Thomas of Erceldoune IV -- The Prologue (lines 1-24)

The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Ercledoune is divided into three 'fitts', a word used in Middle-English to describe a canto or large section of a poem. Of the five MSS containing all or part of this poem, the oldest, the Thornton Manuscript, stands alone in beginning with a 24 line prologue in which a minstrel addresses his audience. Fitt I then tells of Thomas' experience with the elf queen, and Fitts II and III record his prophecies. As I mentioned in outlining Murray's Introduction to his edition, Thomas was famous as a prophet in Scotland and Northern England well into the 19th Century.

The prologue provides a good example of the poetic form used throughout.  What we have is basically an iambic meter with some variations. So four beats per line.  Murray calls this 'long measure'. This might lead us to expect eight syllables per line, but that is not what our eyes or ears find. There are extra unstressed syllables. Now some of these syllables get lost 'as you articulate the line out loud', as Jenni Nuttall tells us at her marvelous blog on Middle English verse:

A vowel at the end of one word can run together with the vowel at the beginning of the next word (this is called elision).   An unstressed syllable can be slurred over within a word (i.e. deliv’ren rather than deliveren).

If we take the first four lines and mark out the elisions and slurred syllables, and compare the text with and without these marks, we can see that the rhythm tightens up considerably. Yet there are still 'extra' syllables, which, as Jenni Nuttall has pointed out to me, suggest that this is more of a 'dolnik verse', in which the four beats are the main thing, but which is rather footloose when it comes to the number of unstressed syllables.  Another variation is also visible in the first half of the first line, which is trochaic rather than iambic. I have also added marks to the second sample to show the beat.

Lystyns, lordyngs, bothe grete & smale,
And takis gude tent what j will saye:
I sall ȝow telle als trewe a tale,
04 Als ever was herde by nyghte or daye:


Lýstyns, lórdyngs, bothe grét' & smál',
And tákis gude tént what í will sáy':
I sáll ȝow téll' als tréw' a tál',
04 Als é'er was hérde by nýght' or dáy':

  letter key: þ = a voiced th, as in this; ȝ = y as in you; j alone = I, the pronoun.

In considering the rhyme scheme -- ABAB -- we need to bear in mind that the pronunciation of English 600 years ago was rather different than now, even leaving aside any distinctions between northern and southern dialects. Thus smale in line 1 and tale in line 3, done in line 10 and schone in line 12, rhymed as much in the ear as the eye.  Even though Murray printed the text without any kind of breaks, the rhyme scheme allows us to see that it falls naturally into quatrains. Murray, however, did number the verses just so -- the line numbers in red are his -- and I will take the liberty of setting it down this way. Doing so will, I hope, aid those (like me) whose understanding of Middle English isn't perfect or immediate.

Lystyns, lordyngs, bothe grete & smale,
And takis gude tent what j will saye:
I sall ȝow telle als trewe a tale,
04 Als ever was herde by nyghte or daye: 

And þe maste meruelle ffor owttyne naye,
That euer was herde by-fore or syene,
And þer-fore pristly j ȝow praye,
08 That ȝe will of ȝoure talkyng blyne. 

It es an harde thyng for to saye,
Of doghty dedis þat hase bene done;
Of felle feghtyngs & battells sere;
12 And how þat þir knyghtis has wonne þair schone. 

Bot jhesu crist þat syttis in trone,
Safe ynglische mene bothe ferre & nere;
And j sall telle ȝow tyte and sone,
16 Of Battels donne sythene many a ȝere; 

And of Batells þat don sall bee;
In what place, and howe, and whare;
And wha sall hafe þe heghere gree,
20 And whethir partye sall hafe þe werre;

Wha sall takk þe flyghte and flee,
And wha sall dye and by-leve thare;
Bot jhesu crist, þat dyed on tre,
24 Saue jnglische men whare-so þay fare.

tent -- heed, attention
meruelle -- a marvel, a wonder
ffor owttyne naye -- forouten naye = without a no, undeniably
syene -- since
pristly -- eagerly
blyne -- cease
wonne þair schone -- won their shoes, i.e., proved themselves
tyte -- quickly, soon
sythene many a ȝere -- many a year ago/since
gree -- victory

