'The Twa Corbies'- William Montgomerie 1955
[Footnotes moved to the end. See Douglas Hamer's article in my collection, the previous article attached to Recordings and Info]
'The Twa Corbies'
by William Montgomerie
The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 6, No. 23 (Jul., 1955), pp. 227-232
'THE TWA CORBIES'
By WILLIAM MONTGOMERIE
MR. DOUGLAS HAMER, in a short note on 'The Twa Corbies', [1] quotes two Scottish folk rhymes:
I. A hoggie dead! a hoggie dead! a hoggie dead!
Oh where? oh where? oh where?
Down i' e' park! down i' e' park! down i' e' park!
Is't fat? is't fat? is't fat?
Come try! come try! come try!
Galloway
2. Sekito says, there's a hogg dead!
Where? where?
Up the burn! up the burn!
Is't fat? Is't fat?
't's a' creesh! 't's a' creesh!
Tweeddale [2]
By limiting discussion to 'The Twa Corbies', and his evidence to printed Scottish folk rhymes, and by referring to 'the Scottish rustic habit of "interpreting the conversation" of carrion crows', Mr. Hamer ties up everything very neatly.
But interpreting the conversation of carrion crows is not a peculiarly Scottish rustic habit, nor is the rhyme a peculiarly Scottish rhyme. In 1894 it was noted down from the recitation of Robert Lawson of Thirlby at the foot of the Hambleton Hills in Yorkshire: [3]
CROW'S DITTY
Gowa! Gowa!
Whea teea? Wheea teea?
Bagby Moor, Bagby Moor.
What ti dea there? What ti dea there?
Seek an au'd yeo, seek an au'd yeo.
Is she fat ? Is she fat ?
Glorr! Glorr! Glorr!
The penultimate line in all three rhymes suggests a common origin for all three, but affords no evidence at all for a Scottish or English source.
Nor is the habit a peculiarly British one. A similar rhyme, which may safely be claimed as the same one, is recited in Germany: [4]
(Krihen sprechen miteinander:)
Ligg'n Knaken, Ligg'n Knaken!
Wonemb? Wonemb?
Achter'n Barg, achter'n Barg!
Mit Flesch, mit Flesch!
Puk em af, puk em af!
A variant was recorded in I935, in Clear Island, south coast of Cork, by An t-Athair Donncha O Floinn: [5]
Do tharla dha fheich dhu' 'ma cheile.
D'iarthuigh ceann aca de cheann eil' aca:
'A' gcualais ca bhfuair a' seana-chapal bas?'
'A' gculntae 'n Chlair!'
'Teimis fe n-a dhein
'Un go lionaimid ar suimear!'
(Translation:
Two crows (ravens) met. One asked the other:
'Did you hear where the old horse died?'
'In County Clare!'
'Let us go there
That we may fill our stomachs!')
For Mr. Hamer, the two rhymes from Popular Rhymes of Scotland 'reveal a more certain origin for the form of this ballad'. He seems to imply that development, in this case at least, is from the simple folk rhyme to the more complex traditional ballad. It is not clear whether he further implies that this is the usual sequence of development.
It may be noted that an intermediate stage in this process of development has also been preserved: [6]
The corbie, wi' his roupy throat,
Cried frae the leafless tree,
'Come owre the loch, come owre the loch,
Come owre the loch wi' me!'
The craw put out his sooty head,
And cried, 'Where to, where to ?'
'To yonder field,' the corbie cried,
'Where there is corn enow.'
'The ploughman ploughed the land yestreen,
The farmer sowed this morn,
And we can mak' a full, fat meal,
Frae off the broad-cast corn.'
The twa black birds flew owre the trees
They flew towards the sun;
The farmer watchin' by a hedge,
Shot baith wi' his lang gun!
Line 2 of the second stanza is exactly equivalent to the second line of the Yorkshire rhyme, 'Whea teea? Wheea teea?' and is echoed, each time in the second line, in the Scottish and German rhymes, which suggests a direct connexion (by translation?) between the short rhymes.
There is still another version,[7] beginning with exactly the same first stanza, but with a significant development in the third:
Corbie. 'Te pike a dead man that's lying
Ahint yon meikle stane.'
