The Dreadful Death of the Bonny Earl of Murray: Clues from the Carpenter Song Collection
[This is an excellent article with some great photos. Only proofed once- some mistakes surely still present.]
The Dreadful Death of the Bonny Earl of Murray: Clues from the Carpenter Song Collection
by Ian A. Olson
Folk Music Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1997), pp. 281-310
The Dreadful Death of the Bonny Earl of Murray: Clues from the Carpenter Song Collection
IAN A. OLSON
The murder of the Earl of Moray in 1592 by his rival, the Earl of Huntly, has been lamented in a beautiful Scottish ballad for four hundred years, with a second 'ahistorical' version ignored. A find by the Harvard collector, James Carpenter, in 1931 suggests both are part of an earlier ballad, whose story shows the murder in afresh light.
'THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY' is one of the most poignant ballads in Scottish history, still sung throughout the land in classroom and concert-hall, and still on the lips of the general population.
1. Ye Highlands, and ye Lawlands,
Oh where have you been?
They have slain the Earl of Murray,
And they layd him on the green.
2. 'Now wae be to thee, Huntley!
And wherefore did you sae?
I bade you bnrng him wi you,
But forbade you him to slay.'
3. He was a braw gallant,
And he nrd at the nrng;
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Oh he might have been a king!
4. He was a braw gallant,
And he playd at the ba;
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Was the flower amang them a'.
5. He was a braw gallant,
And he played at the glove;
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Oh he was the Queen's love!
6. Oh lang will his lady
Look oer the castle Down,
Eer she see the Earl of Murray
Come sounding thro the town! [1]
The details of the murder, other than that the body was 'laid on the green', are not given, but the ballad appears otherwise to encapsulate a horrifying event as recorded by a number of chroniclers, for James Stewart, the second ('Bonny') Earl of Moray, was indeed killed late on 7 February 1592 at his mother's house at Donnibristle, which lies near the north shore of the Firth of Forth opposite Edinburgh, by a party of men led by his rival, George Gordon, sixth Earl of Huntly. The King Uames VI of Scotland) maintained that his orders were only that Moray should be arrested.
Although he was certainly a tall, handsome courtier, Moray was never a contender for the throne, nor the Queen's lover, and the ballad is clearly propaganda intended to blacken the name of the Earl of Huntly.[2] But why the fuss over this particular
incident (for there were many similar or worse crimes at the time)? To understand that requires an attempt to unravel the background to the Moray/Huntly feud, which itself reflects the complexity of Scottish affairs at the turn of the sixteenth century.
The State of the Nation
Scotland had been allied to the great Catholic country of France since the twelfth century, an 'Auld Alliance' which was to prove the longest-running in the history of Europe. It had, for example, supplied both troops to France in the Hundred Years War and a Scots Bodyguard which was faithfully to serve the Kings of France (akin to the Pope's Swiss Guard) until 1830. [3]
The Protestant Reformation of 1560 was to change this orientation dramatically. Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived from France in 1561 to rule a Scotland in the firm grip of Presbyterian Protestants headed by John Knox. The Presbyterians demanded a highly democratic form of church government and their influence was great and growing, even amongst the nobility, and especially within Parliament. Furthermore, they were more inclined to one of the greatest Protestant powers in Europe- England- Scotland's long-standing enemy. [4]
A combination of the Kirk and Protestant Scottish nobility and gentry served after six years to force Mary into exile, but she foolishly fled to England-perhaps the last country in Europe she should have entered-and was judicially murdered in 1587 by Elizabeth Tudor on charges of fomenting French Catholic treason.[5] Mary's son James VI (on Elizabeth's death in 1603 to become also King James I of England) now ruled a Scotland pulled between France and England, and between its ancient Catholicism and a Calvanist Protestantism. It was, furthermore, an era without organised civil control -with neither police nor gendarmerie nor standing army. The will of the King had largely to be carried out by the chancy and dangerous expedient of commissioning the private forces of the clan chiefs and the nobility, and the rule of the King (and the safety of his person) was in constant jeopardy.[6]
The Feuding Earldoms
In the North-East of Scotland the adjacent Earldoms of Moray and Huntly differed in many ways. In 1562 the ancient Scottish Earldom of Moray had been granted in 'revived' form by Mary, Queen of Scots, to her half-brother James Stewart, an illegitimate son of King James V. This 'first' Earl of Moray fell under the spell of John Knox, the charismatic Protestant reformer who had arrived from Switzerland in 1555. The Earl took up the Reformed religion in 1557, becoming one of the founding Lords of the Congregation. [7] In time, he moved from being Mary's right-hand adviser to her most effective enemy; nevertheless, when she was forced to abdicate in 1567 she named him as Regent for her son. This great, humane, and popular Protestant champion, known as 'The Good Regent', was assassinated in 1569, leaving his daughter Elizabeth to become Countess of Moray in her own right.[8]
The Earldom of Huntly, on the other hand, was the possession of the great Gordon family, whose ancestors were Anglo-Normans brought into the region in the fourteenth century to help keep the King's peace-and thereafter spent the following centuries expanding their power bases by war, intermarriage and bloodfued (the Gordons even managed to gain the Earldom of Moray temporarily from 1548 to 1554).[9] Furthermore, they held fiercely to the old Catholic religion and to the French connection, and were to forfeit land (some to the Earl of Moray) for backing Mary, Queen of Scots. The precarious position of George Gordon, the sixth Earl, head of the Roman Catholic party in Scotland (and the villain of our story) is described, together with his powerfiil connections, in a secret report to the English government:
GEORGE GORDON; his mother was doughter to the Duke Hamilton; himselfe aboute xxi yeres of age. In religion doubted, and in affection Frenche. He is contracted to marry with the Duke of Lennox doughter; by whose meanes he obteyned the Kinges fauor. His power and frendeshipp in the Northe is greate; his estate as yet not fully restored since the forfaiture of his father; and therfore slowe to engage himself in any faction, or quarrell of state, but [except] at the Kinges pleasure, to whose humor and fauor he dothe wholy bende and apply himself. [10]
On the other hand, the subject of this paper, the unfortunate second ('Bonny') Earl of Moray (also a James Stewart but no immediate relation of the first Earl), was son of two powerful houses, that of his father, Lord Doune, and of his mother, Margaret Campbell of Argyll. He acquired a centuries-old feud with the Earls of Huntly as a lethal dowry when he gained the Earldom (somewhat unusually) by marrying the first Earl's daughter Elizabeth, Countess of Moray, in 1580. As the above English report continues:
JAMES STEWARTE, eldest sonne of the Lord of Down, begotten one this Erl of Argiles sister, styled of that Erledom in the right of his wyef, beinge theldest doughter of James, laste Erle of Murray and Regent. Is a yonge man of xvii yeres of age; of a very tall stature, but lyttle proofe [as yet untested/untried].
PRINCIPALS IN THE MURDER
Figure 1
The relationships of the principals in the murder
It was hardly surprising that the 'Bonny Earl' was also of the Protestant persuasion, for his father, Lord Doune, was one of the first to join the Protestant cause as a Lord of the Congregation in 1560, and his mother, Margaret Campbell, was the daughter
of Archibald, fourth Earl of Argyll, also a strong Protestant adherent and Lord of the Congregation. 11] Despite the many qualities ascribed to him in the ballad it is difficult to judge how successful a courtier he really was (especially compared to the Earl of Huntly, an obvious King's favourite).[12] But, as the ballad recounts, he appears to have been too great a success as far as Anne of Denmark, the Queen consort, was concerned.[13] James Balfour, later to be Lord Lyon, King of Arms, described an incident in February 1592 concerning 'the Kinges jelosie of Murray, quhom the Queine, more rashlie than wyslie, . . . had commendit in the Kings heiringe, with too maney epithetts of a proper and gallant man'. [14]
Furthermore, the scene in Scotland as a whole was set for disaster as Sir James Melville, an influential member of the Court, remembered:
Aboutt his tym [1591] ther araise gret stryf and disorder in the contre between the Erles of Huntly and Murray, betwen the Erles of Caitnes and Sutherland, between my Lordis Hammiltoun and Angus; for divers of them had mades uttes, and obtenit commissions, with ample preveleges ouer others landis, as weill as ouer ther awen, quhilk pat many of them in discord. [15]
The King brought both Huntly and Moray to his Court in Edinburgh but their differences could not be resolved, and short of attempting to lock both of them up (and, as Sir James Melville noted, Edinburgh Castle was full up with such 'royal guests' and the Abbey of Holyrood not really a fit place to hold anybody of rank), he detained Moray and sent the delighted and opportunistic Huntly home.[16] As might have been expected:
So schone as the Erle of Huntly was at hame in the north. .. [he] tryumphed and tok sindre aduantages vpon the Erle of Murreys dominions, geuing the Erle of Murrey occasion to complain; bot gettingn a redress, [Moray]retirit him from the court, and becams a malcontent, that he tok plane part with the Erle Bodowell, who was still vpon his enterpryses. [17]
The Murder of the Earl of Moray
Joining up with the unstable and turbulent Earl of Bothwell (who, as cousin to the King of Scotland was a credible challenger for the throne) was a senrous mistake on Moray's part, for Bothwell proceeded to make the latest of many attempts on the King's life in December 1591, with a fifty-man raid on Holyrood Palace which was only narrowly repulsed. [18] In mid-January 1592 the Earl of Huntly was commissioned to capture Bothwell (and his supporters) who was reputed to be attempting to flee to Spain from the west of Scotland. Bothwell narrowly escaped, and attention was then turned to his known and suspected allies. [19] The latter, allegedly, included the Earl of Moray.
