Bluegrass Messengers

An Accused Queen in "The Lass of Roch Royal"

An Accused Queen in "The Lass of Roch Royal" (Child 76)
by David C. Fowler
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 282 (Oct. - Dec., 1958), pp. 553-563

[Proofed once, still some mistakes. R. Matteson 2012]

AN ACCUSED QUEEN IN "THE LASS OF ROCH ROYAL" (CHILD 76)
BY DAVID C. FOWLER

THE popular ballad known as "The Lass of Roch Royal" (Child 76) [1] is perhaps most famous for its so-called "shoe my foot" stanzas, in which the forlorn heroine asks such pathetic questions as these (76 D I): "O wha will shoe my fu fair foot? / An wha will glove my han? / An wha will lace my middle gimp / Wi the new made London ban?" In spite of the popularity of these stanzas, however (they are found in an impressive number of ballads and songs), little study has been devoted to one of the earliest ballads in which they appear. The purpose of the following analysis, therefore, is to define the type of narrative represented by "The Lass of Roch Royal" in its earliest known versions, and, as a consequence, to restore the Lass to her rightful position as an Accused Queen, a status which (as we shall see), if not comfortable, is at least not without considerable prestige. To this it need only be added that before we can attempt to distinguish and define the basic narrative structive of the ballad, we will have to examine in some detail the versions given in Child's collection. But this is no mere prerequisite. The convolutions of the texts of "The Lass" constitute a fascinating episode in the history of balladry.

"The Lass of Ocram," probably our earliest text, is a broadside dating from about the middle of the eighteenth century. It was reprinted by Child in his additions and corrections (III, 510-511). Whether or not it is actually the earliest in point of time, it dearly lacks that infiltration by elements from other ballads which is so characteristic of most versions of "The Lass" (and which, in my opinion, eventually destroyed the ballad; but more of this later). The story in this "Ocram" version runs as follows.

The Lass of Ocram is sailing all alone in a rich ship when she meets a proud merchant man. She identifies herself to him (stanza 4 is somewhat corrupt), saying that she is in search of Lord Gregory. The merchant man apparently recognizes her, and directs her to "yonder island." She asks at the gate to be let in, but Gregory's mother, speaking as if she were Gregory, demands that she name three tokens which the lovers had exchanged. The Lass mentions linen, rings, and her maidenhead, suggesting reproachfully in the process that the value of the various tokens is symbolic of their love relationship. She says, for example, of the rings (stanza 12): "For mine was of the beaten gold, / And your was of block-tin; / And mine was true love without, / And yours all false within." But as soon as she has accused Gregory of stealing her maidenhead, the mother tells her to be gone, "Or else in the deep seas / You and your babe shall fall." Whereupon the girl asks who will shoe her bonny feet, etc., concluding with "who's to be father of my child / If Lord Gregory is none?" The mother's answer is: let your own family (brother, sister, mother, father) take care of you, and "let God be father of your child, / For Lord Gregory is none." Meanwhile it is apparent that Lord Gregory has been asleep inside all during this conversation; and, when he finally awakens, he tells his mother that he has dreamed he saw the Lass of Ocram floating on the flood. (That she is "floating on the flood" in his dream is our only hint that the Lass may be dead.) His mother advises him to lie still and rest, for, she says, the maid passed by here not half an hour ago. Lord Gregory then curses her for not waking him, and declares his heart will break for the Lass of Ocram.

The language of this version is polished and regularized; certain stylistic features ("Begone, you base creature!") have the unmistakable stamp of the broadside; and  the last stanza (23) is certainly a typical eighteenth century contribution: "I will go down into some silent grove, / My sad moan for to make; / It is for the Lass of Ocram / My poor heart now will break." But the ballad has its integrity. There is compression, dramatic understatement, and a carefully contrived climax. Sentimentality is skirted: incremental repetition gives an almost ritual tone to the dialogue, but is not prolonged so as to detract from the emotional intensity of the situation. The high point of pathos comes in the "shoe my foot" stanzas (16-17), and a dramatic climax is achieved in the delicate ambiguity of stanza 21, in which the mother is comforting Gregory about his dream: "Lie still, my dearest son, / And take thy sweet rest;/ It is not half an hour ago, / The maid passd this place." We accept her tenderness toward her son as genuine; but although lines 3 and 4 are intended (for Gregory's ears) as reassuring evidence that nothing is wrong with the girl, these innocent sounding lines carry the whole weight of the mother's hatred. Gregory's curse in the next stanza provides the final resolution by revealing that his mother's "love" has destroyed him, as well as the girl. All in all, this version, while of course not great poetry, should rank high among traditional ballads. [2]

One other version (Child A) of "The Lass of Roch Royal," like the "Ocram" text just discussed, dates from about the middle of the eighteenth century. As the story begins, Isabell of Rochroyall dreams about her love, Gregory. The dream, whatever it was (we are not told), impels her to go seek her beloved. She orders a steed saddled, and, after riding a mile or so, meets a "companie" raking over the lea. She is questioned by the company as follows (A 6): "O whether is this the first young may, / That lighted and gaed in; / Or is this the second young may, / That neer the sun shined on; / Or is this Fair Isabell of Roch Royall, / Banisht from kyth and kin?" Concerning this stanza Child remarks (II, 214): "She meets a company, who ask her questions about a first and a second young may, which she seems to understand, but which are not made intelligible to us." This encounter, of course, corresponds to the meeting of the Lass and the proud merchant-man in the "Ocram" version (stanzas 3 and 4). Unfortunately this passage, because of the corruption, can be of little help in elucidating the questions put by the company in A, which we are now considering.[3] But I do not think that these questions are totally unintelligible. "Are you the young maid," they ask, "that visits Gregory openly during the day? Or are you the one that slips in to see him at night? Or are you the one [i.e., Isabell of Rochroyall] that he got into trouble?" Understanding the questions in this way, it is immediately apparent 1) that Gregory is (at least allegedly) a ladies' man, 2) that the three maids represent steps up (or down) the ladder to his affections, and 3) that Isabell's plight is well known. But what motivates the company to ask such questions? On the assumption that they recognize her as Isabell, which seems likely in context, the most that can be said is that they do not appear to be favorably disposed toward the girl. Of course ballad conventions ought also to be recognized: this "company" has a function to perform.

But to continue the story as it is given in A. After Isabell identifies herself, she is directed by the company to Gregory's castle, where she tirls at the pin. The dialogue which ensues between Isabell and Gregory's mother has a startling twist. The mother, speaking as Gregory, asks for the usual tokens. But after Isabell has mentioned rings and smocks (she omits maidenhead), the mother drops all pretense and says (A 17): "Love Gregory, he is not at home, / But he is to the sea; / If you have any word to him, / I pray you leave 't with me." Whereupon the girl asks who will shoe her bonny foot, etc., and who will be the bairn's father. The mother then volunteers, surprisingly, that she will shoe her bonny foot, etc., but that there is none to be the bairn's father till Gregory comes home. And to this the girl strangely replies (A 22): "I'll set my foot on the ship-board/, God send me wind and more! / For there's never a woman shall bear a son / Shall make my heart so sore." Whatever this may mean (that she is determined to sail in search of Gregory? that she suspects deception?), she evidently departs without accepting the mother's apparent offer of assistance [4].

Gregory then dreams that he hears the lass knocking at the door, and, when he wakes and mentions this, his mother tells him she has just left. He leaves his mother with execrations, and orders his steed saddled. After riding a mile or so he meets Isabell's comely corpse, raking over the lea. He slits the winding sheet, kisses the corpse, and leaves instructions for two funerals. Birk and brier spring out of their graves.

The above version (Child A) is found in Elizabeth Cochrane's Songbook, which, like the broadside, cannot be dated with precision. But this doesn't really matter. They are probably of about the same date. In any case the analysis given reveals that, unlike the broadside, the songbook version has absorbed elements from other ballads. This fact alone establishes the genealogical priority of the broadside, which lacks the tenacious birk and brier found in so many of the romantic ballads (e.g., Child 73, 74, 75, 84, 85).

The diction of the songbook version reflects more clearly than the broadside what we have come to think of as typical ballad style. " 'Gar sadle me the black,' he says, 'Gar sadle me the broun ... ,' " etc. But the narrative structure is certainly inferior, and reveals a first stage in the degeneration of the ballad. A passion for parallelism is evident in the text. Since, in the intrusive funereal ending, Gregory rode his steed, Isabell must do likewise in the opening section: " 'Gar sadle me the black,' she says, 'Gar sadle me the broun . . .' " Since Gregory had a dream about Isabell, she must have a dream about him. Thus parallelism is achieved in the ballad, but only at the expense of the sea journey, and the substitution of a vague "companie" (who, like the corpse, come raking over the lea) for the broadside's proud merchant man. We are left only with Isabell's rather pointless statement (A 22) that she'll set her foot on the shipboard to remind us that an element of fundamental importance- the sea journey-is missing from this version.

In Herd's version (Child B), dated 1776, the "shoe my foot" stanzas are removed from their dramatically appropriate position in the dialogue and placed at the beginning, where they now apparently become rhetorical questions uttered by the lass and addressed to the babe itself (already born? The babe is not mentioned directly again, but is perhaps indicated in B 18). In response to these questions someone (her sister?) replies that members of her own family (father, mither, brither) will shoe the babe's bonny feet, etc., and concludes (B 4): "Mysel will kame his bonny head, / With a tabean brirben kame; / And the Lord will be the bairn's father, / Till Love Gregory come hame." Nevertheless, in spite of this comforting a ssurance, the lass sails away in a rich ship to seek Love Gregory. Soon she meets a "rude rover," who asks her (B 8): "O whether is thou the Queen hersel, / Or ane o her maries three?/ Or is thou the lass of Lochroyan/, Seeking Love Gregory?" She identifies herself as the latter, and the rover points out a "bonny bower" where he says she will find Love Gregory. The lass then tirls at the pin, demanding entry, and, in spite of the apparent loyalty of her family (B I-4), announces that she is "Banisht frae a' my kin" (B ii). There follows the usual dialogue with mention of tokens (rings and maidenhead), except that the conversation ends abruptly, obviously because of the fact that the "shoe my foot" stanzas have been removed and placed at the beginning of the ballad. After naming the tokens, the lass again demands entry, and, there being presumably no reply (B 18-19):

Then she has turned her round about:
"Well, since that it be sae,
Let never woman that has born a son
Hae a heart sae full of wae.

"Take down, take down that mast o gould,
Set up a mast of tree;
For it dinna become a forsaken lady
To sail so royallie."

Next we have Love Gregory telling his mother the dream, and she responds as usual. He curses her and orders his steed ("'Gar saddle to me the black,' he said, 'Gar saddle to me the brown . . . ,'" etc.), rides out to meet the corpse, kisses her rosy lips, and then stabs himself to death. There is no mention of birk and brier.

The shifting of the "shoe my foot" stanzas to the beginning in this version from Herd marks a second stage in the distintegration of the ballad. Not only does this shift rob the lass-mother dialogue of its high point of pathos, but it exposes the "shoe my foot" stanzas to the danger of easy detachment from the rest of the ballad. This is, of course, what actually happens later on. We have a few ballads that lack these stanzas (76 C, G), and many that consist of little else than "shoe my foot" (J, plus scores of other ballads and songs). In spite of the intrusion of the funereal ending in this version, the important sea journey is retained; but, because of the new attitude of the lass's family, her sudden departure on the bonny ship is so poorly motivated as to seem useless and arbitrary. One positive feature of Herd's text is significant: for the first time it is suggested (B I-4, 18) that the child is already born.

The fortunes of our ballad (if not of the lass herself) take a turn for the better in the two versions obtained from Mrs. Brown of Falkland. The first of these (Child D) was obtained in 1783. Anny of Roch-royal asks who will shoe her foot, etc., and we are told that her family (father, mother, sister, brother) take on this responsibility, but that the king of heaven m ust fatherh er child. Nevertheless, at her wish, her father gives her a bonny ship, and, with her young son in her arms, she sails away. There is no mention of an encounter at sea with anyone. After barely a month she arrives at her true-love's door (D 8): "The night was dark, an the win blew caul,/ An her love was fast asleep/, An the bairn that was in her twa arms/ Fu sair began to weep." The "fa'se m ither" responds and, when Anny identifies herself and "your youngs on," the mother calls her a witch, warlock, or mermaid. She demands tokens. Anny names napkins and rings, and concludes (D 18): "Sae open the door now, Love Gregor/, An open it wi speed/, Or your young son that is in my arms/ For cauld will soon be dead. "Then the mother (still speaking as Gregor) replies (D 19): "I ha gotten another fair love,/ Sae ye may h ye you hame."  Weeping, the lass returns to the ship. Meanwhile Gregory tells his mother of a dream  he had: Anny stood mourning at his door, but none would let her in. His mother tells the truth, but in such a way as to excuse herself (D 24): "O there was a woman stood at the door, / Wi a bairn intill her arms, / But I woudna let her within the bowr,/ For fears he had done you harm. "Taking his mother at her word, and hence not cursing her, Gregor quickly rushes to the strand, sees the departing ship, and calls a loud to Anny, but to no avail. Then a storm comes up suddenly, and the ship is rent in twain. Anny floats toward the shore, and Gregor wades out to bring in her body. He kisses her lips, mourning over her till sundown, when he dies.

