The Texts of "Edward" in Percy's Reliques and Motherwell's Minstrelsy
by Archer Taylor
Modern Language Notes, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Apr., 1930), pp. 225-227
THE TEXTS OF "EDWARD" IN PERCY'S RELIQUES AND MOTHERWELL'S MINSTRELSY
More than fifteen years ago T. F. Henderson asserted that Motherwell's traditional text of "Edward" was "merely a debased form of the Percy version, gradually debased since the ballad appeared in the Reliques."[1] This unequivocal assertion must rest either upon facts that are obvious to any reader or upon evidence to be collected and presented. Apparently Henderson esteemed the relation of the two texts so obvious that proof was unnecessary. The artistic superiority of Percy's version convinced him that Motherwell's text must be a debasement. But the comparative literary merit of the texts does not determine their relationship. Even the most casual comparison of these texts with other versions of the ballad fails to disclose any basis for Henderson's assertion. He is entirely unaware of the fact that Motherwell's text and all the English, American, Scandinavian, and Finnish ballads possess certain traits which are not found in Percy's Reliques. According to Percy's version the father is murdered and according to Motherwell's, the brother. No text except Percy's names the father. Motherwell's text agrees with the stream of oral tradition and is an independent version. Percy's text represents, as any ballad text may, an individual variation in detail.
The existence of a stream of oral tradition is proved by the fact that a traditional text was in circulation in Sweden in 1640.[2] Unfortunately this text can no longer be found, but the fact that it contained parodistic elements shows that other texts must have existed. In 1776 Herd recovered a version of "Edward" contaminated with "Lizie Wan" (Child No. 51). Percy's version of "Edward" could, to be sure, have entangled itself with "Lizie Wan" in the few years that elapsed between the publication of the Reliques (1765) and of the Scotish Songs (1776). Yet the similarity between Percy's and Herd's versions is not particularly striking, while the similarity between Herd's version and Motherwell's is obvious at a glance. If Motherwell's version is a vulgar debasement of Percy's text, we must believe that this declension in the ballad's fortunes occurred in the brief space of eleven years, so that the corrupted form could join "Lizie Wan" and then find place in the Scottish Songs. Such an explanation is scarcely probable. It cannot have been in Henderson's mind when he characterized the debasement as gradual.
Henderson's unfortunate assertion is open to the interpretation that Motherwell's version alone depends on the Reliques. In view of the striking similarity between Herd's and Motherwell's versions this interpretation is impossible. Henderson quotes no passage as an example of the corruption of Percy's text. It is possible but extremely unlikely that the stream of tradition named the brother as the victim, that Percy's informant changed this figure to the father, and that Motherwell's informant returned to the original when corrupting the text. So complicated an explanation of the facts is unnecessary.
ARCHER TAYLOR
University of Chicago
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Footnotes:
1. The Ballad in Literature (Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature), Cambridge, 1912, p. 25. 2
2 See Olrik in Grundtvig Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, vi (1895), 143.