US & Canada Versions: 157. Gude Wallace
[There is one US fragment of "Gude Wallace" taken from George Edwards of Vermont by Flanders in 1933 (see text below). It was published in Flanders in Ancient Ballads 3, pp. 133-134. It mentions Wallace but otherwise has little resemblance to the Child ballad. Barry, Brit Bids Me, 465 found a sea-captain in Maine who recognized the story.
R. Matteson 2015]
Gude Wallace Notes (Coffin; Flanders)
(Child 157)
This ballad, in Child, dates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but it is probably older than that among the folk. The story is based on an incident used in Blind Harry's Wallace (before 1488 c. 1465) Book V, lines 1080-1119. William Wallace, the Scottish outlaw, meets a a woman while traveling with a comrade. She informs him that there are English soldiers at a nearby hostel drinking and on the lookout for Wallace. The two outlaws go directly to the inn, where they get into a fight. Wallace slays the English captain, and with his friend's aid disposes of the rest of the soldiers. Sometimes this material is prefaced by an incident taken from Book IV, lines 704:797, in which Wallace comes to the house of his lady only to discover she has sold him to the English. She, however, repents and by disguising him in her clothes and sending him to the well as one of her maids enables him to escape the ambush. The ballad is virtually unknown in modern England and America. Phillips Barry, British Ballads from Maine, 469, did locate a widely-read captain Donovan who recognized the story, but the Edwards fragment is the only text actually collected in the New world. This scrap of a song is clearly close print. There are no stanzas in child that resemble the lines Edwards recalled. Moreover, his fragment suggests a continuation of the incident from Book IV that is not normally found in the "Gude Wallace" texts. In May,1297, Wallace and thirty followers burnt Lanark and killed Hezelrig, the English sheriff there. Legend attributes his action to his desire for revenge. Hezelrig had earlier executed Marion Bradfute of Lamington, Wallace's beloved, because she had concealed Wallace from the English and had also spurned the Englishman's son's hand in marriage. At any rate, Wallace's slaying of Hezelrig really marked the beginning of his reputation as a brigand and is the only specific charge to be leveled against him at his indictment at Westminster.
Found November 4, 1940, in notes sent to Phillips Barry on October 9, 1933, made when talking with George Edwards in Burlington, Vermont. Edwards knew only this fragment. H. H. Collector
Gude Wallace
At Ellerie mid Scotland's hills
There stands a castle high.
Behind it gently flows a rill
And murmurs sweetly by.
It was here the noble Wallace dwelt
Full many years gone by,
When England his great power felt
And he their laws defied.
(Wallace's wife would not betray the hiding place of her Lord)
And here the lovely Marian fell
By the cruel sword (Hesserige killed her)