From the summary just given, it should be apparent that Mrs. Brown has taken the poor narrative structure of Herd and made the best of it. [5] Like Herd, she has the "shoe my foot" stanzas at the beginning, but the resulting gap in the dialogue is now filled by the pathetic presence of the weeping child in the lass's arms. (The suggestion for this perhaps came from Herd, B 1-4, 18, where, as we have seen, the presence of the child is implied.) Like Herd, Mrs. Brown represents the family as sympathetic, but she eliminates all statements to the effect that the lass is "Banisht fraea' my kin" (B 11), and suggests that the girl wishes (in spite of the comforts offered by her family) to be with Gregor at all costs (D 5). Like Herd, Mrs. Brown has the love-death ending, but she abandons Gregory's ridiculous ride from town to town in search of a girl who has just departed on shipboard, and in its place presents us with a skillfully wrought (if somewhat melodramatic) description of death at sea.

Mrs. Brown's second version (Child E), obtained in 1800, has essentially the same excellent qualities as those of her first. Of course there are differences of emphasis and motivation, and the ballad undergoes some compression, but though a detailed comparison would be interesting, both in itself and in what it reveals about Mrs. B rown, [6] it would be of limited value for our present purpose.

The remaining versions of "The Lass of Roch Royal" are either purely derivative, or fragmentary. The text which C hild lists as having been communicated to Scott by Major Hutton in 1802 is a diffuse conflation of Herd and Mrs. Brown (B and E) with a few touches from other sources. A text circulating in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and recorded in Pitcairn's MSS (Child C), reveals the final stage in the disintegration of the ballad. It has all the structural faults of Herd's version (Child B ), but, in addition, it lacks the "shoe my foot" stanzas; and the questions posed (in B 8) by the "ruder over" ("O whether is thou the Queen hersel/, Or ane o her maries three?"e tc.), are now (strangely) asked by Gregory's mother, who has hitherto shown no inclination to flatter the lass. The ending falters between Mrs. Brown's picture of death at sea, and the intrusive corpse encounter, complete with thorn and brier. Buchan's version (ChildG ), recorded in 1828, breaks off at stanza 17 with the naming of the tokens (and also lacks the "shoe my foot" stanzas). It is indebted to Mrs. Brown (through Scott), but is perhaps most noteworthy for its introductionof a carpenter to build the ship. This text, however, accuses itself in the opening line: "It fell on a Wodensday .... [7] " The rest (Child F, H, I, J, K) are fragments.

The nine stanzas from Ireland (H) are interesting as an illustration of the development of a burden, and as evidence that a form of the original "Ocram" version ("Aughrim" in H) had survived independently as late as 1830. James Joyce employs a fragment of an Irish version in his short story "The Dead." [8] In the preceding analysis we have witnessed the decline and fall of a ballad. "This ballad," says MacEdward Leach, "is rather rare in spite of the fact that it is a moving and tragic story." [9] How did it happen? The admirable narrative structure of the "Ocram" version was dealt a severe blow with the infiltration of the commonplace love-death and the graves spread over with birk and brier. A second blow came when the "shoe my foot" stanzas were removed from their dramatically appropriate position in the lass-mother dialogue and placed at the beginning-the laudable but unartistic purpose of which was to make the family sympathetic. The ballad enjoyed a temporary rebirth in Mrs. Brown, but then sank finally into oblivion, detaching and leaving behind as its heritage the multitude of "shoe my foot" stanzas which are to be found in so many different ballads to this day.

Having surveyed the horizontal development of our ballad (what happened to it in the course of transmission) we are now in a position to look at it vertically, that is, to distinguish and define those elements which are fairly constant up to the time of its disintegration. This can be done quickly. And when it is done, we will finally be in a position to ask the question which is, after all, the main concern of this paper: What is the type of narrative represented by this ballad? Who is the Lass of Roch Royal?

