Showing posts with label Thomas the Rhymer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas the Rhymer. Show all posts
Thomas the Rhymer
A classic piece of traditional folk singing here - I think Thomas the Rhymer really does need a Scottish accent.
It would be great if Karine Polwart recorded it.
True Thomas - Parallel Themes and Resonances
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Waterhouse
In addition to the Ballad and the 'Prophecies' of True Thomas, there is a body of Scottish fairy lore associated with Thomas. His coming and goings from the Otherworld feature in many tales such as this one->.
Whether these stem from the Ballad, or are a parallel development with the Ballad, is difficult to establish. Just as it is difficult to be certain whether either or both of these came from the tale which opens the 'Prophecies' or whether all stem from a common earlier source.
What is likely is that Thomas became a magnet for the folklore of the Otherworld, attracting stories to himself whose themes are also expressed elsewhere. He became a typological figure of the Otherworld journeyer, moving backwards and forwards across the borders of the two worlds.
In the first branch of Y Mabinogi Pwyll moves across that border and returns with the title 'Pen Annwn' , and by being an Otherworld ruler as well as a ruler of Dyfed, his visitation from the Horse Goddess legitimates his rule. For Thomas the benefits are otherwise. But the idea of gaining insight, poetic or prophetic knowledge, or sovereign legitimacy is all bundled into this meme of the Otherworld's influence on human affairs. The application of such memes might vary across political, theological and cultural spheres as well as in different historical periods. Like much of the fabric of medieval life which was taken up in later periods, this tale became part of the ideology of poetic Romanticism when John Keats adopted the persona of Thomas as a thrall to the Muse. His own situation as a consumptive poet with little prospect of a long life, or of being able to pursue the woman he was attracted to, also determined a tragic context for his version. So here Thomas becomes a doomed and lovelorn Romantic poet in medieval guise, as depicted by John Waterhouse's painting based on Keat's poem, both of which express a barely supressed sexuality and resonances of guilt, elements included in one episode of the 'Prophecies'; but also a lost sovereignty, a chance not realised, a beguiling by an Otherworld that remains unattainable. Is that the quintessential modern expression of this meme?
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
John Keats
John Keats
O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.
I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.
She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said—
“I love thee true.”
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d—Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—“La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!”
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
True Thomas : What Can We Say About Sources?
The Remains of Thomas of Erceldoune's Tower in modern-day Earlston
What of the Ballad? We can trace the record back a little beyond its first emergence in print. Two version appeared early in the Nineteenth Century, one from Walter Scott and the other from Robert Jamieson. Information about how their versions were obtained is contained in the letters of Robert Anderson, a doctor from Edinburgh who was also a literary historian. He published Lives of the English Poets in 1795 and a critical edition of the works of Samuel Johnson in 1815. He carried on an extensive correspondence with other literary men including Bishop Percy, whose Reliques of Ancient English Poetry had been published in 1765. (*) In communicating with Percy about Scottish border ballads in September 1800, Anderson refers to “a pretty large MS collection of old Scottish ballads, communicated by Mrs Brown, wife of Dr Brown, minister of Falkirk”. He reports that Mrs Brown “learned them all when she was a child by hearing them sung by her mother and an old maid-servant”. Mrs Brown had also been visted by Robert Jamieson earlier that year. Anderson then relates that, together with Robert Jamieson, he visited Walter Scott and they discussed the Ballad of True Thomas which had been obtained from Mrs Brown. Anderson spoke of his "suspicion of modern manufacture, in which Scott had secretly anticipated me”, as Mrs Brown was fond of ballads and herself wrote verse. But he concluded that “her character places her above the suspicion of literary imposture”, a view which James Murray, the editor of the ‘Prophecies’ treated with some skepticism.
