Editing Thomas the Rhymer (section)

==Ballad==
<!--UNATTRIBUTABLE assertion: "Musicologists have traced the ballad, "Thomas the Rhymer", back at least as far as the 13th century"-->
The ballad ([[Roud]] 219) around the legend of Thomas was catalogued [[List of the Child Ballads|Child Ballad]] #37 "Thomas the Rymer," by [[Francis James Child]] in 1883. Child published three versions, which he labelled A, B and C, but later appended two more variants in Volume 4 of his collection of ballads, published in 1892.<ref name="child-add"/> Some scholars refer to these as Child's D and E versions.<ref>{{Harvnb|Lyle|2007|p=10}}</ref> Version A, which is a Mrs Brown's recitation, and C, which is Walter Scott's reworking of it, were together classed as the Brown group by C.E. Nelson, while versions B, D, E are all considered by Nelson to be descendants of an archetype that reduced the romance into ballad form in about 1700, and classed as the 'Greenwood group'. (See §[[#Ballad sources|Ballad sources]]).

Child provided a critical synopsis comparing versions A, B, C in his original publication, and considerations of the D, E versions have been added below.

===Ballad synopsis===
The brief outline of the ballad is that while Thomas is lying outdoors on a slope by a tree in the Erceldoune neighborhood, the queen of Elfland appears to him riding upon a horse and beckons him to come away. When he consents, she shows him three marvels: the road to Heaven, the road to Hell, and the road to her own world (which they follow). After seven years, Thomas is brought back into the mortal realm. Asking for a token by which to remember the queen, he is offered the choice of having powers of harpistry, or else of prophecy, and of these he chooses the latter.

[[File:Scott-Minstrelsy-Works-v1-p195-True Thomas tune.jpg|thumb|Music score to the ballad of "True Thomas", from Scott's ''Minstrelsy''.]]
The scene of Thomas's encounter with the elf-queen is "Huntly Bank" and the "Eildon Tree" (versions B, C, and E){{sfn|Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', 320}}{{sfn|Child|1892|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''IV''', pp. 454–5}} or  "Farnalie" (version D)<ref group="lower-alpha">Or at least "Farnalie" is given as the spot to where the queen returned Thomas in the final stanza of the D version. {{Harvnb|Child|1892|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''IV''', pp. 454–5}}</ref> All these refer to the area of [[Eildon Hill]]s, in the vicinity of [[Earlston]]: Huntly Bank was a slope on the hill and the tree stood there also, as Scott explained:{{sfn|Scott|1803|loc=''Minstrelsy'' '''II''', p. 343}}<ref>"Huntley Bank, a place on the descent of the Eildon Hills," {{cite book |last=Scott |first=Walter |title=Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft |publisher=G. Routledge and sons |year=1887 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KpILAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA112 |page=112}}</ref> Emily B. Lyle was able to localize "farnalie" there as well.<ref>She identified it with ''farnileie'' on the Eildon Hills, which appears in a document of 1208 about a land dispute "between the monasteries of Melrose and Kelso". Scott had failed to make this identification. ({{Harvnb|Lyle|1969|p=66}}; repr. {{Harvnb|Lyle|2007|p=12}})</ref>

The queen wears a skirt of grass-green silk and a velvet mantle, and is mounted either on a milk-white steed (in Ballad A), or on a dapple-gray horse (B, D, E and R (the Romance)). The horse has nine and fifty bells on each ''[[wikt:tett#Scots|tett]]'' (Scots English. "lock of matted hair"<ref>Tait (sometimes written ''tate'' and ''tett''), a lock of matted hair. [https://books.google.com/books?id=zLACAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA226 Mackay's Dictionary] (1888); Tate, tait, teat, tatte 2. "Lock, applied to hair" [https://archive.org/details/jamiesonsdictio01johngoog/page/n618 <!-- pg=549 --> John Jamieson's Dictionary] (Abridged, 1867).</ref>) on its mane in A, nine hung on its mane in E, and three bells on either side of the bridle in R, whereas she had nine bells in her hand in D, offered as a prize for his harping and [[wikt:carp|carping]] (music and storytelling).

Thomas mistakenly addresses her as the "Queen of Heaven" (i.e. the [[Virgin Mary]]{{sfnp|Child|1892|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', p. 319}}), which she corrects by identifying herself as "Queen of fair Elfland" (A, C). In other variants, she reticently identifies herself only as "lady of an [[wikt:unco#Scots|unco]] land" (B), or "lady gay" (E), much like the medieval romance. But since the unnamed land of the queen is approached by a path leading neither to Heaven nor Hell, etc., it can be assumed to be "Fairyland," to put it in more modern terminology.<ref name="murray-fairy">{{Harvnb|Murray|1875|p=xxiii}}</ref>

In C and E, the queen dares Thomas to kiss her lips, a corruption of Thomas's embrace in the romance that is lacking in A and B though crucial to a cogent plot, since "it is contact with the fairy that gives her the power to carry her paramour off" according to Child. Absent in the ballads also is the motif of the queen losing her beauty ([[Loathly lady]] motif): Child considered that the "ballad is no worse, and the romance would have been much better" without it, "impressive" though it may be, since it did not belong in his opinion to the "proper and original story," which he thought was a blithe tale like that of [[Ogier the Dane]] and [[Morgan le Fay|Morgan le fay]].<ref>{{Harvnb|Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', p. 320ab, and note §}}</ref> If he chooses to go with her, Thomas is warned he will be unable to return for seven years (A, B, D, E). In the romance the queen's warning is "only for a twelvemonth",<ref>{{Harvnb |Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', p. 320b}}</ref> but he overstays by more than three (or seven) years.