On the basis of the foregoing analysis of the ballad, the following pattern emerges as representative of the basic narrative structure. A lass is sailing alone at sea on a rich ship when she meets a proud merchant man ("companie," A; "rude rover," B; "rank robers, and a' their companie," F; "rank rever, and a' his companie," Scott MS). He asks her a three-fold question which may be taken alternatively as insulting or flattering, and the lass responds by identifying herself, explaining that she is banished from all her kin and is in search of her true love. He then directs her to a nearby island ("castle," A; "bower," B; "tower," F). She approaches her true love's door (with her young son in her arms, B (?), C, D-E, G, H; uttering a spell breaking incantation, F, Scott MS), and asks to come in. Unknown to her lover, who is asleep, his mother answers the door and speaks for him to the lass. The mother demands tokens of their love as proof of her identity (after having first called the lass a witch, warlock, or mermaid, D-E, G; a false thief, C). The girl mentions various tokens, the most prominent of which is a ring, and concludes by referring to the loss of her maidenhead. The mother tells her to get out (threatens her with drowning at sea, 'Ocram" version and E; says Gregory is not at home, A; says "I [Gregor] hae gotten another fair love," D; pretends not to believe her identity, Scott MS). Whereupon the lass asks who will shoe her bonny foot, etc., and who will be father of her child. The mother, still speaking as the true love, replies (with sarcasm), let your family take care of you, and (with irony) let God be father of your child. (Of course after the shifting of the "shoe my foot" stanzas to the beginning, members of the family unhesitatingly assume their responsibilities, and the fatherhood of God is devoutly intended; but this is a secondary development.) Faced with the finality of what she takes to be her true love's cruel words, the lass returns to her ship (with her babe in her arms, A (?), B (?), C, D-E), and sails away (implied in "Ocram" and B; explicit in A, C, D-E, Scott MS). Meanwhile her true love awakens and relates a dream in which he saw the lass floating on the foam (heard her at the gate, A, B, D; saw her dead at his feet, E). His mother tells him to lie still and sleep, for the maid passed this place less than a half-hour ago-hence the dream can have no sinister significance. (No other version preserves this touch; it appears only in "Ocram." The others have: the mother says with apparent unconcern that the lass was here, but is gone now, A, B; the lass was here, but I wouldn't let her in for fear she might harm you, D; the lass was here, but- ominously- I certainly didn't let her in, E. [10]) The lover then curses his mother, and mourns the loss of the girl, who, he presumes, is drowned at sea. [11]

Thus we can now clearly visualize our heroine: she is banished from kith and kin to sail alone on the sea, and, after finally coming to land she is rebuffed (as she thinks) by her true love, throught he machinations of his malevolent mother, a nd is
therefore mercilessly driven, with her young babe in her arms, back once more t o her ship, to sail the seas in peril of her life. It should, I think, be fairly obvious by now that this girl is none other than the Accused Queen, renowned heroine of medieval folktale and romance, who is perhaps best known in Constance, the virtuous lady of the Man of Law's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. [12] The basic outline of this story (using Chaucer's version as a model) is as follows.
Constance, daughter of the Roman Emperor and famous for her virtue, is affianced to the Sultan of Syria, who has agreed to give up idolatry and become a Christian. The Sultan's mother, however, secretly resenting her son's abandonment of his religion, stages a great feast when Constance arrives, in which all the apostates to Christianity are slaughtered. Constance survives the massacre, but is placed alone on a well provisioned ship which sails rudderless on the sea. Years later the ship lands in Northumbriaw, here Constance is sheltered by a friendly constable and his wife, whom she converts to Christianity. Shortly, however, her tranquility is disturbed by the first of a series of accusations. A young knight, whose overtures have been rejected by Constance, attempts revenge by killing the friendly constable's wife and laying the bloody knife by Constance' side. The constable arrives on the scene, together with his lord, King Alla of Northumbria, and the young knight pressesh is accusation of murder. King Alla has great pity for the lovely but forlorn Constance, and, suspecting the young knight of bearing false witness, orders him to swear on a British book of the Evangelists that his accusation is true. The young knight does this, but as soon as he speaks a hand smites him down in the presence of all, and a voice accuses him of slandering a daughter of Holy Church.