But it should be noted that, in December 1800, Anderson again wrote to Percy about some ballads that had been passed to Wm Tytler by Professor Thomas Gordon of Aberdeen in 1783. Gordon was Mrs Brown’s father. These ballads had come from the same woman later identified by Mrs Brown, together with an aunt, a Mrs Farquharson, although Gordon does not mention his wife as a source. Mrs Brown herself later wrote to Tytler’s son who had enquired about the ballads, saying “I do not pretend that these ballads are correct in any way as they are written down entirely from my recollection, for I never saw one of them in print or manuscript”.
As Mrs Brown seems to have communicated a large number of ballads to a variety of different people, all apparently from memory, it is possible that she did not give all of them exactly the same versions. But this does not explain the considerable difference between Scott’s and Jamieson’s versions. And it does seem odd that she is the only source for the Ballad. We might wish to consider here that Anderson also reported to Percy that Jamieson proposed to publish his own collection of old ballads “with interpolated stanzas written by himself”. These later appeared as Popular Ballads and Songs(1806). We might think that Jamieson was more likely to anglicize the ballad in order to popularise it, or that Scott would be more likely to want to keep the Scottish flavour. Jamieson’s version certainly has all the indications of an adaptation by him in line with his stated intentions. Scott, however, was clearly also working from the ‘Prophecies’. He set out his version of the Ballad followed by a second section by himself but based on the ‘Prophecies’ and a third section in which he imaginatively created an epilogue. These are scrupulously separated. But could he have been influenced, or more than influenced, by the ‘Prophecies’ in transcribing a text of the ‘traditional’ Ballad obtained from Mrs Brown’s dictation?
-*-
* For Anderson’s correspondence, see
Illustrations of Literary History of the Eighteenth Century by J B Nicholls (1848)
The Rhymer, The Prophet and The Lady
The Tree planted at the 'Rhymer's Stone' to mark the spot of the 'Eildon Tree'
The Ballad is widely available in different versions. My standard reference in these discussions will be to the version that appeared in Walter Scott’s Border Minstrelsy(1802). A slightly anglicized version of this can be found HERE
The texts from the various manuscript sources for the ‘Prophecies’ were published in James Murray’s Early English Texts Society edition in 1875. The earliest manuscript source dates from c.1430, a little more than a hundred years after the historical Thomas of Erceldoune died.
Here are the opening lines of the ‘Prophecies’ in their transcribed original form. I give this for a flavour of the text, but will after this quote from the text in my translation from the northern dialect of Middle English in which it is written.
Als j me wente Þis Eldres daye
Ffull faste in mynd makand my mone,
In a mery mornynge of Maye
By huntle bankkes my selfe alone,
I herde Þe jaye & Þe throstyll cokke,
The Mawys menyde hir of hir songe,
Þe wodewale beryde als a belle
That alle Þe wode a-bowte me ronge.
Allonne in longynge thus als j laye
Vndre-nethe a semely tree,
J was whare [of] a lady gaye
Come rydynge ouer a longe lee.
If j solde sytt to domesdaye,
With my tongue, to wrobbe and wrye,
Certanely Þat lady gaye
Neuer bese scho askryede for mee.
Hir palfraye was a dappill graye
Swylke one ne saghe j neuer none
Als dose Þe sonne on someres daye
Þat faire lady hir selfe scho schone.
Hir selle it was of roelle bone
Full semely was Þat syghte to see
Stefly sett with precyous stones
And compaste all with crapotee,
Stones of Oryente, grete plente,
Hir hare abowte hir hede it hange;
Scho rade ouer Þat lange lee
A whylle scho blewe, a-noÞer scho sange.
The first thing to notice here is that, unlike the Ballad, this is written in the first person. The Ballad is about Thomas. This purports to be written by him, though there are parts of the narrative that change to third person narration and I will discuss these in a future post. Another difference is that the Ballad launches straight into the action while the ‘Prophecies’ spend some time setting the scene. It is a May Morning, the birds are singing and, as the Lady comes riding towards him, she is described in great detail. Thomas is overwhelmed. He says, ‘If I were to live until Doomsday, I couldn’t describe her splendour’. She is ‘shining like the sun on a summer’s day’ as she approaches with her jewel be-studded trappings. As she comes, she sings out and blows upon her horn like a hunter. It takes 72 lines to describe her approach. The Ballad does it in eight lines.
