His passion for land was
really part of his passion for collecting antiquities. The theory
of Fairyland here (as in many other Scottish legends and witch
trials) is borrowed from the Pre-Christian Hades, and the Fairy
Queen is a late refraction from Persephone. Not to eat, in the
realm of the dead, is a regular precept of savage belief, all the
world over. Mr. Robert Kirk's Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns,
and Fairies may be consulted, or the Editor's Perrault, p. xxxv.
(Oxford, 1888). Of the later legends about Thomas, Scott gives
plenty, in The Border Minstrelsy. The long ancient romantic poem
on the subject is probably the source of the ballad, though a local
ballad may have preceded the long poem. Scott named the glen
through which the Bogle Burn flows to Chiefswood, "The Rhymer's
Glen."
SIR HUGH
The date of the Martyrdom of Hugh is attributed by Matthew Paris to
1225. Chaucer puts a version in the mouth of his Prioress. No
doubt the story must have been a mere excuse for Jew-baiting. In
America the Jew becomes "The Duke" in a version picked up by Mr.
Newells, from the recitation of a street boy in New York. The
daughter of a Jew is not more likely than the daughter of a duke to
have been concerned in the cruel and blasphemous imitation of the
horrors attributed by Horace to the witch Canidia. But some such
survivals of pagan sorcery did exist in the Middle Ages, under the
influence of "Satanism."
SON DAVIE
Motherwell's version.
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