This miracle results in the conversion of King Alla and his followers, and the king himself marries Constance. Her trials, however, are not over yet. The king begets a child on her, but is compelled to go to war in Scotland and is therefore absent when the child (a boy) is born. A messenger, has tily despatched with the good news, stops overnight at the castle of King Alla's mother, who, it seems, resents the fact that her son has married "so strange a creature." She therefore gets the messenger drunk, and substitutes for the letter he is carrying one which declares that Constance has been delivered of a monster, and that Constance herself must be an "elf." To this message the king replies, in effect, God's will be done; take care of my wife and child. But once again his mother intercepts the letter, replacing it with one which orderst he constable to put Constance (and her young son) back on board the ship which had brought her to Northumbria, and to shove her off, never to return. A weeping throng watches her departure. Again she sails aimlessly for years on the sea. At one point in her travels the ship stands in toward a heathen land, opposite a castle, from which emerges a recreant steward, who boards the ship with the purpose of ravishing our heroine. As he is struggling with her, however, he suddenly falls overboard and is drowned. Constance thereupon resumes her maritime journey. The rest of the story is not important for our purposes. It is concerned with the eventual reunion of King Alla and Constance (and her father the Emperor) in Rome, where the recognition scene takes place.

Chaucer's story of Constance, of course, is a relatively late version of the Accused Queen. The earlier folktale had only one malevolent mother; Chaucer has two. In the folktale (I am oversimplifying to a certain extent), the banishment of the heroine is attributed to an incest-minded father; in Chaucer this is supplanted by the proposed marriage with the Sultan, although Chaucer, along with Trivet and Gower, his sources, retains Constance's reluctance to talk to anyone about her father. [13] The accusation theme in the folktale centers around the king's evil mother, while Chaucer's treatment (more typical of romance as opposed to folktale) reveals the transitional stage pointed out by Schlauch [14] in which the mother's villainy is supplemented by the introduction of courtly accusers, whose motives (disappointment in love, worldly advancement) and accusations (murder, treason) are more comprehensible to the sophisticated mind than the motives and charges of the malevolent mother (a vague resentment leading to accusations of witchcraft and monstrous birth). The final stage in this development is the addition of miscellaneous trials (such as the evil steward's attempted assault on Constance in the boat), which are in harmony with the hagiographical interests of writers like Trivet.

The most obvious correspondence between the folktale of the Accused Queen and our ballad, "The Lass of Roch Royal," is, of course, the picture we get of the forlorn maid sailing the seas alone. (According to Ebsworth,[15] the "Ocram" broadside has a woodcut of a ship on it.) But the two stories are much closer together than that. The folktale has a mother who cuts the communication lines between her son and his wife by forging letters; the ballad mother accomplishes the same thing by pretending to be her son when she answers the door. In both cases the girl has to depart with her young son aboard ship. When the king returns and discovers the truth, he has his mother executed, and searches in vain for his beloved. Lord Gregory curses his mother, and mourns for the lass, supposing her to be drowned. One other feature of the folktale is particularly significant when compared with the ballad. The statement in the ballad that the lass is banished from all her kin becomes the more impressive when we realize that it harks back to a version of the Accused Queen story more primitive than Chaucer's-to a version, that is, in which the heroine's banishment is attributed to an incestuous father. But, of course, the ballad as we know it clearly implies (A 6-8) that the banishment can be accounted for as owing to the family's indignation at the Lass's affair with Gregory. The provision of a ship for the lass by her father (D 6, Scott MS 6-10) is probably a modern embellishment.

Not only are the two narratives similar in structure, but there is also a close correspondence in method of treatment. When the lass announces the birth of her babe (whether imminent or already accomplished), the mother denounces her (D ii): "Awa, awa, you ill woman, / You've na come here for gude, / You're but a witch, or wile warlock, / Or mermaid o the flude." Here is Chaucer's description of the forged letter sent to King Alla by Donegild, his mother (Canterbury Tales, B 750- 756): "The lettre spak the queene delivered was / Of so horrible a feendly creature / That in the castel noon so hardy was / That any while dorste ther endure. / The mooder was an elf, by aventure / Ycomen, by charmes or by sorcerie, / And every wight hateth hir compaignye. [16] As has already been mentioned, pathos reaches its peak in the ballad when, after the mother (speaking as her son) has ordered the girl to leave, the latter asks who will shoe her foot, etc. In Chaucer's story the high moment of pathos comes for Constance in these justly famous lines (B 645-651): "Have ye nat seyn somtyme a pale face, / Among a prees, of hym that hath be lad / Toward his deeth, wher as hym gat no grace, / And swich a colour in his face hath had, / Men myghte knowe his face that was bistad, / Amonges alle the faces in that route? / So stant Custance, and looketh hire aboute." The lines just quoted are an exact counterpart of the "shoe my foot" stanzas of our ballad. A detailed comparison of such passages in cognate ballads and romances would, I think, lead to valuable critical conclusions about the similarities and differences to be observed when the devices of traditional ballad poetry are compared with the conscious art of a poet such as Chaucer. To the question "who's to be father of my child?" the ballad mother replies ironically ("Ocram," stanza 19): ". . . let God be father of your child, / For Lord Gregory is none." Chaucer is, of course, not interested in this kind of exploration of the evil mother's character; the spotlight is always on Constance. But the notion of divine protection is given considerable emphasis (B 631-635): "Allas! Custance, thou hast no champioun, / Ne fighte kanstow noght, so weylaway! / But he that starf for our redempcioun, / And boond Sathan (and yet lith ther he lay), / So be thy stronge champion this day!" Constance then gets down on her knees and prays to God. But more specifically applicable to the child is her appeal to the Virgin (B 850-854): "Now, lady bright, to whom alle woful cryen, / Thow glorie of wommanhede, thow faire may, / Thow haven of refut, brighte sterre of day, / Rewe on my child, that of thy gentillesse, / Rewest on every reweful in distresse."