There is probably no way of telling whether the prologue was added to the poem by Robert Thornton, the English scribe responsible for the oldest manuscript, or whether it was a part of the poem he received and copied, but which later scribes omitted. (The scribe of Sloane MS 2578, for example, left out the first fitt entirely, and copied only the prophecies.) To be sure, the two prayers to Christ to save Englishmen (13-14, 23-24) suggest an English rather than a Scottish audience, but Murray rightly points out in his notes that Thornton could have easily substituted 'ynglische' for an original 'Scottismen' (lxix).*

The two prayers are also carefully placed at the beginning (13-14) and end (23-24) of the second half of the prologue. We may thus see it as a separate unit, which expands upon the briefer battle references in lines 9-12 of the first half and shifts the focus of the prologue more to the prophecies of fitts two and three.  So no matter how true and wondrous the fairy story of the first fitt may be, it appears to have less of the attention of the prologue's author, whoever that may be.

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* I am also reminded, however, of the irony in Peadar Kearney's 'Whack Fol the Diddle' (recorded by The Clancy Brothers and many others), but that seems unlikely to be in play here.

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←'An' That's Likker-like Than the Fairy Story.'

Thomas of Erceldoune III -- 'An' that's likker-like than the Fairy Story'

One disadvantage of condensing Murray's extensive introduction as I have just done, is that worthy comments, which give us a sense of the author's personality as well as his scholarship, get lost. To try to combat this I have included below several remarks from Murray's text and footnotes that made me laugh. Comments such as those below may allow us to make out his voice from far off.

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I am inclined to suppose, then, that this part [fitt 2] with perhaps fitt 1, the conclusion, and an indefinite portion of Fitt iii, which is in all probability a melange of early traditional prophecies, may have been written on the eve of Halidon Hill, with a view to encouraging the Scots in that battle; in which the oldest text [Thornton], it will be observed, makes the Scots win, with the slaughter of six thousand Englishmen, while the other texts, wise after the fact, make the Scots lose, as they actually did. 

xxv-vi

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Is it too much to suppose that Thomas of Ercildoune may, from his literary tastes, been a repository of such traditional rhymes, and himself have countenanced the application of their mysterious indications to the circumstances of country, and thus to some extent at least have given currency to the idea of his own prophetic powers 

xxix-xxx

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My friend, Mr Andrew Currie of Darnick, has sent me the following tradition of the disappearance of Thomas, which he took down 35 years ago from the mouth of "Rob Messer, a very intelligent matter-of-fact man, well versed in all tradtionary lorse about Earlston, and possessing a wonderful memory for a man of 85": -- "Ye want to ken if ever aw heard how Tammas the Rymer disappeared? -- Well, aw can tell ye something about that, as aw had it frae ma graanfaither, an' nae doot he had it frae his fore-bears, for we're als auld a family in Yerlsten, -- or raither Ercildoun, as it was caa'd i' thae day -- we're als auld as the Learmonts. D'ye see thae auld waa's i' the front o' yeir ain shop? Weel man, aw mind o' that bein' a gay an' substantial hoose i' maa young days, an' Tammas the Rymer was last seen gaan' oot o' that hoose eae nicht afore the derknin', an' he set off up Leader for Lauder Cas'le; but he ne'er gat there -- he never was sene againe. Aw've heard 'at he geade in there to get some deed signed or wutness 't, an' that he was carryan' money wi' him to some Lord or great man up there, 'at he was intimate wi'. But ma granfaither uist to say -- an' nae doot he had it handit doon -- that Leader was i' great fluid at that time, an' that Tammas the Rymer had been robbit an' murdert an' his body thrawn into the water, whulk micht take it to Berwick. An' that's likker-like than the Fairy story! Sae ye hae'd, as aw had it, frae thaim 'at was afore us.