On 7 February, therefore, Huntly, with 'six or seven score of his friends', left the King's presence as though to go to a horse race near Leith (the port of Edinburgh), but instead rode 3 miles [5 km] west to Queensferry where they commandeered the ferry boats and passed over to the north side of the Firth of Forth. From there they rode under 2 miles [3 km] east along the coast to the manor house of Donnisbristle, which was almost opposite Edinburgh. Moray was in residence in this, his mother's house, prior to appearing at Court, having been reassured by the King's promises that he would be brought back in favour, that any involvement he had had with Bothwell would be overlooked, and that all the disputes he had with Huntly would be properly dealt with. [20]
Huntly attacked and 'slew the said vmquhill erle of Murray, being the lustiest youthe, the first noble of the Kingis bloode, and one of the peiris of the countrey, to the great regrait and lamentatioun of the hail pepill'.[21]
The following day Moray's mother, herself fatally injured by smoke inhalation when her house was set on fire during the attack,[22] had his body brought over to the port of Leith to confront the King, who getting word of this, ordered the corpse to be detained at the port while he made show of going out hunting. But Lord Ochiltree followed after and persuaded the King that Huntly should be charged to stand trial (despite Huntly's claim that he had only been acting in the King's name), and that he should keep out of the King's presence and hold himself in ward in the castle of Blackness, all 'for eschewing of further misliking of the people'.[23]
Figure 2
Death Portrait of the Bonny Earl of Moray in Darnaway Castle
By kind permission of the Earl of Moray
'The people', especially in the form of the Church of Scotland, were indeed outraged, and the King made desperate efforts to prove his innocence in the affair:
As he returned from the hunting, he sent for five or six of the Ministers [clergy], and desired them to cleare his part before the people, which was lamenting and mourning for the cruel murder of the Nobleman. They desired him to clear himself, by earnest pursueing of Huntlie with fire and sword. [24]
The formidable Margaret Campbell of Argyll, furthermore, was not a woman to be thwarted and increased the pressure on the King by refusing to have her son's body buried until justice had been done.[25] She had it displayed in the church of Leith and commissioned a horrific and gory death portrait painted in vivid forensic detail [26] (Figure 2) but died shortly afterwards.[27] For five years the corpse lay on public display until the King ordered Moray's son to have it buried 'in the accustamat buriall placeis of thair predicessouris, within tuentie dayis'.[28] Huntly was never brought to trial.[29]
The alternative version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray'
Professor Francis James Child of Harvard published his great work, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, a hundred years ago. In it he listed and annotated 305 ballads he thought worthy of inclusion, giving each a number used to this day. He included Scottish historical ballads, giving 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' number 181. The popular version we have been considering so far is '181A'. Although Child notes that he found it in a very successful eighteenth publication by Allan Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany (1750), Bertrand Bronson, who went on to publish the tunes of the Child ballads (Child had concentrated on the texts), pointed out that it had appeared a little earlier in an equally successful collection of Scottish songs by William Thomson, Orpheus Caledonius (1733; Figure 3- see below).[30]
In 1983, the late David Buchan, during the course of our editing his paper, 'The Historical Balladry of the North-East of Scotland' for the Aberdeen University Review,[31] drew my attention to Child's 'B' version of the ballad, taken from Finlay's Scottish Ballads where it had been noted 'from recitation'.[32] This ballad tells a very different story from the 'A' version:
[1.] Open the gates,
And let him come in;
He is my brother Huntly,
He'll do him nae harm.
[2.] The gates they were opent,
They let him come in,
But fause traitor Huntly
He did him great harm.
[3.] He's ben and ben,
And ben to his bed,
And with a sharp rapier
He stabbed him dead.
[4.] The lady came down the stair
Wringing her hands,
"He has slain the Earl o'Murray
The flower o' Scotland."
[5.] But Huntly lap on his horse,
Rade to the king,
"Ye're welcome hame Huntly,
And whare hae ye been?
[6.] "Whare hae ye been?
And how hae ye sped?"
"I've killed the Earl o' Murray
Dead in his bed."
[7.] "Foul fa' you, Huntly,
And why did ye so;
You might have ta'en the Earl o' Murray,
And saved his life too."
[8.] "Her bread its to bake,
Her yill is to brew,
My sister's a widow,
And sair do I rue.
[9.] "Her corn grows ripe,
Her meadows grow green,
But in bonny Dinnibristle
I darena be seen. [33]
Huntly is here Moray's brother-in-law, let into the house by his sister, only to stab Moray treacherously to death in his bed 'with a sharp rapier'. As in the 'A' version this is still contrary to the lamenting King's wishes, but here Huntly also grieves that he has made his sister a widow, has brought ruin on her estate, and has exiled himself (with coded sinister undertones that she is also pregnant, perhaps incestuously so).
The 1733 Orpheus Caledonius version
Highlands and ye Lawlands
Oh! where ha'e ye been:
They hae slain the Earl of Marray,
And they laid him on the Green.
Now wae be to thee Huntly,
And wherefore did ye fae;
I bad you bring him wi you,
But fbrbad you him to flae.
He was a braw Gallant,
And he rid at the Ring;
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Oh ! he might have becn a King.
Hc was a braw Gallant,
And hc play'd at the Ba',
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Was the Flower amang thcm a'.
He was a braw Gallant,
And lhe playd at the Glove,
But we know that Moray's wife, Elizabeth, was not only three months dead at the time of attack but also no relative at all of the Earl of Huntly. And what of the account that the Bonny Earl was killed during a late afternoon attack, after running from the burning house?
. . . [Huntly] beset the House, requiring him to render. The Earl of Murray, refusing to put himself in the hands of his enemy, after some defence made, wherein the Sheriffe [of Moray] was killed, fire was set to the House, and they within forced by the violence of the smoak and flame to come forth. The Earl stayed a great space after the rest, and the night falling down, ventured among his Enemies, and breaking through the midst of them did so far out-run them all, as they supposed he was escaped; yet searching him among the rocks, he was discovered by the tip of his Headpiece, which had taken fire before he left the House, and unmercifully slain.[34]
The Evidence of the Death Portrait
Some ten years beforehand, I remembered studying photographs of the Death Portrait of the Bonny Earl with Sir Iain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, then Albany Herald, who was a close friend of the present Earl of Moray and who had written the account of Earldom in Burke's Peerage. We agreed that the most peculiar thing about the corpse was that it was that of a man who, at the time of his murder had been unclothed or very lightly clad, and who had been wearing no armour.
Figure 4
Death Portrait: upper body
By kind permission of the Earl of Moray
The portrait is very carefulfly painted in great and close detail (Figures 4 and 5). Three types of wound are present: there are multiple puncture wounds, mainly of the chest; there are three pistol ball entry holes, two in the right side of the chest and one in the upper right abdomen; there are multiplk. right-sided slash wounds of the head, neck and leg.
These slash wounds, furthermnore, are so angled as to have been inflicted from behind, on a victim who was lying on his left side and partially curled up, by an assailant standing on the victim's right, attacking from the lower (feet) end of the victim's body. All these forensic details are quite consistent with an assault upon a man in bed, lightly clad or naked, and certainly not wearing armnour.
The usual armnour of the time had probably started life as a common soldier's cheap substitute for mail or plate armor, and was simply plates or scales of metal sewn between two layers of cloth, and known as a jack. [35] Scots of all ranks (including the King) wore them in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and they could be obtained from Scottish craftsmen [36] They were capable of stopping a sword or dagger, but probably not a pistol ball especially if at close range On the other hand the entrywound caused by a lead ball splaying through a metal plate would have been 'pretty messy'-certainly quite unlike the three neat entry holes in the Bonny Earl's body.[37]
The Erie of Murrey's mother caused draw her sonne's picture, as he was demaimed, and presented it to the king in a fyne layne cloath, with lamentatiouns and eamest sute for justice ... Of the three bullets she found in the bowelling of the bodie of her sonne, she presented one to the king, another to [Maitdand, the Chancellor], the thnids he reserved to herself, and said "I sail not part with this, till it be bestowed on him that hindreth justice".[38]
Figure 5
Death Portrait: lower body
By kind permission of the Earl of Moray
It would appear that the attack on the House of Donnibristle lasted for quite some time before Moray was forced out. There would have been ample time for him to have donned such a simple piece of armour (even if he had not been wearing it routinely), yet the Portrait shows a man with stab wounds and clean ball entry points in the thoracic area. These wounds are inflicted from the front, and are consistent with an attack (first by discharge of pistols, then by rapier points?) on an unarmnoured man lying on his back, who then turns curled up to dim-inish the force of the attack, on to his left side, receiving thereafter multiple slash wounds to neck -and right thigh. The slash and puncture wounds are indeed in keeping with those caused by 'a sharp rapier' for the rapier of the peniod was capable of cutting along its length.
Thus although the 'A' version of the ballad (which gives no details other than the immediate disposal of the corpse) does not conflict with contemporary accounts of the killing of the Earl of Moray, the forensic details of the Death Portrait fit the apparently historically inaccurate-'B' version very well indeed.
The contrasting versions of Child 181
Although Child did not comment in his final publication, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, on the contrasting stories of his 'A' and 'B' versions, others have. Willa Muir, in her perspicacious Living with Ballads (1965)-a book well before its time, especially with regard to women's role in preservation and transmission of folk-song, and oddly neglected-discussed the two differing versions at considerable length:
The Northem version [B], composed at a farther remove from the scene of the murder ... The words, the metre and the feeling are clipped down almost in Norse style. The Ballad may well have been made by a fighting man on campaign ... A very different atmosphere is provided by the Edinburgh [A] version. This is a vehicle for the incantatory heightening of feeling, built up by repetition from verse to verse, with a passion of loving regret for the lost young nobleman. In the Northem version there is no personal regret for Murray; the regret indicated by Huntly, the 'wicked brother', is for his sister's grief. [40]
David Buchan's last published paper, 'The Historical Balladry of the North-East [of Scotland]' returned to a favourite area of study which he had first explored as an appendix to his 1965 doctoral thesis The Ballad and the Folk (later to be expanded to his famous book with the same title in 1972).[41] As noted earlier, he was also intrigued by the difference between the versions (and was later delighted when I mentioned that my earlier discussions with lain Moncreiffe concerning the forensic evidence 'confirmed' the B version):
The well-known A version is the one in all the school books and literary anthologies ... is very much a lament after the death, not a developed narrative. The unregarded B version, however, has, in the compass of nine stanzas, three swift scenes and, though short, is much more typical of this ballad genre [Ballads of Feud and War].[42]
The Missing Ballad Mystery
Although the ballad of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' was most probably one of the 'comoun rymes and sangs' which kept the incident 'in recent detestation' in 1592, [43] it does not appear in print until over a hundred years later. Its music echoes this state of affairs: all published tunes (bar one) are the same as that given by Thomson in his 1733 Orpheus Caledonius until 1885 when what is now the modern version, beloved also by Revivalist folk singers-to my mind a rather lugubrious Victorian arrangement-takes over (Figure 6). [44] An odd fate for what was supposedly a powerful protest song that 'nearly dirled a sovereign off his throne'. [45] For Goldstein's claim that the ballad 'has not been reported from tradition in England or Scotland since Child' [46] is almost, but not quite, correct, especially as far as the North-East of Scotland -Moray's and Huntly's territories- is concerned.