Craw. 'Is he fat, is he fat, is he fat, is he fat?
If no, we may let him alane.'
Relying on the editor's information in the Contents, that the author is unknown, one might assume that this is the perfect transition version between rhyme and ballad (or ballad and rhyme), for it has elements of both. But Whitelaw in his Book of Scottish Song (Glasgow, 1875, p. 403) attributed this version to Alexander Carlile (1788-1860), who is known to have rewritten
others of our folk-songs (e.g. p. 368).
The true traditional ballad, folk-song, or folk-rhyme is anonymous. Such a criterion of authenticity is very chancy, especially in this case where the song could deceive the eye and ear of the expert in folk-song, whose ear, from experience, is not satisfied with 'wot' and 'new slain' in the line, 'I wot where lies a new slain knight', and the perfection, at another level of poetry, of the couplet
O'er his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sail blaw for evermair,
from 'The Twa Corbies' in Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy.
The theory of development from folk-rhyme to ballad is so satisfactory that one is tempted to leave Mr. Hamer's observation uncriticized. But development in folk-song and rhyme is very seldom as tidy as that. There is some evidence suggesting another possibility.
Familiarity with such rhymes teaches one that many rhymes in oral tradition, manuscripts, and printed collections are fragments of largely forgotten songs and ballads. Sir Walter Scott quotes one of these rhymes in his Minstrelsy in the Notes on 'The Eve of St John':
Fair maiden Lylliard lies under this stane,
Little was her stature, but great was her fame;
Upon the English louns she laid mony thumps,
And, when her legs were cutted off, she fought upon her stumps.
This episode is alleged to have occurred at the battle of Ancrum Moor in 1545. But in the ballad called 'The Hunting of the Cheviot',' a similar episode is recorded:
For Wetharryngton my harte was wo,
that euer he slayne shulde be;
For when both his leggis wear hewyne In to,
yet he knyled & fought on his kny.
If this is the same story as 'The Battle of Otterburn', the accepted theory, it tells of a battle fought in 1388. The 'Hunttis of Chevet' [8] is mentioned among the songs in The Complaynte of Scotlande (1549), but was old then. It is significant that the later version, [9] probably a broadside copy, is nearer the rhyme of Fair maiden Lylliard. Here is the corresponding stanza:
For witherington needs must I wayle
as one in too full dumpes,
For when his leggs were smitten of,
he fought vpon his stumpes.
The development in this case is not from rhyme to ballad, but from traditional ballad to broadside to rhyme. This seems to be the reverse of the process described by Mr. Hamer. It is possible that the rhyme of Fair maiden Lylliard may have been adapted, and incorporated in the second version of the ballad, but there is still the earlier version of the stanza to explain. To put it as late as 1545 leaves a gap of a century and a half between the event (1388) and the ballad about the event. In this case the evidence seems to suggest a later date for the rhyme than for the ballad stanza, and it is as possible that in the case quoted by Mr. Hamer the same evolution took place from ballad to rhyme.
There is another example of the same process, which seems to be that of breaking down rather than building up. In the Bannatyne MS. is a poem [10] which has all the appearance of being a folk-poem, 'How the first Helandman of god was maid of Ane horse turd in argylle as is said'. I begin at the second stanza:
Sanct petir said to god,
in a sport word-
'Can ze not mak a heilandman
of this horss tourd?'
God turnd owre pe horss turd
wt his pykit staff,
And vp start a helandman
blak as ony draff.
Qwod god to pe helandman,
'Quhair wilt thow now?'
'I will doun in pe lawland, lord,
and thair steill a kow.'
'And thow steill A cow, cairle,
thair thay will hang the.'
'Quattrack, lord, of that,
ffor anis mon I die.'
The Rev. William Findlay (d. 1917), collecting from oral sources in the Lowlands of Scotland, recorded this: [11]
Can you mak a hiel'n'man?
Yes indeed an' that I can
Just as weel as ony man
He rummelt it, he tummelt it,
He gied it sik a blow
Up jumped a hiel'n'man
Crying Trotsho!