l note 1

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' "The Cambridge [MS] has suffered by rain-water nearly as much as the Cotton has by fire, a great part of each page having become illegible by the total disappearance of the ink. By wetting it, however, with a composition which he procured from a bookseller and a stationer in Cambridge, the writing was so far restored in most places, that, with much poring and the assistance of a magnifying glass, he was able to make it out pretty clearly. The greatest difficulty he met with was from the unlucky zeal and industry of some person who long ago, and in a hand nearly resembling the original, had endeavoured to fill up the chasms, and, as appeared upon the revival of the old writing, had generally mistaken the sense, and done much more harm than good." Jamieson little thought that his own "unlucky zeal and industry" would in the process of time entitle him to equal or even greater reprobation, for the "composition," which he so naively confesses to have applied to the MS., has dried black, and both disastrously disfigured the pages and seriously increased their illegibility'. 

lvii

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'Jamieson's edition presents many misreadings and not a few wanton alterations of the text.' 

lxi

←Murray's Introduction    The Prologue (lines 1-24)→

Thomas of Erceldoune II -- Murray's Introduction and the Contents of his Edition

The Introduction will probably seem more than a little dry to most who actually read it. Myself, I either don't read introductions at all or I read them after I have read the book (which is what I did here). My reason is that I don't want to be told how to read the book, as most introductions seem to me to do. Mercifully, that is not the case here. Murray's introduction is thoroughly detailed, informative and quite interesting for those of us who like this sort of thing. He examines the story of Thomas and his works not as just written documents, but as part of a centuries old living tradition about the man and his prophecies that carried weight even into his own time, and that many had held relevant to the history of Scotland. His legend touches upon figures such as William Wallace, Robert the Bruce, James the Sixth and First, and Charles Edward Stuart, the Young Pretender

Yet at 77 pages (ix-lxxxi) Murray's introduction is far too long for more than the briefest outline here. When considering the text itself later, I will of course bring in relevant material from the Introduction.

Introduction

"Traditional" ballad of Thomas and the Queene of Faerie (ix-lvi)

1. Sources and dates (ix-xi) --
• Contemporary documents suggest that Thomas was born between 1210 and 1220, and was perhaps dead by 1294, but the latter date may be wrong. See below, section 3.
2. Family (xi-xiii) -- 
• His surname, de Ercildoune, suggests a connection, whether of blood or vassalage, to the Earls of March who used de Ercildoune as their surname. His other name, Rymour may be a family name or 'derived, it is generally supposed, from his poetic or prophetic avocations' (xii). 
3. Alexander III and William Wallace (xiii-xvii) --
• In 1286 Thomas supposedly predicted the death of Alexander III of Scotland the next day. He is also linked to an incident in the life of William Wallace that can date no earlier than 1296.
4. Posthumous fame as a prophet (xvii-xx) -- 
• Quoted as a prophet as early as 1314 or so, Thomas was frequently mentioned in company with Merlin.
5. Poetic Abilities (xx-xxiii) -- 
• Numerous works are attested in his name from an early date.
6. Dual Character as Poet and Prophet (xxiii) -- 
• Thomas 'continued to be venerated for centuries' in this character, starting with the earliest composition attributed to him, the present poem.
7. Naming the actual author (xxiii-xxiv) -- 
• Thomas sometimes seems to be the poet, and sometimes a character in the poem, as he shifts back and forth between the first and third person.  For this reason deciding if the professed author is the actual author is a vexed question.
8. Dating the poem (xxiv-xxvii) --
• Events mentioned in the prophecies in Fitts II and III indicates that the poem was composed later than 1401, though a date in the aftermath of the Battle of Otterbourne in 1388 is also possible.
9. Fitt III (xxvii-xxix) -- 
• Murray regards the greater part of the predictions in Fitt III as adaptations of earlier legendary prophecies (e.g., about Arthur) now revamped and attributed to Thomas, whereas the prophecies of Fitt II can be related to historical events. Interest in the prophecies helped preserve the fairy story on Fitt I.
10. Identification of the English (xxix-xxx) --
• These traditional prophecies, which often spoke of how Arthur would drive out the Saxon invader, encouraged the Scots in their 14th century struggles with the English to identify the English with the Saxons. Here, too, Thomas is often paired with Merlin. Murray asks: 'Is is too much to suppose that Thomas of Erceldoune may, form his literary tastes, have been the repository of of such traditional rhymes, and himself have countenanced the application of their mysterious indications to the circumstances of his country, and thus to some extent at least given currency to the idea of his own prophetic powers?' 
11. The prominence of Thomas in printed prophetic literature (xxx-xl) --
• From 1603 onward printed collections of prophetic and occult lore contain frequent citations of Thomas.
12. Connection to James I/VI (xl-xli) --
• Thomas was held to have prophesied the ascent of James the Sixth of Scotland to the throne of England as James the First.
13. Thomas' reputation as a prophet in Scotland in the 18th century (xli-xlii) --
• In the Stuart rising of 1745 men expected Thomas's prophecies to be fulfilled. In fact his prophecies commanded such widespread belief in 18th century Scotland that a contemporary historian felt it necessary to disparage and refute them. 
14. Thomas' reputation as a prophet in England (xlii-xliii) --
• All the copies of Thomas' prophecies that survive do so in English, not Scots, which suggests how wide an audience he had in England. English prophetic writings of the 15th and 16th centuries commonly appeal to him and his prophecies. 
15. Thomas in Tweedside (xliii-l) --
• Locally and throughout Scotland well into the 19th century the people preserved traditional local predictions traced back to Thomas. Sir Walter Scott preserves some of these in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 'Within my own memory' (xlvi), Murray, who was born in 1837, can attest people quoting at least one prophecy of Thomas'.
16. The Eildon Tree and Huntlie Brae (l-lii) --
• A discussion of these locations mentioned in the poem.
17. Sir  Walter Scott's and Robert Jamieson's ballads of 'Thomas the Rhymer' (lii-lvi) --
• Murray presents the texts of each in parallel.

