Page images
PDF
EPUB

Minotaur of Crete; and this was supposed to explain that dreaded hankering of the elfin world's inhabitants after human beings, which moved them to spirit away a beautiful bride or bridegroom on the eve of a wedding, or to rob the cradle of a chubby little infant, leaving in its place a hideous, withered changeling of their own.

In the legend of Thomas the Rhymer the Fairy Queen appears under the same amiable aspect which is given. to the large-hearted Zee by the author of "The Coming Race," that of a mistress who disinterestedly saves her alien lover from the doom to which he would have been consigned by her own people. There are other legends, however, in which the hero achieves his restoration to earth in defiance of the fairy powers; and the ballad now to be described derives its fascinating terror from the account of the elfin stratagems set at work to prevent the recovery of the hero from the fairy world.

The Young Tamlane will probably be acknowledged by most critics to be the finest of the legendary ballads of Scotland. The hero is known under considerable variations in his name, among which it is worth while to compare Tamlane, Tamlene, Tam-a-line, Tam o' the Linn, Tom Linn, Thom of Lynn, Thomalin, and Thomlin. Amid these varieties none can hesitate to pronounce an original identity; and methods of research, which our modern comparative mythologists have already followed to valuable results, enable us, without much difficulty, to trace the name, with the main features of the legend gathering round it, to the same source which has given to the nursery the numerous tales of Thumbling or Tom

Thumb, and of Jack the Giant-killer.1 Everyone acquainted with the science of nursery stories knows that Thumbling, whatever degradation he may have suffered in his later history, was originally no other than the god Thor, who, in his wandering from Asgard, the home of the Aesir, to U:gard, the home of the Giants, put up one night in the glove of the Giant Skrymir, which he mistook for a house, and, on being frightened by a seeming earthquake, sought refuge in what he supposed to be an adjoining building, but which turned out to be the thumb (German Däumling) of the glove. This is not the place to follow the myth of Thor, from this incident of his lodging in the thumb of Giant Skrymir's glove, through all the transformations he has undergone in the popular literature of Europe. Probably no branch of that literature presents, among the later offshoots of the Thor-myth, such a luxuriant outgrowth as the Scottish ballad of The Young Tamlane. The hero is, indeed, a favourite in Scottish verse.

66

He

1 The original identity of Thumbling and Tamlane does not seem to have been surmised by our collectors of ballads. It was asserted, however, so long ago as in the Quarterly Review for January 1819, p. 100, in an article on the "Antiquities of Nursery Literature," to which my attention was drawn by the eulogistic language in which it is spoken of by Grimm ("Kindermährchen," vol. iii. p. 315). Among the popular heroes of romance enumerated in the introduction to the history of Tom Thumbe (London, 1621, bl. letter), occurs 'Tom a Lin, the devil's supposed bastard.'" (Scott, in the "Border Minstrelsy,” vol. i. p. 223.) It would be interesting to know whether there is here indicated any connection between Tom Thumb and Tom a Lin. Simrock, who traces numerous ramifications of the Däumling legend ("Deutsche Mythologie," pp. 270-288), does not appear to know of Tamlane. Uhland has a monograph on the Mythus von Thor (Stuttgart, 1836), but it has not come in my way; and I cannot therefore say whether he recognizes the connection of Tamlane with his subject.

1

does not, it is true, always bear the heroic character which he displays in this ballad. He appears in an enigmatical sort of nursery rhyme, as undergoing a series of undignified adventures, in which, if the rhyme be not wholly meaningless, we may still perhaps recognize a few shattered and distorted fragments of the original image of Thor, as well as some resemblance to the mishaps of Tom Thumb.

"Tam o' the Linn came up the gait

Wi' twenty puddings on a plate,

And every pudding had a pin;

'We'll eat them a',' quo' Tam o' the Linn.

"Tam o' the Linn had nae breeks to wear,
He coft him a sheepskin to make him a pair,
The fleshy side out, the woolly side in;
'It's fine summer cleeding,' quo' Tam o' the Linn.

"Tam o' the Linn he had three bairns,
They fell in the fire in each other's arms;
'Oh!' quo' the boonmost, 'I've got a het skin ;'
'It's hetter below,' quo' Tam o' the Linn.

"Tam o' the Linn gaed to the moss,
To seek a stable to his horse;

The moss was open, and Tam fell in ;

'I've stabled mysel',' quo' Tam o' the Linn." 1

1 Chambers' "Popular Rhymes of Scotland," p. 33. In Chambers' "Scottish Songs" (p. 455) occurs a slightly varied version of this rhyme, with the chorus Fa la, fa la, fa lillie, between each line, and with the additional opening verse

"Tam o' the Lin is no very wise,

He selt his sow, and boucht a gryce :
The gryce gaed out, and never cam in.

'The deil gae wi' her!' quo' Tam o' the Linn."

In the same spirit appears to be an old English song, the following snatch of which is introduced into "a very merry and pithie comedie," entitled The longer thou livest, the more Fool thou art :

"Tom a Lin and his wife and his wives mother
They went over a bridge all three together,
The bridge was broken and they fell in,
'The devil go with all,' quoth Tom a Lin.” 1

It may be interesting to mention, moreover, that Joanna Baillie has developed, with the fruitfulness of her own fancy, a similar conception of our hero in her song Tam o'the Lin; and as this humorous reproduction of an old Teutonic legend is not very generally familiar, it will not be out of place here in connection with the more primitive versions of the same theme:

"Tam o' the Lin was fu' o' pride,

[ocr errors]

And his weapon he girt to his valorous side,

A scabbard o' leather wi' deil-hair't within.

Attack me wha daur!' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

"Tam o' the Lin he bought a mear;

She cost him five shillings, she wasna dear.
Her back stuck up, and her sides fell in.
'A fiery yaud!' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

Tam o' the Lin he courted a may;

She stared at him sourly, and said him nay;

But he stroked down his jerkin and cocked up his chin 'She aims at a laird, then,' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

"Tam o' the Lin he gaed to the fair,

Yet he looked wi' disdain on the chapman's ware;

1 See Ritson's Dissertation prefixed to his "Ancient Songs and Ballads," p lxxxiv.

Then chucked out a sixpence, the sixpence was tin. 'There's coin for the fiddlers,' quo' Tam o' the Lin. "Tam o' the Lin wad show his lear,

And he scanned o'er the book wi' wise-like stare. He muttered confusedly, but didna begin. 'This is Dominie's business,' quo' Tam o' the Lin. "Tam o' the Lin had a cow wi' ae horn, That likit to feed on his neighbour's corn.

[ocr errors]

The stanes he threw at her fell short o' the skin;

She's a lucky auld reiver,' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

"Tam o' the Lin he married a wife,

[ocr errors]

And she was the torment, the plague o' his life;
She lays sae about her, and maks sic a din,

She frightens the baby,' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

"Tam o' the Lin grew dourie and douce,

And he sat on a stane at the end o' his house. 'What ails, auld chiel?' He looked haggard and thin. 'I'm no very cheery,' quo' Tam o' the Lin.

"Tam o' the Lin lay down to die,

And his friends whispered softly and woefully— 'We'll buy you some masses to scour away sin.' 'And drink at my lykewake,' quo' Tam o' the Lin.”

Whether this conception of our hero originated from the confidence of his great prototype in the sheer force of his hammer Miölnir exposing him to be outwitted at times by the trickery of Utgard's inhabitants, it is unnecessary for us to inquire. In the ballad of The Young Tamlane the hero assumes the character of one who has entered an unearthly world, and returned from it victorious over the efforts to retain him within its power The legend, moreover, has lost its general relations to

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »