejected "Musselburgh Field" if he had known of the drollery text, writing the ballad off as an "imperfect and incorrect copy" of an ancient broadside. But such speculations go beyond my purpose, which is simply to suggest the way in which the broadside version of "Musselburgh Field" affects the discussion as to the authorship of "King James and Brown" and the traditional qualities of "Bishoppe and Browne." D. K. Wilgus, who intends to write on "King James and Brown" shortly, has generously outlined for me the stylistic arguments he will use to prove Elderton was not its author.
Harvard University, ALBERT B. FRIEDMAN
Cambridge, Massachusetts