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THE GI.JASGOW HERALD, SATURDAY, JANUARY 10.,

THE WEEK-END

A LOST BALLAD
THE LEGEND OF THE MOTHER'S GHOST

I owe this problem to Mr Gordon
Bottomley, to whose sympathetic understanding
Scottish literature is, in these
latter days, indebted for so much inspiration.
Having played with the
question, I hand it on, so that some one
in a wider audience may perchance be
able to contribute something towards
its solution. For it concerns nothing
less than the recovery of a lost Scots
ballad; moreover, one may reasonably
surmise that, had the ballad been
spared, it would have ranked among
those of which we are proudest.

The chase begins with a ballad set to
music by Loewe in 1824. In the third
volume of his collected songs, in the
group devoted to Scots and English
ballads, there will be found one which
bears the title " Der Mutter Geist"
(" The Mother's Ghost"). Its theme
is the not unfamiliar one of the harsh
step-mother, and it tells how the cries
of the children bring their mother from
her grave to comfort them and to
censure the somewhat too supine and
consenting father.

The assignment of the origin of this
ballad is tantalising and peculiar. It
is presented as a " ballad described by
Loewe as 'out of the old Scots by
Talv j' " ; and to this there is the
further addition: " originally after the
Danish." Talvj, who was Loewe's
sister-in-law, supplied the composer
with not a few of the ballads which he
set to music. 'l'he reference to the
Danish is sufficiently comprehensible ;
for indeed the ballad is familiar in
Danish collections in various forms,
and has been translated from the
Danish not only by William Morris, but
also by Prior in his "Ancient Danish
Ballads." There is also a version by
Longfellow in the " Tales of a Wayside
Inn," where the legend of the
Mother's Ghost is told by the musician.

Scots Origin

One's first temptation is to regard
the cryptic "aus dem Altschottischen"
as merely a graceful, if not wholly
honest, concession to a prevailing
fashion. The music of "Der Mutter
Geist" was composed when the influence
of Scott had made Scots ballads a
popular commodity on the Continent.
A good ballad, even if it might claim
a "settlement" elsewhere, might
therefore have been assigned to Scotland
in order to satisfy the demands
of popular taste in these matters.

But here it is clearly inadmissable to
accept the suggestion that the claim to
a Scots origin is no more than a meaningless
ticket. For, in the first place,
Loewe obviously believed in the Scots
origin of tJhe ballad which his sister-in-law
presented to him. In his autobiography
he says of Talvj: "hat sie
für mich die Ballade der Mutter Geist
aus dem Altschottischen in das
deutsche übertragen" ("she translated
for me the ballad of the Mother's
Ghost out of old Scots into German").
Talvj also, although responsible for a
later translation from a Danish source,
expressly refers to iJhe Scots origin of
the version used by Loewe. It is thus
evident that Loewe considered that he
was here dealing with a Scots ballad
and not merely with a Danish ballad
masquerading under a Scots flag.

"Wuthering Heights"

does, and the extreme vagueness of the
references in Loewe's collected works
furnishes a reasonable presumption
that the most conscientious editor had
failed to trace any corresponding Scots
text. Failing the recovery of any portion
of the lost Scots version, an interesting
line of inquiry for those who
"possess" the Danish (and who live
near the British Museum) would lie in
a comparison of the various Danish
versions.

It is notable, for instance, that the
versions which seem to come direct
from the Danish (such as Longfellow's)
have passages relating to the recall of
the ghost at dawn by the crowing of the
cock. The absence of these couplets
from the version professedly drawn
from a Scots source may perhaps be an
additional indication that Talvj and
Loewe were working on a version distinct
from any of those in the Danish
collections. But all these problems I
present to the ballad scholar; I am content
to offer, with becoming diffidence,
an attempted reconstruction of the
Scots ballad on the basis of the text
used by Loewe:-

THE MITHER'S GHAIST
(FOR GORDON BOTTOMLEY.)

Earl Richard has ridden far and wide
To seek a new wife for his ingleside.

He has wooed and won her, and brocht her
back:
But her hert was cankered, her hert was
black.

Into the yaird she has stepped, and there
The Earl's seven bairns were greetin' sair.

The bairns were flichtered wi' dule and
teen ;
The lass glowered at them wi' angry een.

She gaed them neither ale nor breid;
"It's hunger and spite sal be your meed."

She has stown the bairnies' beds awa:
"What ails the brats at the hey and the
straw?"

They daurna bed by candle licht:
"You can see to sleep in the mirk at nicht."

It was far in the nicht, and the bairnies
grat;
The mither beneath the mools heard that

And when she heard her bairnies maen,
Quo' she: "I maun see my weans again."

She cried to the Lord in eident prayer:
"Let me gang whaur my bairns are greetin'
sair."

And aye she deaved Him, and priggit sae
lang,
That God the Lord had to let her gang.

Up sprang she frae the dowie deid,
And birst the lair-stane ower her heid.

As süne as her ghaistly stap drew near,
The dogs in their kennels a' yowled in fear.

And when she cam to tha castle yett,
'T was the auldest lase o' them a' she met

"What, dochter o' mine, are you daein'
here?
in
And whaur are the lave o' my bairns sae
dear?"

"You're a bonnie wife, a.nd you're braw and
fine;
plete fi
But I'm thinkin' you ne'er were mither o
mine."

"0, hoo should I be fine and braw?"
My hoose in the yird is weet and sma'."

" My mither was white, and her cheeks were
reid;
But you are ashen and wan as the deid."