Figure 6
The Victonan (1885) arrangement
Peter Buchan (1790-1854), for example, the North-East ballad collector whose 'collecting, editing and printing [the texts of] our old b allads' in Gavin Greig's opinion gives him a place and reputation in this particular field quite beyond serious challenge', [47] printed a text of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' (virtually identical to Child's' A' version) in his first collection of Gleanings of Scarce Old Ballads in 1825. [48]
William Christie of Monquhitter (c. 1778-1849), was a dancing master, composer and violinist who collected 'old inedited ballad airs' from around 1831 onwards. He was later joined in this work by his son, William Christie, Dean of Moray (died 1885) and their joint work published as Traditional Ballad Airs Arranged a nd Harmonised for the Pianoforte and Harmonium, from Copies Procured in the Counties of Aberdeen, Banif and Moray in two volumes in 1876 and 1881.[49] As the title suggests, the tunes were presented according to Victorian custom, and Greig was especially concerned at the way the Christies treated tune variants, apparently by amalgamating them into single 'ideal' versions.[50] It is most fortunate, in light of such concerns, that the version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' which they print comes from a single source in theirown family, for as they explain, 'This Air was sung. . . by the Editor's maternal grandmother. Through her and her mother it can be traced in this form as far back as the year 1760'. Apart from the Orpheus Celedonius version (and its variants), this is the only traditional tune so far recorded (Figure 7). Their text, however, is the popular version as in Child's 'A'. [51]
With one crucial exception no other versions of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' appear to have been recorded from tradition in the rest of Britain or Ireland, and there are none in the turn of the twentieth century collections made largely from North-East Scotland by John Ord[52] or Gavin Greig/James Bruce Duncan. [53] The North Amenrcan versions tabled by Bronson clearly stick very closely to Child's eighteenth century 'A' text. [54] There is, in fact, only one version that I can trace taken from living tradition in Scotland in the twentieth century and it sheds an interesting light on the problem.
The Bonny Earl of Murray
This Air was sung to "The bonny Earl of Murray" by the Editor's maternal grandmother. Through her and her mother it can be traced in this form as far back as the year 1760. A set of it, "Frennett Hall' is given in Johnston's Scots Musical Museum, III. 296. The smooth melody sung in Buchan will contrast favourably with the set in the "Museum." The editor's paternal grandmother sang the air in this form to the ballad of "Young Grigors's Ghost" Buchan- Gleaning's p. 28. B. A. Smith gives a beautiful air to the Ballad. V. 100. The Ballad given here is in "The Tea-Table Miscellany:' 11. 1aa Findley gives another version Scottish Ballads" II. 21.
Figure 7
The traditional version from the Chnstie family ( c.1760)
Fresh Light from the Carpenter Collection
Between 1929 and 1930, James Madison Carpenter (1888-1984), an instructor at Harvard (whose mentor was the Harvard ballad scholar, G. L. Kittredge), extended his interest in folk song of the sea (his doctoral thesis of 1929 was 'Forecastle Songs and Chanties') by collecting visits to Britain. He eventually travelled around in an open-topped Austin Seven car (wearing two sets of woolly underwear), carrying a cylinder dictaphone powered by a six-volt battery. Without any contacts he first explored the eastern coasts of northern England and Scotland, and thereafter extended his range inland. He recorded from a number of singers who had themselves been collected by both Cecil Sharp and Gavin Greig. He developed wide-ranging interests, from singing games to mummers' plays, but most fortunately, he also concentrated on collecting Child ballads. He returned to Amenrca in 1935 and despite having little or no musical training, set about transcribing the tunes.
From his copious findings he intended to publish a Child ballad book (never, alas, completed) which would eclipse all others with the sheer breadth and quality of its versions, especially from his highly important North-East of Scotland source, Bell Duncan (whose song corpus, if ever published, will amost certainly eclipse even Gavin Greig's prolific Bell Robertson).[55] But it was from a previously unrecorded Mrs Watson Gray of Fochabers in North-East Scotland that in 1931 he took down a song she had learned over fifty years before in Glenlivet-'The Bonnie Earl o Murry'. The text was as follows:
[1.] He's ben an' ben, [cf CHILD B v3]
An ben tae his bed,
An wie a shairp rapier,
He stabbit him dead.
[2.] The ladye cam' doon the stairs [cf. CHILD B v4]
Wnrngin' her hands,
He's slain the Earl o Moray
The floor o' Scotland.
[3.] But Huntly lap(s) on his horse [cf. CHILD B v5]
Rade tae the king;
"Ye're welcome hame, Huntly
An' Whare hae ye been?
[4.] "Whare hae ye been, [cf. CHILD B v6]
An' hoo hae ye sped?"
"I've killed the Earl o' Moray,
Dead in his bed."
[5.] "Noo wae be to ye, Huntly, [cf. CHILD A v2]
An wharefore did ye sae,
I bade ye bring him wie ye,
But forbade ye him tae slay."
[6.] He was a braw gallant, [cf. CHILD A v3]
An' he rade at the nrng,
An the bonnie Earl o' moray,
He micht hae been a king."
[7.] He was a braw gallant, [cf. CHILD A v5]
An he played at the glove,
An' the bonnie Earl o'moray
He was the Queen's love.
[8.] He was a braw gallant, [cf. CHILD A v4]
He played at the ba',
0 the bonnie Earl o' Moray
Was the floor o' them a'.
[9.] O lang will his ladye, [cf. CHILD A v6]
Look owre the castle doone,
Ere she see the Earl o' Moray
Come soundin' through the toon. [56]
Clearly, according to Mrs Gray, what Child took to be two separate versions are, in fact, parts of a single ballad.
The 'Combined' Ballad
This is not an original observation, for John Finlay had come to the same conclusion in 1808. Finlay's publication was in two volumes: the first volume included a version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' virtually identical to the 'A' version Child had taken from Ramsay; the second volume contained the text that Child was later to call his 'B' version. Finlay's Notes on his second version in the second volume, however, read as follows:
The present ballad, which, as well as the other [in his volume 1], I suspect to be coeval with the event it celebrates, was taken down from recitation. Owing to the same peculianties of measure of both, a suspicion arises that they may at one period have been united. I is singular, that they are likewise both of them dramatic in their structure. [57]
William Motherwell, in his 1827 Minstrelsy, agreed that Finlay's 'conjectures' were 'not all unlikely'. [58] Child himself, in an earlier publication of his ballad researches entitled English and Scottish Ballads (1859) had indeed observed Finlay's comments on 'The Bonny Earl of Murray', for Child's own note states: 'the second [he later called his B version], which may perhaps be a part of the same ballad, was first printed in Finlay's collection'. [59] But when Child went on to publish his definitive The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898, his extensive commentary on 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' dealt almost entirely with the 'A' version; in the couple of lines referring to the 'B' version, this time he left out, or forgot about, Finlay's hypothesis. [60]
If Mrs Gray did indeed learn her ballad before 1880 as Carpenter's notes state, she could, theoretically, have combined it from Finlay's two versions, but it would seem unlikely that she got it from these printed sources. Firstly, she does not sing the famous opening verse 'Ye Highlands, and ye Lawlands. . .' which was the epitome of the popular Ramsay/Thomson (Child 'A') version. Secondly, she had neither the opening verses 1 and 2 of the Finlay (Child 'B') version which describe Huntly both as Moray's brother-in-law and a rank betrayer of hospitality, nor the final verses 8 and 9 in which Huntly laments for his sister and their mutual ruin.
Ye Highlands and Ye Lawlands?
Willa Muir's comments are perhaps relevant as to why Mrs Gray's ballad does not have the famous opening verse of the Ramsay/Thomson (Child's 'A') version, perhaps one of the best known of all song openings, whether sung in English or broad Scots:
Ye Highlands, and ye Lawlands,
Oh where have you been?
They have slain the Earl of Murray,
And they layd him on the green.
She shrewdly observed:
At that time [1592] no one in the Northern marches w uld have coupled Highlands and Lowlands together a a whole; the conjunctioni s surprisingev en in this Southern Ballad. I incline to think that thesel ines came into the song nearer the time of pninting it (1763) [Child s tates 1750] when public o pinion a bout H ighlanders was beginning to change. [61] Lowland public opinion about Highlanders did indeed change from regarding them as dirty, dangerous savages to glamorous and even erotic heroes,[62] with the result that nowadays Lowland Scots especially dress up formally as Noble Savages in a Victorian approximation of the garb of a race of people they perhaps once thought better exterminated,[63] but that change did not begin until the middle of the seventeenth century.