Very striking use is made of the young child himself in both Chaucer and the ballad. The latter pictures the lass standing at the door calling for her true-love (D 8): "The night was dark, an the win blew caul, / An her love was fast asleep, / An the bairn that was in her twa arms / Fu sair began to weep." It is interesting to compare this with Chaucer's description of Constance (B 834-840): "Her litel child lay wepying in hir arm, / And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, / 'Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee noon harm.' / With that hir coverchief of hir heed she breyde, / And over his litel eyen she it leyde, / And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, / And into hevene hire eyen up she caste."

All of these correspondences, both in structure and in treatment of the story, lead me to the conclusion that "The Lass of Roch Royal" properly belongs with the extensive lore and literature of the Accused Queen. Whether this conclusion is of any value for fixing the date of origin of the ballad I hesitate to say. If the theory of one recent critic is correct, the story of the Accused Queen goes back ultimately to the Clementine Recognitions of the third century. [17] At the other end of the scale (which is, of course, where ballad scholars now realize they should look), our Queen survives, on the inappropriate level of farce, as "Christian Custance," a wealthy widow, in Nicholas Udall's Roister Doister (mid-sixteenth century), and, more suitably, as the noble and virtuous Queen Hermione in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. [18] By way of conclusion I would like to cite one more very significant correspondence between the story of the Accused Queen and our ballad, which represents, I believe, the most reliable type of evidence that can be brought to bear in a study such as the present one. It will be recalled that among the hazards encountered by Constance in Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale is the evil steward who attacks her on she ship (B 911-924):

Doun fro the castel comth ther many a wight
To gauren on this ship and on Custance.
But shortly, from the castel, on a nyght,
The lordes styward-God yeve hym mes- chance!-
A theef, that hadde reneyed oure creance,
Cam into ship allone, and seyde he sholde
Hir lemman be, wher-so she wolde or nolde.

Wo was this wrecched womman tho bigon;
Hir child cride, and she cride pitously.
But blisful Marie heelp hire right anon;
For with hir struglyng wel and myghtily
The theef fil over bord al sodeynly,
And in the see he dreynte for vengeance;
And thus hath Crist unwemmed kept Custance.

In the ballad the lass is sailing alone, when (B 7): "She hadna saild a league but twa / O scantly had she three, / Till she met with a rude rover, / Was sailing on the sea." This "rude rover," of course, is none other than Chaucer's evil steward. But how does he behave in the ballad? He begins by asking her flattering questions: "O whether is thou the Queen hersel, / Or ane o her maries three?" This might at first suggest that he is about to make overtures to the girl. But he turns out to be merely checking her identity, and his only function is to point the way to Gregory's castle. [19] And it is in the performance of this menial function that a final and bitter retribution comes upon the evil steward. In medieval romance the reward for his presumptuous attack on Constance was death by drowning. In the ballad, as punishment for looking upon our heroine with a luxurious eye, he has been turned into an innocuous signpost on the high seas.


NOTES

1 Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, I882-1898), II, 213-226; III, 510-512; IV, 47I-474; V, 225 , 294.

