July 14. 1855.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



21 



LONDON. SATURDAY, JULY 14. 1835, 



BUCHATS'S SCOTTISH BALLADS : PBRCr's RELIQUES. 



It is now just ten years since Mr. J. H. Dixon, 

 then a member of the Council of the Percy So- 

 ciety, became the editor of a book published for 

 that body, entitled Scottish traditional Versions of 

 Ancient Ballads, London, 1845. From the pre- 

 face we learn that the materials of this work are to 

 be found in two MS. volumes, then in possession 

 of the Percy Society, containing ballad versions 

 taken from oral tradition in the North of Scot- 

 land by (? the late) Mr. Peter Buchan of Peter- 

 head. In the same preface we are farther in- 

 formed that — 



" Mr. Peter Buchan's manuscripts were compiled solely 

 for his own amusement ; but at one time,' in consequence 

 of the solicitations of several of his antiquarian and 

 literary friends, it was certainly Mr. Buchan's intention 

 to have published a portion, at least, of the materiel which 

 he had so industriously collected. Causes, however, over 

 which he had no control, compelled an abandonment of 

 the design, and the volumes were laid aside till the esta- 

 blishment of the Percy Society, when they were handed 

 over to a member of the council, who made a careful in- 

 vestigation of their contents. They were subsequently 

 inspected by other members of the Society, and finally, 

 bj' a vote of the Council, were placed in the hands of the 

 editor and his friend W. Jerdan, Esq., for them to decide 

 on the authenticity and general merit of the ballad 

 portion of the volumes." 



Now every reader of this preface, who does 

 not know better, must necessarily get the im- 

 pression, that Mr. Buchan himself never pub- 

 lished any part of his ballad collection ; while the 

 reader who knows better must be strongly puz- 

 zled by the question, why it is not even men- 

 tioned, that this same Mr. Buchan has published 

 three different collections of traditionaiy songs, 

 and, in fact, is the man who has rescued, and for 

 the first time published, more traditionary ballad 

 versions than any other antiquary in Great 

 Britain that we know of? His published col- 

 lections are, taken together, and compared with 

 the contributions of any other single collector, the 

 richest source in this branch of folk lore out of all 

 that up to this day have appeared before the 

 British public. Neither Percy, nor Ritson, nor 

 Herd, nor Scott, nor Jamieson, nor Motherwell, 

 have brought so great a number of traditionary 

 versions of old folk ballads before the public as 

 Mr. Peter Buchan of Peterhead. His first and 

 second publications (viz. Scai'ce Ancient Ballads, 

 Peterhead, 1819 ; Gleanings of Scotch, English, 

 and Irish scarce old Ballads, chiefly tragical and 

 historical, Peterhead, 1825) were but small and of 

 a more private nature; but his chief work, the 

 Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scot- 

 land, hitherto unpublished, two vols. 8vo., Edia- 



burgh, 1828, contains no less than 145 ballad 

 texts, all of them from oral tradition, or from fly- 

 sheets (stall copies, broadsides), and only a very 

 few of them of doubtful antiquity. 



That Mr. Buchan has not published his ballads 

 with that scrupulous accuracy, that strict and 

 verbal adherence to the popular tradition, as 

 might be wished, and which may now be de- 

 manded, we are ready to confess ; but he cer- 

 tainly has done no worse in that respect than all 

 the ballad editors of England and Scotland, with 

 the exceptions of Mr. Ritson, Mr. Jamieson, and 

 perhaps one or two more. His merits in pre- 

 servation of the old Scottish folk lore are so great, 

 that he certainly ought to be treated in a less 

 slighting manner than has been the case ; and 

 nobody had a better reason to point out his ser- 

 vices than the gentleman who owed to him the 

 whole of the collection which he brought before 

 the public. 



When we leave the preface and come to the 

 inspection of the contents of Mr. Dixon's volume, 

 which contains no more than seventeen ballad 

 versions, we find that out of these two-thirds have 

 been published already by Mr. Buchan himself. 

 But this fact is not hinted at by Mr. Dixon, ex- 

 cept in two instances, in the notes ; the one when, 

 in No. X., the editor says (p. 99.) that " Versions 

 may be seen in the works of Herd, Scott, Jamie- 

 son, Buchan, and Chambers," but it is not stated 

 that Mr. Dixon's version of this ballad is word for 

 word the same with that published by Mr. Buchan 

 in his last collection, vol. ii. p. 198. The other 

 instance is when Mr. Dixon, in the note (p. 104.) on 

 " The Waters of Gamery," informs us that " there 

 are many versions of this story, the most com{)lete 

 being the one called ' Willie's drowned in Ga- 

 mery : ' see Buchan's Ballads of the North." And 

 here the editor farther deigns to quote Mr. Bu- 

 chan's notes on the occasion. In this last instance 

 the version published by Mr. Dixon is another 

 than that published by Mr. Buchan himself 

 (vol. i. p. 245.). But in none of the other in- 

 stances, even where Mr. Dixon only gives a re- 

 print from the same text that has been printed 

 once before in Mr. Buchan's- large collection, is 

 any mention made of this fact. We shall point 

 out the rest of the communia bona of Mr. Buchan's 

 published ballad books and Mr. Dixon's Ancient 

 Ballads. 



The first piece in the Dixon collection is 

 " Young Bondwell." This is not in Mr. Buchan's 

 Ballads of the North ; but we are informed by 

 Motherwell {Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, 

 p. Ixxxvi.) that a version of this ballad has ap- 

 peared in Mr. Buchan's Scarce Ancient Ballads. 

 Whether that is the same text as given by Mr. 

 Dixon, we are unable to decide, because the 

 .Scarce Ballads are extremely scarce, and no copy 

 of it within our reach. Of No. V. in the Dixon 