In London, in the late 1680s there was a flourishing of 'Scotch Songs'. That they were rather debased popular songs of allegedly Scottish origin, some with fake tunes, all with fake texts, did not detract from their popularity with a public seeking a change from the classical productions of Purcell and Lully. Dryden, for example, referred to 'the rude sweetness of a Scotch tune ... which is natural and pleasing, though not perfect.[64]
The immensely successful Thomas D'Urfey, whose Pills to Purge Melancholy[65] was the most popular song book of its day, had a standard 'Scotch song' formula, complete with artificial Scots dialect and genuine place-names, together with delightful fake folk-tunes (many set by Purcell, presumably as revenge). Allan Ramsay in Edinburgh saw his chance and brought out firstly a book of Scots Songs in 1718 and secondly, the first of a four-volume The Tea-table Miscellany in 1723. This latter was so successful a rewriting of Scots song that it eclipsed all others. For this Miscellany he lifted and rewrote many of D'Urfey's songs to make them more Scottish for an Edinburgh audience, while also rewriting Scottish folk songs for a London audience. [66] Enter William Thomas, with his 1725 London publication, Orpheus Caledonius [67] (as opposed to Purcell's Orpheus Britannicus of 1698-1721 [68]). Thomson was a professional singer of Scottish descent who was very popular in London. His volume of fifty Scots songs set for voice and continuo was beautifully arranged-including the thirty-eight 'lifted' from Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany. Thomson brought out a second edition in 1733, now a hundred songs long (with even more taken from Ramsay), and which included the first ever publication of 'The bonny earl of Murray' [69]
There had been a number of songs circulating around the 1720s in London about high-class Lowland girls eloping with potent Highland lovers, and Thomson capitalized on this, titillating his London audience from the very first page of his Orpheus Caledonius:
Love's brightest Flames warm Scottish Lads,
Tho' coolly clad in High-land Plads;
They scorn Brocade, who like the Lass,
Nor need a Carpet, if there's Grass;
But Ramsay had led the way in 1723 with the earliest pnnted 'Highland Laddie' song, linking the 'Highlands' and the 'Lawlands' together for the first time in a popular song:
The Lawland Lads think they are fine,
But O they're vain and idly gaudy!
How much unlike that gracefu' Mein,
And manly Looks of my Highland Laddie?
O my bonny, bonny Highland Laddie,
My handsomec harmingH ighlandL addie:
May Heaven still guard, and Love reward
Our Lawland Lass and her Highland Laddie. [70]
Willa Muir was undoubtedly right: back in 1592 nobody would have thought of linking the Highlands and the 'Lawlands', but by 1733 Thomson-or anyone else for that matter-would have had no hesitation in removing the uncouth opening verses to the folk ballad, 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' and in substituting instead a moving eighteenth-century sentimental stanza -a simple alteration which successfully transformed a somewhat sordid folksong into a searingly beautiful lament which both caught the contemporary popular imagination and echoed down 250 years thereafter. The 'combined' version and its possible historical significance From Mrs Gray's evidence it would appear that there was once a fuller version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' along the following lines (major Gray variations in italics):
1. Open the gates [cf Finlay (Child 'B') vl]
and let him come in;
He is my brother Huntly,
he'll do him nae harm.
2. The gates they were opent, [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v2]
they let him come in,
But fause traitor Huntly,
he did him great harm.
3. He's ben an ben, [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v3; Gray vl]
an ben to his bed,
An with a shairp rapier,
he stabbed him dead.
4. The lady came down the stair, [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v4; Gray v2]
wringing her hands:
'He has slain the Earl o Murray,
the flower o Scotland.'
5. But Huntly lap on his horse [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v5; Gray v3]
rade to the king:
'Ye're welcome hame, Huntly
and whare hae ye been?
6. Whare hae ye been? [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v6; Gray v4]
and how hae ye sped?'
'I've killed the Earl o Murray,
dead in his bed.'
7. 'Foul fa you, Huntly! [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v7; Gray v5]
An why did ye so?
You might have taen the Earl o Murray/
I bad ye bring him wie ye,
and saved his life too/but forbad ye him tae slay'.
8. He was a braw gallant, [cf. Ramsay (Child 'A') v3; Gray v6]
And he rid at the ring,
An the bonny Earl of Murray,
Oh he might hae been a king!
9. He was a braw gallant [cf. Ramsay (Child 'A') v5; Gray v8]
And he played at the ba;
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Was the flower amang them a'.
10. He was a braw gallant, [cf. Ramsay (Child 'A') v5; Gray v7]
And he played at the glove,
And the bonny Earl of Murray,
Oh he was the Queen's love!
11. 'Her bread it's to bake, [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v8]
her yill is to brew;
My sister's a widow,
and sair do I rue.
12. 'Her corn grows ripe, [cf. Finlay (Child 'B') v9]
her meadows grow green,
But in bonny Dinnibristle
I darena be seen.'
13. O lang will his lady [cf. Ramsay (Child 'A) v6; Gray v9]
Look owre the castle Down,
Ere she see the Earl of Murray
Come sounding through the town!
If the 'missing' verses from Finlay are added as above to Mrs Gray's 'Bonnie Earl o Murray', the result paints the following picture of Moray's murder (information from the added Finlay verses printed in italics):
Huntly is Moray's brother-in-law.
Huntly's sister, in response to Huntly's arrival and/or his presumed request for admission, admits Huntly to the house (of Donnibristle),
On the grounds that he will commit no treachery, being her brother.
Huntly, however, goes to Moray's bed (although no time of day is indicated),
and
Huntly stabs Moray to death with a sharp rapier.
Huntly then rides to the King.
The King welcomes Huntly and asks him where he has been.
Huntly admits to the killing of Moray in his bed.
The King remonstrates with Huntly and
The King states he wanted Moray to be brought in and not killed.
Moray is lamented as a 'braw gallant' who 'rade at the ring' and who 'might have been a king',
Moray is lamented as a 'braw gallant' who 'played at the ba", and was 'floor amang them a",
Moray is lamented as a 'braw gallant' who 'played at the glove', and 'was the Queen's love'.
Huntly laments that he has made his sister a widow.
Huntly laments that even thoughh is sister's household and lands are neglected he cannot return to Donnibristle.
Moray's lady will look long over the walls of Doune castle for his return.
The following historical facts and reports are consistent with the above:
Huntly gained a commission to arrest Bothwell and his co-conspirators, of whom Moray was rumoured to be one.[71]
Moray was big, powerful, handsome and capable of manly pursuits.[72]
Moray attended the Court of King James.[73]
Moray's death was generally lamented.[74]
Moray's death portrait shows the body of a man with both stab and slash wounds who was naked or lightly clad, wearing no body armour.
Moray's portrayed wounds are consistent with a naked or lightly clad man killed while lying on his back/right side, quite possibly in bed.
Margaret, Moray's mother, was Lady Doune, and grieved (the short while she lived) over his non-return.[75]
Queen Anne had commented favourably on Moray.[76]
King James denied publicly than he had ordered Moray to be killed by, or even arrested by, Huntly.[77]
Huntly left the scene of the murder and could not return.[78]
The following are inconsistent with the 'combined' ballad:
Moray's wife, Elizabeth was no relation of George Gordon, sixth Earl of Huntly. [79]
Moray's wife had died three months before the murder.[80]
Huntly did not take the news of the murder to the King in person.[81]
Numerous reports agree that Huntly attacked Donnibristle with a large body of men and forced Moray out by setting fire to it;
Moray was killed after having run out of the house.[82]
Towards the end of his life Child himself wrote: 'To tell the truth I like to have the ballads quite in the air. It is the next best thing to their flying in the face of all history'. [83] David Buchan, on the other hand, suggested that ballad singers would attempt to show a truth (or truths), if not necessarily the truth about a historical event. [84] Singers, moreover, might conflate historical events as in a similar Gordon family Feud ballad, 'The Baron of Brackley' (Child 203) which combines two events in the same venue, but fifty-four years apart. In the case of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray', it was Moray's son who was eventually married to Anne Gordon, Huntly's daughter, in 1607 [85] in a Royal attempt to end the feud (the King had immediately ordered the ten year old boy not to take action against his father's murderer at the time). [86]
But surely, the lurid and detailed descriptions of Huntly's murderous attack on Moray in Donnibristle are, as David Buchan stated, confirmed by 'documentary sources (reliable in this instance)'? [87] Certainly, by the time Walter Scott, busy as ever
inventing Scottish History, recounted the event in 1827, it had lost nothing in the telling:
as he [Moray] fled to the rocks by the sea-shore, he was traced by the silken tassels attached to his headpiece, which had taken fire as he broke out from among the flames. By this means the pursuers followed him down amongst cliff near the sea, and Gordon of Buckie, who is said to have been the first that overtook him, wounded him mortally ... As Murray was gasping in his last agony, Huntly came up; it is alleged by tradition, that Gordon pointed his dirk against the person of his chief, saying, 'By Heaven, my lord, you shall be as deep in as I', and so compelled him to wound Murray whilst he was dying. Huntly, with a wavering hand, struck the expiring earl on the face. Thinking of his superior beauty, even in that moment of parting life, Murray stammered out the dying words, 'You have spoiled a better face than you own'. [88]
Some of the core details of the above do appear in contemporary or near-contemporary accounts,[89] but their elaboration is an excellent example of how a legend develops, indeed, probably as it rapidly developed in the days after the murder. But the most immediate accounts are bare of elaboration: 'cruelly murdered . . . at his house in Dumbrissell . . . and with him Dumbar, Shriffe of Murray. . . .';[90] 'assail the Erle of Murray at his own house ... to slay him';[91] 'where upon he [Moray] came to Donnybirsell, where he was slayne ... the said erle of Huntly ... maist tressonablie reased fyre, brunt the house of Donnybrisell, and maist vnvorthelie and schamefullie murdreist and slew the said vmquhill erle of Murray ... to the great regrait and lamentatioun of the haill pepill'.[92]
It would also have been remarkable if Gordon of Buckie had participated in Scott's drama, for he got himself so badly wounded during the melee that the raiders left him for dead. Moray's mother, herself seriously ill, had him resuscitated and taken across to Edinburgh to stand trial. What was the fate of this sole captured eye-witness? On arrival his feet never touched the ground; despite protests he was by Royal command swiftly incarcerated and summarily executed.[93] Why he was so efficiently silenced? What might he have confessed at trial-that either the King or his Chancellor had indicated it would be no bad thing if Moray had an 'accident' while being arrested?
