He
could not have kept his secret, after the death of Scott. These
considerations must not be neglected, however suspicious "Auld,
Maitland" may appear.
THE BROOMFIELD HILL
From Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland. There are
Elizabethan references to the poem, and a twelfth century romance
turns on the main idea of sleep magically induced. The lover
therein is more fortunate than the hero of the ballad, and,
finally, overcomes the spell. The idea recurs in the Norse poetry.
WILLIE'S LADYE
Scott took this ballad from Mrs. Brown's celebrated Manuscript.
The kind of spell indicated was practised by Hera upon Alcmena,
before the birth of Heracles. Analogous is the spell by binding
witch-knots, practised by Simaetha on her lover, in the second
Idyll of Theocritus. Montaigne has some curious remarks on these
enchantments, explaining their power by what is now called
"suggestion." There is a Danish parallel to "Willie's Ladye,"
translated by Jamieson.
ROBIN HOOD BALLADS
There is plentiful "learning" about Robin Hood, but no real
knowledge. He is first mentioned in literature, as the subject of
"rhymes," in Piers Plowman (circ. 1377). As a topic of ballads he
must be much older than that date. In 1439 his name was a synonym
for a bandit. Wyntoun, the Scots chronicler, dates the outlaw in
the time of Edward I. Major, the Scots philosopher and master of
John Knox, makes a guess (taken up by Scott in Ivanhoe) as the
period of Richard I.
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