There is a Dumfries version of the same rhyme: [12]
Up Jock, doon Tam,
Blaw the bellows, auld man.
Peter cam tae Paul's door,
Playing on a Fife.
Can ye shape a Hielandman
Oot an auld wife?
He rummelt her, he tummelt her,
He gied her sic a blow,
That oot cam a Hielandman
Crying 'Trotshow'.
Another part of the poem in the Bannatyne MS. survived in Argyllshire till the late nineteenth century, and was recorded by R. C. Maclagan: [13]
Whaur are ye gaun, my wee Johnnie Hielanman?
I'm gaun awa to steal a wee coo.
You'll be hanged, my fine Johnnie Hielanman,
What do a care if my belly be fu'.
It would be very difficult to prove that these rhymes, picked up nearly 400 years later from the lips of the people, were the sources of ideas in the Bannatyne MS. poem. It is more likely that they are fragments from the poem, which have been modified in oral transmission through the centuries.
The positive value of Mr. Hamer's note is in drawing attention, once again, to the interconnexion between all kinds of material in oral tradition. The danger in the study of ballads is of becoming a prisoner within the ballad tradition, forgetting that it is an abstraction from the whole field of orally transmitted songs, singing games, nursery rhymes, folk-tales, folkrhymes and proverbs, from which the folk themselves did not abstract the ballads, till the collectors asked them to do so. Professor Child's
ballad collection consists very largely of ballads abstracted from manuscripts which contain many things beside ballads. The scholar who works within the limits of this printed collection [14] cannot but come, again and again, to the same conclusions as Child. Working with a full knowledge of the ballad manuscripts he must come at times to other conclusions than those of Child, who did not always see the complete ballad manuscripts, but only the traditional ballads extracted from them by his helpers.
Footnotes:
1. R.E.S., xxiii (I947), 354-5.
2. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland (Edinburgh, 3rd edn., 1847), p. 165. My copy of the book gives 1841 as the date of the 3rd edition.
3. Folk Lore, v (I894), 342. The word 'recitation' does not exclude the possibility that the rhyme was sung.
4. Maria Kuhn, Macht aufdas Tor! Alte Deutsche Kinderlieder (K6nigstein and Leipzig, 1942), p. 118.
5. Bealoideas, v (I935), 135. For other Irish versions see An Stoc, March 1920, p. 5; and Sept.-Oct. I927, p. 5. For these references I am indebted to Mr. Sean O'Sullivan, Archivist of the Irish Folklore Commission, Dublin. Compare also the Lancashire rhyme 'The Frog and the Crow' in N. & Q., Series I, ii (I850), 222. I am informed that there are also a number of Scottish Gaelic parallels.
6. Fifty Traditional Scottish Nursery Rhymes. Collected, edited, and arranged for Voice and Piano by Alfred Moffat (Augener, London, n.d.), p. 29. The source of the collection was 'a manuscript collection of traditional Scottish airs ... in the possession of a well known firm of booksellers in Edinburgh ... written between the years 1845 and 1850'.
7. R. A. Smith, The Scottish Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1824), vi. 62.
8. MS. Ashmole 48 in the Bodleian, printed in Skeat's Specimens of English Literature, I394-I579 (Oxford, 3rd edn. i880), p. 67, st. 54.
9. 'Chevy Chase' from Percy's MS., p. I88; Hales and Furivall (London, I867-8), ii. 7, st. 50.
10. x62b-x63a. Written in eight long lines, without punctuation.
11. Manuscript B, p. 82. All Mr. Findlay's MSS. are in my keeping.
12. Transactions of the Dumfries and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society,
I908-9, p. 55.
13. The Games & Diversions of Argyleshire (Folk-Lore Society, London, 190I), p. 256.
14. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston and New York, 5 vols., I882-98). One danger in using the single-volume selection (Harrap, London, n.d.) for the ballad of 'The Twa Corbies' is a misplaced note about the other variants, whose existence proves that the Minstrelsy version is fundamentally traditional, even if touched up by Miss Erskine of Alva, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, or Sir Walter Scott. The variants are listed in the notes to No. 26 in the five-volume edition.