The Ballad as Indictment
The beginnings of the romantic tale concerning the self-sacrifice of the Sheriff, Moray's escape to the shore, Moray's burning head-piece, and Huntly being forced to incriminate himself appear in later accounts written by churchmen. From Calderwood's posthumous True History of the Church of Scotland published eighty-six years later we gain:
and that night set the house of Dinnibirsle on fire, so that the Earle of Murray was forced to come forth, and was discovered by some sparks of fire in his knapscal, and so was killed, and cruelly demaimed.[94]
Spottiswood's The History of the Church of Scotland, also published posthumously, sixty-three years after the event, recounted:
they supposed he was escaped; yet searching him among the rocks, he was discovered by the tip of his Head-piece, which had taken fire before he left the House, and unmercifully slain. The report went that Huntley's friends, fearing he should disclaim the fact, (for he desired rather to have taken him alive) made him light from his horse, and give some strokes to the dead corps.[95]
It is clear that considerable elaboration of the basic account that Huntly 'raised fire, burnt the house of Donnibristle, and slew the Earl of Moray' has taken place, but is it possible or even likely that Huntly gained entry to the house under trust and stabbed Moray in his bed, as the ballad firmly maintains? Admittedly even the contemporary accounts vary in detail, especially regarding whether Moray was killed in the daytime, or at night,[96] but this may only reflect an incident that was prolonged at a time of year when dark fell early.
Most accounts state that Moray was resting at Donnibristle with a false sense of security, not knowing or even suspecting that Huntly had managed to gain a commission which could be interpreted as allowing him to arrest Moray. It is possible that Huntly could have gained access by stealth or pretext, especially as Donnibristle appears to have been constructed more as farm buildings with protection against animals and casual marauders, and despite its surrounding walls 'nocht being ane fenceable nor strenthe houss'. [97] The burning of the house could have followed the murder, with the later accounts of the fleeing earl murdered on the shore being but elaborate fabrications to heighten a horror story. Perhaps Moray's body was indeed taken out and dumped on the shore ('layd on the green') to look as though he had been unfortunately killed while foolishly fleeing from lawful arrest.
But it must be admitted that against such a scenario even the bare accounts tend to tell of a sequence of fire followed by the escaping Moray being cut down by the Firth, and the Death Portrait has a small supine figure top right, on the shore, which is presumably the corpse in situ-although admittedly it could merely indicate where the body was finally laid. Interestingly enough the body is painted as being fully clothed, and with the accounts agreeing that Moray had donned a 'Head-piece' or 'Knapscal' [98] it would still seem strange that he had not also had time to don simple body-armour which would have prevented the chest wounds shown on the naked corpse itself Huntly's men had certainly arrived wearing 'jakkis' as well as their 'steilbonettis'.
Perhaps the clue comes from the extract from the dairy of another clergyman, the Reverend James Melvill, where he describes the crime as 'murdour. . . with forthought, fellon hamsukin, and treason under tryst, maist crewalie with fyre and sworde.' These words have been very carefully chosen, and not merely for maximum dramatic effect. The Earl of Huntly is accused of
1. Premeditated acts of:
2. Murder
3. Hamesucken
4. Treason under trust
5. Arson
6. Armed assault.
In any legal system these crimes are heinous and deserving of severe punishment, but accusations 3 and 4 have even more significance. An act of murder 'under trust', especially in relation to a feud, referred to a recent Act of 1587 which classified such an action as treason, with forfeiture of life, lands and property. If that were not enough, Melvill accuses Huntly of the Scots Law crime of 'hamesucken'- the premeditated felonious seeking (i.e. with corrupt and evil intention) and invasion of a person in his dwelling-place or house with intention to assault. This crime carried an automatic death sentence. [101]
But why were members of the Reformed Church so keen to have Huntly executed and why was there such a popular revulsion against the incident? Admittedly it took place close to Edinburgh, from whose outskirts the smoking house was visible, [102] but it was hardly an unusual episode for those turbulent times. Furthermore, Huntly insisted that firstly, he had been commissioned to capture the accomplices of the dangerous Earl of Bothwell (who really was Public Enemy Number One with his tendency to invade the capital for murder and mayhem) and secondly, that Moray (a known Bothwell accomplice) got himself killed by mistake while resisting lawful arrest. [103]
Moray's murder, although not particularly unique for the times, was the last straw for a nation in a wretched and politically anarchical condition-and an opportunity for the Kirk to gain the upper hand. The King's Chancellor, Maitland, had seen the precipitous situation all too clearly:
The body of the slaughtered Earl of Moray was lying still unburied in Leith, and the cry for revenge for that and other acts of murder a nd lawlessness was growing l ouder a nd louder; attacks on the King and his mis-govemment were incessant, n ot only in sermons, but also in rhymes, songs a nd popular pasquilst; the rebel Earl Bothwell was zig-zagging i n arms o ver the countrya she chose, not only defying c apture, and meditating n o one knew what wild new demonstration of his own, but drawingt o him the sympathies of many who thought his revolutionary le adership better than nothing; how could the King save himself and recover popularity? [104] When Parliament rose on 5 June 1592, four months after Moray's death, the Presbyterian clergy were delighted to see that amongst 181 Acts passed that day, the vaguely titled 'Act for abolisheing o the Act is contrair the trew Religion' was the most comprehensive and sweeping that had yet been passed by a Scottish Parliament in favour of the Presbyterian system. It became known as the 'Golden Act', for it ratified all previots Acts in favour of that system, abrogated any anti-Presbyterian Acts, rescinded and repealed all Acts of a popish tinge or capable of popish construction still remaining in the Statute-book and guaranteed the future government of the Kirk forever by strict democratic Presbyterian method, with annual General Assemblies, together with presbyteries and synods. [105]
This astute piece of statesmanship seems to have been successful, for the 'publict threatning of God's judgements thairupon from pulpites' [106] appears largely to have ceased. Bothwell was to disappear from Scotland to die in poverty in Naples, but Huntly's enemies attacked and wasted his lands. The Gordon retaliation was terrible and the whole country north of the Tay entered a state of internal feud and warfare. [107] It was not until five years after, at the General Assembly of May 1597, that Huntly declared his penitence for the murder of the Earl of Moray, and was received into the Kirk along with the other Catholic Earls to great public celebration. [108] His estates and titles were restored in December of that year, and two years later he was created Marquis. [109] Most significantly, in February of 1597, the Privy Council ordered the immediate burial of Moray's corpse in response to complaints by 'certane of the ministerie [clergy]'. As the murder had been first and foremost in the charges pressed fiercely by the clergy against Huntly, this signalled their willingness to bury also their constant pursuit of his crime.[110]
The Ballad, the Kirk and the Folk
What is to be made of Mrs Gray's version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray'? Was it current at the time in its 'complete' form, perhaps one of many in circulation? Can it really have been an instrument of Church propaganda? Why did it not surface until over 140 years after, if it had entered the oral tradition? Why had it split into two parts? Why does it appear to have been virtually absent from the repertoires of traditional singers (including those of the Moray/Huntly territory of the North-East of Scotland) for over two hundred years?
Some questions are easier to answer than others. Thomson's genius (or that of someone similar) in 1733 was to pare the ballad down to a lament, add a moving declamatory first verse and launch it as one of the most successful 'drawing-room' pieces ever. Indeed, it could be that the very success of the 1733 version-as often recited as sung-prevented the ballad being recorded from tradition under the conditions imposed by collectors (and often the singers themselves) for it was (and still is) customary to apply the 'Hint for Collectors' enunciated by the early Folk Song Society which stated:
Hint V... it may be necessary to point out to them [the singers] that nothing they may have learned at school, or heard at a concert etc., is wanted, and it is advisable, if possible, to give them an example of the kind of traditional song that the Society w ishes t o preserve. [111]
Such music for the ballad as we possess provides few clues, although Thomson's beautiful 1733 setting, which largely predominated for the following 150 years, was by no means a typical musical arrangement of the time. Its simplicity and directness strongly suggests a folk tune as its source, although it was most likely written (or altered) with the professional singer in mind, for the compass is a spectacular octave and a sixth. [112] When the Victorians got hold of the ballad in 1885 they set it to suitable 'dramatic', brooding music. [113] As Bronson ironically remarks, 'This has a mournful beauty, but seems not very folklike, or at any rate balladlike. Among the revivalists, however, it is the tune most likely to be known'. [114] Sadly, if Mrs Gray provided a tune it has not yet been found in Carpenter's papers 15 (although as the collection has been rightly described as 'chaotic', it may still turn up). [116]
Was the 'complete' version current in 1592? If the singer confused Moray and Moray's son (with the latter's marriage alliance with the Gordons) then this would date it well after 1607. But it seems likely that making Moray's wife into Huntly's sister was but a further device to blacken Huntly's actions and good name, and help poise the axe above his head. If the full ballad was current, one of the many 'common rhymes and sangs' concerning the murder, [117] why did it not survive and flourish overtly in oral tradition?
There were, for example, three other very similar late sixteenth/early seventeenth century Feud ballads concerning members of the great Gordon family. Murder, hamesucken, arson and treachery are also the themes of 'Edom o Gordon' (Child 178) relating to 1571, 'The Baron of Brackley' (Child 203) relating to events in 1592, [118] and 'The Fire of Frendraught' (Child 196) relating to events in 1630. But these ballads (and their tunes) were all carried triumphantly into the twentieth century-as were ballads such as 'Mary Hamilton' (Child 173), which also faced competition from a cut-down drawing-room version (similarly 'improved' by Victorian arrangers). [119]
What ailed the full version of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray'?