2 It is difficult to understand such aberrations of judgment as the one expressed by W. E. Henley and T. F. Henderson, editors of The Poetry of Robert Burns, (London, n.d.), in a note on Burns' "Lord Gregory" (III, 455): "Of the several sets of this ballad, the most corrupt and the worst deboshed is The Lass o f Ocram, in the Roxburghe Collection." I can only explain this as a rather violent reaction to those stylistic features typical of broadsides which, as I have pointed out, can be observed here and there in the "Ocram" version. Perhaps if its language had had a Scottish flavor, t he balladw ould not have seemedt o the editors to be so "deboshed" (Scottish f or "debauched"). As a matter o f fact, rhymes s uch as "alone," "main" (stanza 3)
suggest a possible Scottish origin for the broadside version.

3. It seems to me that there is a stanza missing between lines 3 and 4 of the fourth stanza of "Ocram," caused by the printer's eye skipping from "said he" to said she" as follows:

'"Thou fairest of all creatures
Under the heavens," [said he],
.  .  .  .  .
.  .  .  .  . ?"

.  .  .  .
.  .  .  . ," said she,
"I am the Lass of Ocram,
Seeking for Lord Gregory."

It is of course impossible to say just exactly what the proud merchant man asks the girl, but I suspect it was something like this: "Are you the fairest of all creatures under the heavens," said he, "Or are you the lass of Ocram, seeking Lord Gregory?" And she replies: "No I am not the fairest of all creatures under the heavens," said she, "I am the lass of Ocram," etc. Compare
Child F 5-6, where the "ranke robers" ask the girl: "Now whether are ye the Queen hersell? / For so ye weel micht bee .. ," and she replies, "O I am neither the Queen ..., / Nor sick I seem to be ..."

4 Child (II, 214) argues that the scene shifts after A 17, that the lass returns home, and that it is her own family that offers to shoe her foot, etc. Child understands the line "Banisht from kyth and kin" to mean physical separation, not alienation. This is dubious, to say the least. But then in addition we must assume, if we acccept Child's view, that the lass, having made the trip
home, and having received offers of assistance from her family, decides after all to sail again in search of Gregory.

5 In making observations of this kind, I do not imply that Mrs. Brown sat at her desk with a copy of Herd and worked out her versions. All I am saying is that the structure of the ballad she knew was evidently close to that represented by Herd's text.

6 Cf. B. H. Bronson, "Mrs. Brown and the Ballad," CFLQ, IV (I945), 129-140.

7 In Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads . . . Collected .. . by the Late Gavin Greig (Aberdeen, 1925), pp. XIX-XXXV, the editor, A. Keith, presents an eloquent, and, it seems to me, partly convincing defense of Peter Buchan as a collector. But Buchan's version of "The Lass of Roch Royal" is not one of his strong points.

8.  I am indebted to my colleague, Donald S. Taylor, for calling this to my attention.

9 The Ballad Book (New York, 1955), p. 253.

10 Total disintegration of the mother's personality occurs in C, where she unceremoniously awakens Gregory (there is no dream), addresses him as "fause gudeson," and calls the lass a "limmer" (hussy).

11 The endings are so various, and in some cases so obviously secondary, that it seems inadvisable to designate any one of them as "original."

12 The whole tradition of the Accused Queen is analyzed in an admirable study by Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (New York, 1927).

13 Texts of the story of Constance by Trivet and Gower, together with a discussion of their relation to Chaucer's version, are conveniently printed in Margaret Schlauch, "The Man of Law's Tale," Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, eds. W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (Chicago, I941), pp. 155-206.

14 Chaucer's Constance, Chapter IV.

15 Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 6I5.

16  All Chaucer quotations are from the Cambridge Edition, Chaucer's Complete Works, ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston, 1933). Trivet (Bryan and Dempster, p. I73) has the mother write in the letter that Constance is an evil spirit in the form of a woman (maueise espirit en fourme de femme). In Gower she writes: "Thi wif, which is of faierie" (Bryan and Dempster, p. 190;
Confessio Amantis, II, 964).

17 J. Schick, "Die Urquelle der Offa-Konstanze Sage," Britannica ("Festschrift Max Forster") (Leipzig, 1929), pp. 31-56. Cited by Schlauch, Sources and Analogues, p. I6o, n. 2.

18 Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens, p. 6r. I have made no special effort to uncover post-medieval versions of the Accused Queen story. I suspect there are more than a  few.

19 The fact that he asks her if she is the "Queen hersel" need not be pushed as having any direct connection with the lass's Accused Queen ancestry. Many a ballad heroine, as she passes through the town, is "taken to be some queen." It is interesting to note that Mrs. Brown, with her usual perceptiveness, sensed that the "rude rover" was vestigial, and cut him entirely out of
the story.

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Seattle, Washington