Description of the MSS and Editions (lvi-lxii)

MSS (lvi-lxi)

1. MS Thornton (lvi-lvii): circa 1430-40. '[O]n the whole a very careful and accurate text; only in a few places...Robert Thornton has misread his original, which can however generally be restored.' '[The] original Northern form of the language [is] little altered.'
2. MS Cambridge (lvii-lviii): mid 15th century. Murray quotes Robert Jamieson on it: '"The Cambridge has suffered by rain-water nearly as much as the Cotton has by fire, a great part of each page having become illegible by the total disappearance of the ink."' A Southernized version badly done, with scribal errors and varia from Thornton generally unsupported.
3. MS Cotton, Vitellius E x (lviii-lix) Damaged in the notorious fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 (the same fire which damaged the Beowulf MS, Cotton Vitellus A xv). This is a poorly done copy, but it generally agrees with Thornton.
4. MS Landsdowne 792 (lix): between 1524 and 1530. Well and neatly copied, but incomplete.
5. MS Sloane 2578 (lix-lxi): dated 1547. It does not contain Fitt I at all, likely because the book in which it is bound is specifically interested in prophecies.

Printed Editions (lxi-lxii)

1. Sir Walter Scott published Fitt I, based on the Cotton MS, in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802-03). (lxi)
2. Robert Jamieson included all three fitts in his Popular Ballads and Songs from Tradition, Manuscripts, and Scarce editions (1806). 'Jamieson's edition presents many misreadings and not a few wanton alterations of the text.' The Cambridge MS was the basis of his text. (lxi)
3. David Laing in 1822 based his edition in Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland. Relied on the Lincoln MS, supplemented from the Cambridge. (lxi)
4. J. O. Halliwell in his Illustrations of the Fairy Mythology of a Midsummer Night's Dream of 1845. According to Murray, Halliwell also used the Cambridge MS, but did a better job of it than Jamieson had. (lxi-lxii)
5. F. J. Child, 1861, English and Scottish Ballads, reprints and corrects fitt 1 from Laing. (lxii)
6. The Present Edition (lxii-lxiv)

Collation of MSS. (lxiv-lxviii)

• A table of five columns, 'showing the lines present and absent in the various MSS., and the actual line in each, which answer to each other and to those numbered in the printed text.'

Notes Textual and Explanatory (lxix-lxxxvi)

• In which Murray offers commentary on noteworthy or difficult items within the text itself.