If these other Gordon ballads are examined closely, then it becomes clear that they recount treacherous attacks upon the Gordons- and performing such songs would have been highly popular (and even profitable) in their extensive teritories. Furthermore, even down in Edinburgh, Huntly could muster at least 150 armed horsemen,[120] and undoubtedly had the power to act like a previous magnate, who:
surrounded by fifty armed men on horseback, paraded the streets of Edinburgh, and with hideous and furious gestures, openly d eclared that 'if he knew who were the authors of bills a cusing him, he would wash his hands in their blood'. [121]
Huntly, however, did not come into favour, and return to Court until 1597 (when his estates and titles were restored)- the year that the Protestant clergy formally abandoned their vendetta against him. For five years at least it would have been safe to sing and sell ballads on the streets of Edinburgh which accused Huntly of crimes whose legal remedies were outlawry or death.
The Kirk had been determined to break the power of the Catholic Earls and had seized its chance. There was undoubtedly a popular outcry and revulsion against the Donnibristle incident, but the same would also have applied to such dreadful events as the even more revolting murder of David Rizzio, who received fifty-six stab wounds in front of the pregnant Mary Queen of Scots within Holyrood House in 1566; nobody seems to have made or sustained a song and dance about them. [122]
Does it seem strange to suggest that the Scottish Presbyterian Church was a source of such a propaganda ballad? The myth, largely started by nineteenth-century Episcopalian writers, persists that Calvinism was inimical to popular music and song. Nothing could be further from the truth, for as in Switzerland, France, Germany (and England) the Calvinists had no objection to the delights of music in the home, and were in no way opposed to music and song as such. [123] For perhaps the first time in their history, the Scots people were encouraged to sing in church services. Before the Reformation, the folk were merely spectators (often from behind the rood screen), observing, if they could, but having no part in either the service or its music; after the Reformation the screens were swept away, the congregation was brought 'into the body of the Kirk' up close to their minister, and the people encouraged to sing the psalms, many of which were based on folk-tunes and many set in the 'common' or 'ballad' metre.[124] It was also a singing Reformation.
Given such a powerful hold, launching and sustaining a protest ballad such as 'The Bonny Earl of Murray', as part of a barrage of 'incessant ... sermons ... rhymes, songs and popular pasquils', [125] would have been a simple matter for the Kirk. The elaborations, exaggerations and lies the ballad contained are, not surprisingly, from the same stable as the lurid accounts recounted many years later by those influential religious historians, Calderwood and Spottiswood, [126] and were intended to ensure the same outcomes -the ending of the power of the Catholic nobles led by the Earl of Huntly, the ascendancy of the Protestant Lords, [127] and the permanence of the Presbyterian system in Scotland.
Three months after the murder the Golden Act secured the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, with its privileges and democratic mode of government. Five years afterwards the Catholic Earls were formally humiliated at the General Assembly, and publicly accepted the Protestant faith. The Church signalled the end of its vendetta by calling for the burial of the Earl of Moray; the ballad was no longer needed. Furthermore, Huntly was both back in favour, and back in town, with increased powers, privileges and commissions.[128] Public performances of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' would have become distinctly unwise and it is small wonder the onrginal full version appears virtually to have gone underground for over two hundred years. Who could have guessed that in parallel, in the safety of a more romantic age, a part of 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' would be revived, to enjoy a second and even a third life as a beautiful drawing-room lament (not to mention a fourth life amongst Revival folksingers) and thus become one of the most long-lasting and evocative of songs (and recitations) in Scottish popular culture?
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the Earl and Countess of Moray, and Lord Doune, for their family k nowledge, permission to photograph the Death Portrait in Darnaway Castle, access to and help with family papers, and for their kind hospitality; also to the ever-helpful staff of the Archives and Special Collections, University of Aberdeen, and of the Reference and Local Collections of Aberdeen Central Library. I am indebted to the following: for specialist advice on weaponry and armour to David Caldwell, Assistant Keeper, Scottish Mediaeval Collection, National Museums of Scotland, and Phillip Lankester, Curator, Royal Armouries; concerning Scots Law to Hugh Olson, Faculty of Advocates, Edinburgh; for transcription of Moray Muniment papers to Grant Simpson; also to the late David Buchan, Julia Bishop, Edward Cowan, AlexanderF enton, James Kirk, the late lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, Leslie Macfarlane, John Purser, and Donald Withrington. The paper was written with the aid of a generous grant from the Forbes Family, New York.
Notes
1 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, ed. by Francis James Child, 5 vols (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1882-98; repr. New York: Dover, 1965), III, p. 448.
2 Michael Lynch in Scotland: A New History (London: Century, 1991), p. 233, states 'The only relationship which the well-known ballad bears to reality is that the Earl was indeed bonnie'. Jenny Wormald, in Lords and Men in Scotland: Bonds of Manrent 1442-1603 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1985), p. 437, Note 15, calls the song 'this famous and misleading ballad'.
3 Stephen Wood, The Auld Alliance (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1939).
4 John Prebble, The Lion in the North (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1971; repr. London: Penguin, 1973), pp. 191-96.
5 Even English historians take this view. See Prebble, p. 208.
6 The Duke of Atholl's fifty-strong Atholl Highlanders, 'the only private army in Britain' represent the sole survival of such forces. See Collins Encyclopaedia of Scotland, eds. John and Julia Keay (London: HarperCollins, 1994), p. 15.
7 Sir lain Moncreiffe of that Ilk, 'Queen of Hearts' in Lord of the Dance, ed. Hugh Montgomery- Massingberd (London: Debrett, 1986), pp. 48-49.
8 The Complete Peerage, ed. by H. A. Doubleday and Lord Howard de Walden, 13 vols (London: St Catherine Press, 1936), X, p. 184. Elizabeth appears to have been aged four at the time of her father's death in 1569; an Act of Parliament of 1581 later created her Countess of Moray in her own right.
9 John Mackintosh, Historic Earls and Earldoms of Scotland (Aberdeen: Jolly & Sons, 1898), pp. 108- 75 (p. 142). See also Complete Peerage, p. 181.
10 'An Opinion of the present state, factions, religions and power of the Noblemen of Scotland, 1583', in The Bannatyne Miscellany Containing Original Papers and Tracts Chiefly Relating to the History and Literature o f Scotland, ed. by Walter Scott, 2 vols (Edinburgh: The Bannatyne Club, 1827), I, p. 57.
11 Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 105th edn, ed. by Peter Townsend (London: Burke's Peerage Ltd., 1970), p. 1877. Also Complete Peerage, pp. 182-83, 185 and 200. James's anti-Catholic activities included rooting out the Jesuits in Scotland; the report to the Privy Council in March 1589 that he was a suspected papist can only have been an unsuccessful attempt to blacken his name at Court. The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland. IV, 1585-1592, ed. by David Masson (Edinburgh: H.M. General Register House, 1881), pp. 307, 461.
12 Sandy Ives, in his thoughtful "The Bonny Earl of Murray": The Intersections of Folklore and History in Child 181A', in Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context, ed. by James Porter (Los Angeles: UCLA, 1995), pp. 135-41, discusses the significance of the items Moray 'played at' -the ring, ba' and glove-but we can only guess at their meaning. They may be actual or metaphorical; they may have sexual undertones. The 'ring' may refer to a dance, or a martial art. The 'glove' probably symbolizes courtly love. I was most dubious about Ives's explanation that the Earl was a regular guy' because he played the extremely violent and dangerous game of mediaeval football/ handball (which still survives- see John Robertson's Uppies and Doonies: The Story o f the Kirkwal Bl a' Game ( Aberdeen: A berdeen University Press, 1967) until I noted in The Complete Peerage(p . 679) that Huntly's father 'died suddenly at Strathbogie after a game of football'. Wrong again.
13 Prebble, p. 219, states that Anne of Denmark 'was a tall, fair, well-proportioned woman with a long nose, a good nature, and a trivial mind'. Even if reports of her indiscreet comments regarding Moray were a lie, folk would have readily believed them. See Ethel Carlton Williams's Anne of Denmark (London: Longman, 1970), especially pp. 9 and 41-42.
14 James Balfour, The HistoricaWl orkso f SirJamesB aifour4, vols (London: Hurst Robinson & Co.; Edinburgh: Constable, 1825), I. p. 390.
15 Sir James Melville of Halhill, Memoiros f his Own Life, 1549-1593 (Edinburgh: Bannatyne C lub, 1827), p. 405.
16 Sir James Melville, p. 406.
17 Sir James Melville, p. 407.
18 David Calderwood, The True H istory o f the Church o f Scotland fromt h e Beginning o f the Reformation, unto the End of the Reigne of King James VI (Edinburgh,1 678), p. 267; David Moysie, Memoirso f the Affairs o f Scotland (Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1830), p. 87. Bothwell 'walked along the dark edge of insanity' (Prebble, p. 219).
19 Moysie, p. 88.
20 Moysie, p. 88. Moray seems to have been unaware that Huntly had murdered his ally James Campbell of Cawdor only three days previously. See Edward J. Cowan, 'Clanship, kinship and the Campbell a cquisition o Islay', S cottish Historical Review, 58 (1979), 132-57 (p. 140).
21 Moysie, p. 89.
22 Moray Muniments, TD 81/3/4/58, Damaway Castle.
23 Moysie, pp. 90-92.
24 Calderwood, True History, p. 267.
25 Complete Peerage, p. 186.
26 See the pamphlet concerning the Death Portrait in Darnaway Castle, by Morton, seventeenth Earl of Moray, Painting of James, 2 nd earlo f Moray( Kinfauns:[ n. pub.], 19 December 1912).
27 Burke's Peerage (p. 1877) statest his was in February 1572; this must be a misprint for 1592. Also Moray Muniments, TD 81/3/4/58.
28 The Registero f the Privy Councilo f Scotlandp, . 444. The CompleteP eerage(p . 186a) states that the body was buried in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, in the Moray vault. This is most unlikely as the Bonny Earl was no relation of the first Earl. Moray was probably buried with his father Lord Doune (and mother?) at Kilmadock.S ee David Calderwood, The Historyo f the Churcho f Scotlande, d. by Thomas Thomson, 8 vols, (EdinburghW: oodrow Society, 1845), V, p. 145.