Then she wheels around her milk-white steed and lets Thomas ride on the {{linktext|crupper}} behind (A, C), or she rides the dapple-gray while he runs (B, E). He must wade knee-high through a river (B, C, E), exaggerated as an expanse of blood (perhaps "river of blood"), in A.{{sfn|Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', p. 321b}} They reach a "garden green," and Thomas wants to pluck a fruit to slake his hunger but the queen interrupts, admonishing him that he will be accursed or damned (A, B, D, E). The language in B suggests this is "the [[Forbidden fruit|fruit of the Forbidden Tree]]",<ref>{{Harvnb|Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', 321a, note *}}</ref> and variants D, E call it an apple. The queen provides Thomas with food to sate his hunger.

The queen now tells Thomas to lay his head to rest on her knee (A, B, C), and shows him three marvels ("[[wikt:ferly|ferlies]] three"), which are the road to Hell, the road to Heaven, and the road to her homeland (named Elfland in A). It is the road beyond the meadow or lawn overgrown with lilies<ref>Leven, "a lawn, an open space between woods"; Lily leven "a lawn overspread with lilies or flowers" [https://books.google.com/books?id=y_s3AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA327 John Jamieson's Dict.] (Abridged, 1867)</ref> that leads to Heaven, except in C where the looks deceive and the lily road leads to Hell, while the thorny road leads to Heaven.

The queen instructs Thomas not to speak to others in Elfland, and to allow her to do all the talking. In the end, he receives as present "a coat of the even cloth, and a pair of shoes of velvet green" (A) or "tongue that can never lie" (B) or both (C). Version E uniquely mentions the Queen's fear that Thomas may be chosen as "[[wikt:teind|teinding]] unto hell",<ref name="child-add"/> that is to say, the {{linktext|tithe}} in the form of humans that Elfland is obliged to pay periodically. In the romance, the Queen explains that the collection of the "fee to hell" draws near, and Thomas must be sent back to earth to spare him from that peril. (See § [[#Literary criticism|Literary criticism]] for further literary analysis.)

===Ballad sources===
The ballad was first printed by [[Walter Scott]] (1803), and then by [[Robert Jamieson (antiquary)|Robert Jamieson]] (1806).<ref>{{Harvnb|Scott|1803|loc=''Minstrelsy'' '''II''', pp. 269–273}}: "Part 1, Ancient" which is prefaced "never before published"</ref><ref>{{Harvnb|Jamieson|1806|loc=Vol. '''II''', pp. 7–10}}: "procured in Scotland... before [he] knew that he was likely to be anticipated in its publication by Mr Scott" (p.7)</ref><ref>Jamieson and Scott's printed in parallel in {{Harvnb|Murray|1875|pp=liii–}}</ref> Both used Mrs Brown's manuscript as the underlying source. Child A is represented by Mrs Brown's MS and Jamieson's published version (with only slight differences in wording). Child C is a composite of Mrs Brown's and another version.<ref>{{Harvnb|Child|1884|loc=''Pop. Ball.'' '''I''', p. 317a}} "C being compounded of A and another version..."</ref> In fact, 13 of the 20 stanzas are the same as A, and although Scott claims his version is from a "copy, obtained from a lady residing not far from Ercildoun" corrected using Mrs Brown's MS,<ref name="Scott 1803 loc=Minstrelsy II, p. 268">{{Harvnb|Scott|1803|loc=''Minstrelsy'' '''II''', p. 268}}</ref> Nelson labels the seven different stanzas as something that is "for most part Scott's own, Gothic-romantic invention".<ref name="nelson140">{{Harvnb|Nelson|1966|p=140}}</ref>

Child B is taken from the second volume of the Campbell manuscripts entitled "Old Scottish Songs, Collected in the Counties of Berwick, Roxburgh, Selkirk & Peebles", dating to ca. 1830.<ref name="child-add"/>{{Refn|Nelson adds "at Marchomont House, Berwickshire.{{sfn|Nelson|1966|p=142}}}} The Leyden transcript, or Child "D" was supplied to Walter Scott before his publication, and influenced his composition of the C version to some degree.{{sfn|Nelson|1966|p=142}} The text by Mrs Christiana Greenwood, or Child "E" was "sent to Scott in May of 1806 after reading his C version in the ''Minstrelsey'',{{sfn|Nelson|1966|p=142}} and was dated by Nelson as an "early to mid-eighteenth-century text".{{sfn|Nelson|1966|p=143}} These two versions were provided to Scott and were among his papers at [[Abbotsford House|Abbotsford]].