Tomas of Ersseldoune (1-47)

• Fytte I (2-17)
• Fytte II (18-31) 
• Fytte III (32-47)

Appendix (48-63)

1. I (48-51) --
• The text of 'The Prophecie of Thomas the Rhymer' (1515-1548) as published in "The Whole prophesie of Scotland" by Robert Waldegrave (1603).
2. II (52-61) --
• "The Prophisies of Rymour, Beid, and Marlyng" (1515-1525) from Landsdowne MS. 762 and Rawls MS. C. 813.
3. III (62-63) --
• "An English Prophecy of Gladsmoor, Sandisford, and Seyton and the Seye" (1549).

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←First Thoughts and Intentions      'An' that's likker-like than the Fairy story'→

Thomas of Erceldoune I -- First Thoughts and Intentions

Lystyns, lordyngs, bothe grete & smale,
And takis gude tent what j will saye:
I sall ȝow telle als trewe a tale,
Als ever was herde by nyghte or daye:
And þe maste meruelle ffor owttyne naye,
That euer was herde by-fore or syene,
And þer-fore pristly j ȝow praye,
That ȝe will of ȝoure talkyng blyne.

Listen, lordings, both great and small,
And take good heed of what I will say:
I shall you tell as true a tale,
As ever was heard by night or day:
The most marvellous, there's no denying,
That ever was heard before or since.
And therefore readily I you pray,
That ye will of your talking cease.

I am about to embark on a task for which I am not particularly well qualified, being rather an expatriate Classicist than a native Medievalist. But I am going to try to provide some kind of text of the Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune. I am doing this because I find it an interesting work, of undoubted influence, and because no one, as far as I can see, has done so since 1875. I hope that what I come up with will at least be useful because of its accessibility, even if it might not be all that every Medievalist (and sometime Classicist) would want it to be. 

That hat, those shelves!

The 1875 edition, published by the Early English Text Society (reprinted 2008), and edited by the James Murray, is also available at archive.org. The online edition is hard to work with because of the formatting, and the EETS reprint is bit dear. This led me to a mistake. I purchased (though not from EETS) what turned out to be a criminally overpriced, abominably bad scan of Murray's edition. I can only concede that I got what I paid for. It was so poor, blurry, and faint that I found it nearly impossible to read. Had I lashed it to a brick and hurled it through the manufacturer's window, a jury would have called us even. 

I then inquired of the good folk at the Middle English Texts Series whether anyone had an edition in the works for them. They said no, but declared themselves always willing to consider proposals. Though I backed slowly away, I nevertheless kept thinking that this work should be available and readable. So recently I bit the bullet and bought a library rebinding of the actual first edition. It's a wonderful little book, with the library hard covers bound over the original soft covers, and the marvelous ragged edges of a book whose pages came uncut. (If you've never cut pages, it is both thrilling and a little scary. The Collection Budé series of Latin and Greek authors still came with uncut pages as recently as the 1990s.)

What did I mean above when I said I meant to provide 'some kind of text' of this work? Well, nothing as ambitious as a critical edition. I haven't the time or the ability to go see the manuscripts themselves, of which there are five, nor do I have the expertise in Middle English, its northern dialects, or its paleography to establish or emend a text. Murray gives the texts of all five mss. I shall give only the text of the oldest, Thornton (Lincoln MS 91), which was made in the 1430s, a generation or so after the Romance was composed (Murray, xxiii), and about a century and a half after the historical Thomas the Rhymer lived (ca. 1220 - ca. 1298). For this I give two reasons. The oldest ms is often (though not always) the best, since it is closest to the source.  And simplicity: Murray supplies all five mss, as nearly side by side as can be managed on a small page, but this makes following the tale from one page to the next more difficult and at times confusing. At least this was so for me. By restricting myself to the Thornton MS, I aim to provide a text of the story that is easier to follow. In the end, that's what it's all about.

Wherever the other mss offer interesting details or readings of note, I will of course bring them in. Any scholarship more recent than 1875 that I find and can get my hands on will also find a place here along with my own comments on the text. I imagine that in time I will bring in the later material from the ballads, though I am still undecided about what to do, if anything, with the prophecies. But obviously the place to start will be with the Romance itself, which I will begin putting up soon. Any questions and suggestions will as always be welcome. Just be kind: in the fine tradition of Harlan Ellison, I am working without a net here.

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Murray's Introduction→