29 Moysie, p. 92.
30 BertrandH . Bronson, The TraditionaTl unes of the Child Ballads,4 vols (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1959-1972), III, pp. 159-61.
31 David Buchan, 'The HistoricalB alladryo f the North East',A berdeenU niversitRy eview,5 5 (1994),
377-87. This was an expanded version of a conference paper with the same title in Ballata e Storia,
special issue of Lares, 51.4 (1985), 443-51.
32 John Finlay,S cottishH istoricaaln dR omantiBc alladsC, hieflyA ncient2, vols (EdinburghJ:a mesB allentyne
& Co., 1808), II, p. 11-23.
33 The text given is Finlay'so riginal.C hild's transcriptionin The Englisha nd ScottishP opularB allads
has over forty differences-in capitalization,p unctuation, spelling, and use of quotation marks. No
editorial policy appears to be involved.
34 John Spottiswood, The Historyo f the Churcho f ScotlandB, eginningt he Yearo f our Lord2 03 and
Continuedto the End of the Reigno f KingJamest he VI of EverB lessedM emory(E dinburgh,1 655; 3rd edn
corrected and amended, London: R. Norton, 1666), p. 387.
35 Thea Gabra-Sanders',P art of a 16th Century Quilted Jack of Plate found at CraigievarC astle,
Aberdeenshire',Journoafl theA rmsa ndA rmourS ociety1, 4.3 (1993), 147-52. A superiorv ersioni n which
the metal plates were riveted together for added strength was called a brigantine. See David H. Caldwell,
'Royal Patronageo f Arms and ArmourM aking' in ScottishW eaponas ndF ortfication1s1 00-1800, ed. by
David H. Caldwell (EdinburghJ: ohn Donald, 1981), 73-93 (pp. 88-89).
The Dreadful Death of the Bonny Earl of Murray 307
36 Gabra-Sandersp,. 151.
37 David Caldwell, Assistant Keeper, National Museums of Scotland. Personal communication, 29
October 1995.
38 Calderwood, History of the Kirk, V, p. 145.
39 David Caldwell, personal communication, 6 November 1995. Swords with rapier-type hilts and
long blades are shown in contemporary portraits of Scotsmen such as the 1592 portrait of Sir Thomas
Kennedy of Culzean, or the 1601 portrait of Sir Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy in D. Thomson's
Painting in Scotland 1570-1650 (Edinburgh: Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1975), pp. 27 and 35.
(See also Peter Buchan's curious comments on the actual sword used, note 48 below.)
40 Willa Muir, Living With Ballads (London: Hogarth Press, 1965), pp. 199-204.
4' David D. Buchan, 'The Ballad and the Folk: Studies in the Balladry and the Society of the Northeast
of Scotland',A ppendix' The HistoricalB alladso f the North-East'( unpublishedd octorald issertation,
University of Aberdeen, 1965); David Buchan, The Ballad and the Folk (London and Boston: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1972; repr., East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 1997), pp. 35-47, especially p. 44.
42 David Buchan, 'Historical Balladry of the North East', pp. 378-80.
43 Rev. JamesM . Melvill, TheA utobiographayn d Diarieso f MrJamesM . Melvill,M inistero f Kilrennyin
Fifea ndP rofessoorf Theologyin the Universitoyf St Andrewse, d. by Robert Pitcaim (EdinburghW: oodrow
Society, 1842), p. 294.
44 A. C. MacLeod and Harold Boulton, Songs of the North. Music arranged by Malcolm Lawson
(London: Field and Tuer, [1885]), pp. 142-46. Ewan MacColl inJ ourneyma(Lno ndon:S idgwick and
Jackson,1 990), pp. 306-308 arguedt hat 'a close readingo f the text and a little historicalr esearchw' ould
heighten any revival singer's performance of this ballad; sadly, he got the historical details back to front,
taking Moray for 'a Catholic conspirator'.
45 Agnes Mure Mackenzie, ScottishP ageant,1 513-1625 (Edinburgh:O liver and Boyd, 1948), p. 50.
46 Kenneth Goldsteini n insertedn otes to The Englisha nd ScottishP opularB allads,e d. by Kenneth S.
Goldstein. (8 LP records. Riverside RLP 12-621-628, 1965).
47 Gavin Greig, Folk-Songin Buchan( Peterhead:P . Scrogie, 1906; repr.i n Folk-Songo f theN orth-East
(Hatboro, Penn., 1963), p. 5. A point of view endorsed by Peter Buchan's champion, William Walker,
in PeterB uchana nd OtherP apers( Aberdeen:D . Wyllie & Sons, 1915).
48 Peter Buchan, Gleaningos f ScarceO ld BalladsC hieflyT ragicaaln dH istoricaMl, anyo f ThemC onnected
witht heL ocalitieosf A berdeenshiarned To Be Foundi n No OtherP lace( PeterheadP: . Buchan, 1825; reprinted
Aberdeen:D . Wyllie & Son, 1891), pp. 91-92. His Note on the ballado n p. 195 statesc ryptically' killed
with one of the Baskerville swords which was lately in the possession of a dealer in curiosities in
Edinburgh'. Neither the National Museums of Scotland nor the Royal Armouries can identify such a
'Baskervilles' word.
49 W. Christiea nd Wm. Christie, TraditionaBl alladA irsA rrangeadn dH armonisedfothr e Pianofortaen d
Harmonium,froCmo piesP rocureidn theC ountieos fA berdeenB, anffandM oray2, vols (EdinburghE: dmonston
& Douglas, 1876, 1881).
50 Gavin Greig, Folk-Songi n Buchanp, p. 6-8.
5' Christie and Christie, I, pp. 202-203.
52 John Ord, Bothy Songsa nd Balladso f AberdeenB, anffa nd MorayA ngus and the Meams (Paisley:
Gardner, 1930).
53 The Greig-DuncaFn olk Song Collectione,d . by PatrickS huldham-Shawa nd Emily Lyle. Vols 1-4
(Aberdeen:A berdeenU niversityP ress,1 981-1990); vols 5-6 (EdinburghM: ercatP ress,1 995). Volumes
7-8 remain to be published.
54 Bronson, III, pp. 159-61.
55 Roy Palmer, 'The CarpenterC ollection', Folk MusicJournal5, .5 (1989), 620-23. Much of the
information is gleaned from Alan Jabbour's 'Interview with J. M. Carpenter, 27 May 1972', Library of
Congress Tape AFS 14,762-14,765, LWO 6918.
56 James M. Carpenter,' A Guide To The James Madison CarpenterM anuscriptsM. icrofilm of the
Library of Congress Manuscript written by James Carpenter of the University of Harvard 1979/80',
Libraryo f CongressM usic 3109, Reel 4. [The song titles are in rough alphabeticaol rder]. The typed
transcripth as handwrittena lterationsa s in v3, line 1. There seems to be no more informationo n Mrs
Grayo n the microfilmo ther than that Carpenterm ade dictaphoner ecordingso f her (althoughs he seems
to have provided no tunes). Remote and isolated Glenlivet, which lies on the eastern edge of the
principal Gordon territory in the North-East, is famous for its whisky and as a staunch redoubt of
indigenous Catholicism in Scotland.
308 IAN A. OLSON
57 Finlay, I, pp. 77-84 (pp. 81-82) and II, pp. 11-23 (pp. 21-23).
58 William Motherwell, Minstrelsy:A ncient and Modem tvitha n HistoricalI ntroductiona nd Notes (Glasgow:
John Wylie, 1827), pp. 78-82.
59 English and Scottish Ballads, ed. by Francis J. Child, 8 vols (Boston, Little Brown and Co., 1859),
VII, pp. 119-22, (p. 120).
60 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, III. 6 (1889), pp. 447-49.
61 Muir, pp. 202-03. She makes great play of the difference between the two versions: one she sees
as an emotional Edinburgh (southem) account, the other a more authentic, terse, northern version.
62 William Donaldson, 'Bonnie Highland Laddie: The Making of a Myth', ScottishL iteraryJournal,3
(1976), 30-50, and TheJacobite Song: Political Myth and National Identity (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University
Press, 1988).
63 Ian A. Olson, 'Scottish Contemporary Music and Song: An Introduction' in Scotland: Literature,
Culture, Politics. [Anglistik & Englischunterricht 38/39] (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1989), pp. 139-66
(pp. 141-43).
64 David Johnson, Music and Society in Lowland Scotland in the Eighteenth Century (London: Oxford
University Press, 1972), pp. 130-43. He recounts the famous anecdote of Queen Anne's tiring of Purcell
pieces and asking for 'an old Scots ballad "Cold and Raw"', to Purcell's great annoyance. The Queen's
next birthday song from Purcell in 1692, oddly enough, has its bass set to 'Cold and Raw'.
65 Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, ed. by Thomas D'Urfey (London: J. Tonson, 1719-20).
66 Allan Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany (Edinburgh, 1723), pp. 169-70. See Johnson, pp. 133-42.
67 William Thomson, Orpheus Caledonius, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: Printed for the Author at his
House, 1733; repr. Hatboro, Penn.: Folklore Associates, 1962), II, p. 8.
68 Orpheus Brittanicus:A Collectiono f Choicest Songs, 2 parts (London: J. Heppenstall, 1698-1702).
69 Which, along with five other songs, Ramsay was in tum 'to swipe' for a fourth volume of his
Tea- Table Miscellany. See Johnson, pp. 140-41.
70 Ramsay, The Tea-Table Miscellany (1723), pp. 169-70. See Donaldson's TheJacobite Song, p. 55.
71 Spottiswood, p. 387.
72 Robert Birrel, 'The Diarey of Robert Birrel' in Fragments of Scottish History, ed. by J. G. Dalyell
(Edinburgh: Constable, 1798), p. 89; Bannatyne Miscellany, p. 57; Sir James Melville, p. 407.