====Mrs Brown's ballads====
Mrs Brown, also known as [[Anna Gordon (ballad collector)|Anna Gordon]] or Mrs Brown of Falkland (1747–1810),<ref name="bronson"/><ref name="rieuwerts"/> who was both Scott's and Jamieson's source, maintained that she had heard them sung to her as a child.<ref name="anderson-ltr"/> She had learned to sing a repertoire of some three dozen ballads from her aunt, Mrs Farquheson.<ref group="lower-alpha">who learned them at the estate of her husband called Allan-a-quoich, by the waterfall of [[Linn of Quoich|Linn a Quoich]], near the source of the [[River Dee, Aberdeenshire|River Dee]] in [[Braemar]], [[Aberdeenshire]]</ref><ref name="bronson">{{cite journal|last=Bronson|first=Bertrand H.|title=Mrs. Brown and the Ballad|journal=California Folklore Quarterly|volume=4|number=2|year=1945|pages=129–140 |doi=10.2307/1495675|jstor=149567}}</ref><ref name="perry">{{cite encyclopedia |last=Perry |first=Ruth |title=Artistic Representation: The Famous Ballads of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown |encyclopedia=A Cultural History of Women in the Age of Enlightenment |editor-last=Pollak |editor-first=Ellen |volume=4 |series=Cultural Histories |publisher=Bloomsbury |year=2012 |pages=187–208 |hdl=1721.1/69940 |url=http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/69940 |doi=10.5040/9781350048157-ch-008 |isbn=978-1-3500-4815-7}}</ref><ref name="rieuwerts">{{cite book|last=Rieuwerts|first=Sigrid|title=The Ballad Repertoire of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown of Falkland|publisher=Scottish Text Society|year=2011|isbn=978-1897976326}}; [http://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/jfrr/article/view/3018/2894 Reviewed by Julie Henigan] in ''Journal of Folklore Research Reviews'' and [http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Ballad+Repertoire+of+Anna+Gordon,+Mrs+Brown+of+Falkland.-a0274956908 by David Atkinson] in ''Folk Music Journal'' (23 Dec 2011)</ref> Mrs Brown's nephew Robert Eden Scott transcribed the music, and the manuscript was available to Scott and others.<ref name="rieuwerts"/><ref>Quoting from letter from Thomas Gordon: "In conversation I mentioned them to your Father [i.e. William Tytler], at whose request my Grandson Mr Scott, wrote down a parcel of them as his aunt sung them. Being then but a meer novice in musick, he added in his copy such musical notes as he supposed..."; and later: "The manuscript that was being passed around among Anderson, Percy, Scott, and Jamieson had been penned by Anna Brown's nephew, Robert Scott, who took down the words and music to the ballads as his aunt sung them at William Tytler's request in 1783."{{Harvnb|Perry|2012|pp=10–12}}</ref> However different accounts have been given, such as "an old maid-servant who had been long as the nursemaid being the one to teach Mrs Brown."<ref>{{Harvnb|Murray|1875|pp=liii}}</ref>

===Walter Scott's ballads in three parts===
In ''Minstrelsy'', Walter Scott published a second part to the ballad out of Thomas's prophecies, and yet a third part describing Thomas's return to Elfland. The third part was based on the legend with which Scott claimed to be familiar, telling that "while Thomas was making merry with his friends in the Tower of Ercildoune," there came news that "a hart and hind... was parading the street of the village." Hearing this, Thomas got up and left, never to be seen again, leaving a popular belief that he had gone to Fairyland but was "one day expected to revisit earth".<ref name="Scott 1803 loc=Minstrelsy II, p. 268"/> Murray cites [[Robert Chambers (publisher born 1802)|Robert Chambers]]'s suspicion that this may have been a mangled portrayal of a living local personage, and gives his own less marvellous traditional account of Thomas's disappearance, as he had received it from an informant.{{sfn|Murray|1875|pp=lxix–l}}

In Walter Scott's "Third Part" to the ballad, Thomas finds himself in possession of a "elfin harp he won" in Fairyland in a minstrel competition. This is a departure both from the traditional ballad and from the medieval romance, in which the queen tells Thomas to choose whether "to harpe or carpe," that is, to make a choice either of the gift of music or of the gift of speech. The "hart and hind" is now being sung as being "white as snow on Fairnalie" (Farnalie has been properly identified by Lyle, as discussed above). Some prose retellings incorporate some features derived from this third part (See §[[#Retellings|Retellings]]).

=== Duncan Williamson ===
The traditional singer [[Duncan Williamson]], a [[Scottish Gypsy and Traveller groups|Scottish traveller]] who learned his songs from his family and fellow travellers, had a traditional version of the ballad which he was recorded singing on several occasions. One recording (and discussion of the song) can be heard on the [[Tobar an Dualchais – Kist o Riches|Tobar an Dualchais]] website.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Tobar an Dualchais Kist O Riches|url=http://www.tobarandualchais.co.uk/track/39395?l=en|access-date=2021-03-12|website=tobarandualchais.co.uk}}</ref>