Now, for comparison, consider this from the First Branch of Y Mabinogi:
“As they were sitting on this hill a woman dressed in shining gold brocade and riding a great pale horse approached the highway which ran past them. Anyone who saw the horse would have said it was moving at a slow steady pace as it drew adjacent to the hill. "Men," said Pwyll, "does anyone know that horsewoman?" "No, lord," they answered. "Then let someone go and find out who she is." A man rose to go after her but by the time he reached the highway she had already gone past. He tried to follow her on foot, but she drew farther ahead of him. When he saw his pursuit was in vain he returned and told Pwyll, "Lord, it is pointless for anyone to follow her on foot." "All right. Go to the court and take the fastest horse you know and go after her." The man fetched the horse and set out after her. Once he reached open country his spurs found his mount, but no matter how much he urged the steed onward the farther ahead she drew, all the while going at the same pace as before.”
These and other parallels will be considered later.
As the Lady approaches him, Thomas assumes that she is must be the Virgin Mary and he addresses her as such, but she informs him he is mistaken. She is, rather, as the ballad has it, The Queen of Elfland, though in the ‘Prophecies’ she simply says that she is from ‘another country’. Rhiannon, in Y Mabinogi is clearly of a faery nature from the outset and not mistaken for Mary, though she only identifies herself by her name and her father’s name.
In the Ballad, the Queen invites Thomas to give her a kiss and then almost immediately carries him off to Elfland after identifying other possible roads they could take. But in the ‘Prophecies’ much more happens. After being told that she is not Mary, Thomas begins to suggest that they ‘lie down’ together. At first she refuses, saying that it would ‘mar’ and ‘spill’ her beauty. But Thomas persists and she then agrees:
Down then came that lady bright
Underneath the greenwood spray
And if the story tells it right
Seven times with her he lay.
She said ‘man you like your play'
But after this, as she predicted, she is transformed and her appearance is hideous. All of this is covered by the kiss in the Ballad, after which he is under her spell. In Y Mabinogi, Rhiannon tells Pwyll she has come because she wants him for a husband and he agrees to visit her to formalize the arrangement.
At which point, I’ll pause and postpone more until the next post.
The Prophecies of True Thomas
The Rhymer's Stone
The identity of Taliesin in the Welsh literary tradition has been mixed up with his status as the repository of legendary and prophetic material which clearly must be later than the supposed dates for the bard of Urien of Rheged in the sixth or seventh centuries. Much the same is true of Arthur as a legendary chieftain supposed to have lived at around the same time or a little earlier. The real identities of these figures, such as they can be established at all, are therefore uncertain. I find myself reflecting on these matters in the context of a much later case of an historical character who has gained legendary status. Thomas of Ercildoune has for some time been known to me as a character in the Scots ballad of ‘True Thomas’, or ‘Thomas the Rhymer’, who was carried off by the Queen of Faery and given ‘true speech’. During a recent trip to Scotland I visited the place where this is said to have happened. It is possible to follow a trail from the medieval abbey in Melrose up onto the Eildon Hills and then to descend to Huntley Bank by Bogle Burn (‘Goblin Brook’) and down to the ‘Rhymer’s Stone’, a memorial to mark the spot where Thomas sat, according to the ballad, under the ‘Eildon Tree’. A hawthorn has also been planted by the memorial stone to represent this tree.
As well as exploring the physical geography of the ballad I have also been researching its background. It appears in most anthologies of traditional ballads, having featured in Child’s English and Scottish Ballads(1862) and in Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Robert Graves discussed the ballad in his ‘historical grammar of poetic myth’ The White Goddess (1949) and suggested that the true speech conferred on Thomas was the gift of poetic inspiration. He also points out that the ballad was a source of John Keats’ poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’. I had for some time, therefore, thought of the ballad as having independent existence arising from an oral tradition and representing a typological expression of a folklore motif of the Faery Queen on a horse. In this way it is possible to link it with other such expressions in, for instance, the ballad of Tamlane and, indeed, other literary formulations of the motif like the arrival of Rhiannon on a white horse in the First Branch of Y Mabinogi. This sort of typological approach enables one to see the use of the motif by poets such as Keats as touching on archetypal themes in both the written and the oral tradition of story telling or, we might say, myth making.