73 Sir James Melville, p. 406.
74 Spottiswood, p. 387.
75 Complete Peerage, pp. 185-6; Burke's Peerage, p. 1877.
76 Balfour, p. 390; Williams, pp. 41-42, states that Anne remarked on 'his good looks and lovely
golden hair'.
77 Calderwood, History of the Kirk, V, p. 145.; Register of the Privy Council, IV, p. 725; Sir James
Melville, p. 407.
78 Moysie, p. 92.
79 Burke's Peerage, pp. 1880 and 1399.
80 Complete Peerage, p. 185.
81 Moysie, p. 89.
82 Spottiswood, p. 387; Calderwood, History of the Kirk, V, 145.
83 Letterso n ScottishB alladsfrom ProfessorF rancisJ. Child to W. W. [William Walker],A berdeen,e d. by
William Walker (Aberdeen: Bon-Accord Press, 1930), p. 4 (F.J.C. to W.W., 17 March 1891).
84 David Buchan, 'History and Harlaw',Joumal of the Folklore Institute, 5 (1968), 58-67; thesis, p. 388.
See also Sigrid Rieuwerts, 'The Historical Moorings of 'The Gipsy Laddie' [Child 200]: Johnny Faa
and Lady Cassillis', in 7he Ballad and Oral Literature, ed. by Joseph Harris (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1991), pp. 78-96.
85 Burke's Peerage, p. 1880, where the date of the marriage contract is given as 1607. The Damaway
pamphlet gives the date as 1601. A '7' and '1' are easily confused in these documents.
86 Balfour, p. 390.
87 David Buchan, 'Histonrcal Balladry', p. 380.
88 Walter Scott, Tales of a Grandfathere, d. by Robert Cadell (London: Whittaker & Co., 1836), II,
pp. 191-92. Nobody seems to have noticed that Scott also invented English popular history-Cavaliers
and Roundheads, Robin Hood and the Brave Saxons/Evil Normans, Oliver Cromwell, Bad King John
etc., but a novelist who could, for example, transform a sadistic, perverted, absentee Angevin monarch
into 'Good King Richard the Lionheart' (see Ian Olson, 'Legend Debunked', The Times, 3 July 1996)
clearly found no problem with romanticising this sordid feud between the Morays and the Huntlys.
The Dreadful Death of the Bonny Earl of Murray 309
89 Birrell,p p. 26-27. The contemporaryE nglishr eports( Calendaorf the StateP apersr elatingto Scotland
and Mary, Queen of Scots, 1547-1603. Vol. X, 1589-1593, ed. by W. K. Boyds and H. W. Meikle
(Edinburgh: H. M. General Register House, 1936) pp. 633 and 635) state only that a badly-burned
Moray almost escaped when he shot out of the house like 'a gon' but went slap into a group watching
out for such an eventuality.
90
Balfour, p. 390.
91 Sir James Melville, p. 407.
92 Moysie, p. 89.
93 e.g. Andrew Godfrey Stuart, A Genealogical & Historical Sketch of the Stuarts of Castlestuart in Ireland
(Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1854), pp. 174-77.
94 Calderwood, The True History, p. 267.
9 Spottiswood, p. 387.
96 The Rev. J. M. Melvill says 'in fear [broad] day-light', p. 294; Spottiswood gives 'the night falling
down', p. 387; Calderwood's True History states, 'that night set the House of Dinnibristle on fire', p. 267.
97 Moray Muniments, TD 81/3/4/58, Darnaway Castle. Also Alexander Fenton, personal communication,
4 December 1995.
98 Calderwood, True History, p. 267; Spottiswood, p. 387.
99 Moray Muniments, TD 81/3/4/58, Damaway Castle.
100 Rev. J. M. Melvill, p. 294.
101 David Hume, Commentarieso n the Law of Scotlandr espectingC rimes, 2 vols (Edinburgh, 1797; rep.
with a Foreword by Lord Cameron, Edinburgh: Law Society of Scotland, 1986), pp. 286-288 (murder
under trust) and pp. 312-23. Hume derives 'hamesucken' from the German 'heimsuchen' -to seek at
home; modern authorities derive it from ME hamsok(e)ne, OE hamsocn, ON heimsokn. See the Concise
Scots Dictionary, ed. by Mairi Robinson (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985).
102 Calderwood, History of the Kirk, V, p. 145.
103 Moysie, p. 89; Spottiswood attributes to Huntly, 'for he desired rather to have taken him alive',
p. 387; in Balfour I, 390, Huntly protested 'naither airt nor pairt of the murther'.
104 Register of the Privy Council, IV, 725. Editor's footnote.
105 Register of the Privy Council, IV, 749; Calderwood, True History of the Church of Scotland, pp. 268-
70. The King made no secret of preferring an Episcopalian system, with bishops appointed by the
Crown; accepting the Crown of England, with her flattering Anglican Church, gave him the opportunity
to fight back. He had ignored the articles and spirit of the Golden Act, and exiled Knox's successor
Andrew Melville with many other protesting churchmen by the time he restored Crown-nominated
bishops in 1607. (Prebble, pp. 231-33).
106 Rev. J. M. Melvill, p. 294.
107 Mackintosh, pp. 167-68.
108 Mackintosh, pp. 173-75.
109 Burke's Peerage, p. 1399.
110 Register of the Privy Council, V, 444-45, and footnote p. 445.
ill Ian Olson, 'The Folk Song Society's Hints for Collectors (1898)', English Dance and Song, 57.1
(1995), 2-5. Based on Minute Book of the Folk Song Society, entries for 6 and 20 July, 1898. Later
issued as a Folk Song Society leaflet.
112 John Purser, Scotland's Music (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1992), p. 116. This authoritative writer
considers that 'The Bonny Earl of Murray' is 'a remarkable example of the wide vocal range which the
ballads expect of their singers'. Both Gavin Greig and James Duncan held the view that any ballad
demanding such a range was not a genuine folksong: Gavin Greig, Folk-Song in Buchan, pp. 53-54;
P. N. Shuldham-Shaw and E. B. Lyle, 'Folk-Song in the North-East: J. B. Duncan's Lecture to the
Aberdeen Wagner Society, 1908', Scottish Studies, 18 (1974), 1-37 (p. 11).
113 Interestingly enough, the Thomson setting also survived in parallel, although with compression
of its range as in George Farquhar Graham, The Popular Songs of Scotland with their Appropriate Melodies
(Glasgow: G. Muir Wood & Co., 1894), pp. 390 and 417. (The copy I possess belonged to, and is
annotated by, James Duncan).
114 Bronson, III, p. 159.
115 The index to Carpenter's tunes contains no mention of 'The Bonnie Earl o Murry' (the spelling
of Mrs Gray's version) or any other variant of the spelling. The microfilm of the manuscripts does
contain a handwritten music manuscript of the usual Victorian tune set to Child A verses 1, 3 and 6,
i.e. starting with 'Ye Hielands and ye lowlands'. The title to this music manuscript is 'The Earl o'
310 IAN A. OLSON
Murray', above which Carpenter has written 'The Bonnie Earl o' Murry'. It seems highly unlikely that
this was Mrs Gray's tune as it is not set to her text. She supplied the texts of twenty-six Child ballads
in total-but no tunes.
116 Palmer (p. 622) puts the matter succinctly: 'The truth is that the Carpenter Collection is chaotic,
and so are the indexes to it.'
117 Balfour, p. 294.
118 According to Child some events from 1666 may also have been incorporated into this ballad.
119 The sawn-off version-'The Four Maries'-with beautiful sentimental accompaniment was published
by Colin Brown in The Thistle (London: Collins, 1884). See also James Duncan's comments,
reproduced in the Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection Volume 2 (1983), p. 519.
120 Moysie, p. 88.
121 Mackintosh, p. 153.
122 Prebble, pp. 196-201; Moncreiffe, pp. 49-50.
123 Percy A. Scholes, 'The point that the Calvanistic form of Protestantism was in no way opposed
to music as such is worth making here, as the attitude to music of the Presbyterians in Scotland and
England has, in this matter, often been seriously misrepresented'. The Oxford Companion to Music, ed.
by Percy A. Scholes, 10th edn, ed. by John Owen Ward (London: Oxford University Press, 1975),
p. 824. See also Edward J. Cowan, 'Calvinism and the Survival of Folk', in The People's Past (Edinburgh:
Polygon, 1980), pp. 32-57.
124 Millar Patrick, Four Centuries of Scottish Psalmody (London: Oxford University Press, 1949), pp. 5-
6. The Wedderburn brothers' Ane Compendious Buik of Godlie Psalms and Spirituall Sanguis, collectitfurthe
of sundrie partes of the Scripture (1542-1546), known popularly as The Gude and Godlie Ballatis, 'next to
the Bible itself, did more than any other [book] to further in Scotland the Reformation cause'. The first
Earl of Moray ('The Good Regent') ensured that the beautiful corpus of Pre-Reformation church music
was not completely lost (pp. 57-60).
125 Register of the Privy Council, IV, 749, footnote.
126 Calderwood (who was to be exiled for his resistance to episcopacy) was a fourteen-year-old student
at St Andrews at the time of the murder and his account was not published until 1678. Spottiswood, a
Presbyterian minister at Calder (who later tumed coat to promote episcopacy as Archbishop of St
Andrews and of Glasgow, and Chancellor of Scotland), was twenty-seven at the time and did not publish
his account until 1655.
127 Not least of whom was the Duke of Argyll, whose sister Margaret had been Moray's mother.
Moray should have been almost unassailable as a Campbell protege, but unfortunately for him an unusual
power struggle amongst the Campbells during the 1590s had left him dangerously exposed. Huntly, for
example, deprived Moray of a major ally, John Campbell of Lorne, by assassination, only three days
before the Donnibristle attack (Cowan, 'Clanship, kinship and the Campbell acquisition of Islay', p. 140).
128 Mackintosh, p. 174.