While still being persuaded of the validity of this approach, there is another way of viewing the bare facts. Thomas was an historical character who lived in the thirteenth century in a tower – now a ruin but still partly standing – in the village of Ercildoune (now Earlston) in the Tweed Valley. He was dubbed ‘The Rhymer’ because of his reputation for penning prophetic verses. But like Taliesin before him many later events became attached to his list of prophecies, in the case of Thomas mostly related to conflicts between England and Scotland. He is said to be the author of a work in three ‘fyttes’ or sections containing prophecies in Fytte Two and Three but telling the story of his being carried off by the Faery Queen in Fytte One. Here his acquisition of the gift for ‘true speech’ from the Queen is the validation of his power as a prophet. The earliest of several manuscripts containing this work – the so-called ‘Thornton Manuscript’, a collection of various romance and prophetic writing - has been dated to the decade 1430-1440, over a hundred years after Thomas’s death.
This work, it is believed, is the source of the ballad. But the work is written in a northern dialect of Middle English, not Scots. And while Fytte One contains the same story as the ballad, the details differ. In his edition of various manuscript versions of the ‘Prophesies’ for the Early English Texts Society in 1875, James Murray argues the case for the textual integrity of the whole work in three fyttes in spite of the feelings of Child and others that the story of Fytte One was distinct as a literary product and deserved to be considered separately. Murray also suggests it may not be too much to suppose that “Thomas of Ercildoune may, from his literary tastes, have been the repository of such traditional rhymes” and that he may have known of an independent version of the story in Fytte One and used it as a way of giving “currency to the idea of his own prophetic powers”. Or that a later author put together a compilation of Thomas’s prophecies, adding others of his own, and linked them to the story of his being carried away to Faery in the same way. Indeed, Murray points out that at some stages of its literary reception the prophecies had been regarded with more interest than the folktale. These were common currency in the political discourse of the time and were often used to justify, or whip up support for, particular causes. The author of the Complaynt of Scotland (1529) refers to “diuerse prophane prophesies of merlyne and other ald corruptit vaticinaris the quhilkis hes affirmit in rusty ryme” while James V (of Scotland) was entertained with “prophisies of Rymour, Beid and Marlyng”.
Placing the prophecies alongside those of Merlin, and therefore in the same context as those ascribed to Myrddin and Taliesin, brings the material into focus alongside Welsh texts and predictions of conflicts between the different peoples inhabiting Britain after the Romans left, and throughout the Middle Ages. But we do at least know that Thomas Learmount of Ercildoune existed and that some of the prophecies concerning the area around the Eildon Hills and the valley of the River Tweed provide a setting which make it likely that he was their author. Walter Scott, who was also an inhabitant of this area, may therefore be seen to have had an interest in promoting the ballad and there is some debate as to the previous provenance of the version that he printed in his collection. If it was, indeed, a recent literary production based on Fytte One of the ‘Prophesies’ then the idea that the story had an independent existence in the oral tradition could be questioned. Scott was certainly enthusiastic about Thomas’s legendary status and he even tried to appropriate it by incorporating a ‘Rhymer’s Glen’ into his estate at Abbotsford a few miles away from the spot where the ‘Eildon Tree’ was located. But many have felt that the story has a life of its own beyond the context of the times during which the prophecies were significant. And having a context outside of a particular historical time frame is one indication of a story with the typological, or mythical, significance referred to earlier.
A closer look, therefore, at the ballad, alongside the story in Fytte One of the ‘Prophesies’ is an ongoing project and may feature in a future post.
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