Thomas the Rhymer
Thomas of Ercildoune- or Erceldoune - is well-known as a character in the Scots ballad of ‘True Thomas’, or ‘Thomas the Rhymer’, who was carried off by the Queen of Faery and given ‘true speech’. It is possible to follow a trail from the medieval abbey in Melrose up onto the Eildon Hills and then to descend to Huntley Bank by Bogle Burn (‘Goblin Brook’) and down to the ‘Rhymer’s Stone’, a memorial to mark the spot where Thomas sat, according to the ballad, under the ‘Eildon Tree’. A hawthorn has also been planted by the memorial stone to represent this tree.
The Ballad
The ballad appears in most anthologies of traditional ballads, having featured in Child’s English and Scottish Ballads(1862) and, earlier, in Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Robert Graves discussed it in his ‘historical grammar of poetic myth’ The White Goddess (1949) and pointed out that the ballad was a source of John Keats’ poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’. It may therefore be assumed that the ballad had independent existence arising from an oral tradition and representing an expression of a folklore motif of the Faery Queen on a horse. In this way it is possible to link it with, for instance, the ballad of Tamlane and, indeed, other literary formulations of the motif like the arrival of Rhiannon on a white horse in the First Branch of Y Mabinogi.
The Historical Character
Thomas was an historical character who lived in the thirteenth century in a tower – now a ruin but still partly standing – in the village of Ercildoune (now Earlston) in the Tweed Valley. He was dubbed ‘The Rhymer’ because of his reputation for penning prophetic verses. But many later events became attached to his list of prophecies, mostly related to conflicts between England and Scotland. He is said to be the author of a work in three ‘fyttes’ or sections containing prophecies in Fytte Two and Three but telling the story of his being carried off by the Faery Queen in Fytte One. Here his acquisition of the gift for ‘true speech’ from the Queen is the validation of his power as a prophet. The earliest of several manuscripts containing this work – the so-called ‘Thornton Manuscript’, a collection of various romance and prophetic writing - has been dated to the decade 1430-1440, over a hundred years after Thomas’s death.
The Prophecies
These may be the source of the ballad. But the work is written in a northern dialect of Middle English, not Scots. And while Fytte One contains the same story as the ballad, the details differ. In his edition of various manuscript versions of the ‘Prophesies’ for the Early English Texts Society in 1875, James Murray argues the case for the textual integrity of the whole work in three fyttes in spite of the feelings of Child and others that the story of Fytte One was distinct as a literary product and deserved to be considered separately. Murray also suggests it may not be too much to suppose that “Thomas of Ercildoune may, from his literary tastes, have been the repository of such traditional rhymes” and that he may have known of an independent version of the story in Fytte One and used it as a way of giving “currency to the idea of his own prophetic powers”. Or that a later author put together a compilation of Thomas’s prophecies, adding others of his own, and linked them to the story of his being carried away to Faery in the same way. Indeed, Murray points out that at some stages of its literary reception the prophecies had been regarded with more interest than the folktale. These were common currency in the political discourse of the time and were often used to justify, or whip up support for, particular causes. The author of the Complaynt of Scotland (1529) refers to “diuerse prophane prophesies of merlyne and other ald corruptit vaticinaris the quhilkis hes affirmit in rusty ryme” while James V (of Scotland) was entertained with “prophisies of Rymour, Beid and Marlyng”.
Placing the prophecies alongside those of Merlin, and therefore in the same context as those ascribed to Myrddin and Taliesin, brings the material into focus alongside Welsh texts and predictions of conflicts between the different peoples inhabiting Britain after the Romans left, and throughout the Middle Ages. But we do at least know that Thomas of Ercildoune existed and that some of the prophecies concerning the area around the Eildon Hills and the valley of the River Tweed provide a setting which make it likely that he was their author. Walter Scott, who was also an inhabitant of this area, may therefore be seen to have had an interest in promoting the ballad and there is some debate as to the previous provenance of the version that he printed in his collection. If it was a recent literary production based on Fytte One of the ‘Prophesies’ then the idea that the story had an independent existence in the oral tradition could be questioned. Scott was certainly enthusiastic about Thomas’s legendary status and he even tried to appropriate it by incorporating a ‘Rhymer’s Glen’ into his estate at Abbotsford a few miles away from the spot where the ‘Eildon Tree’ was located. But many have felt that the story has a life of its own beyond the context of the times during which the prophecies were significant. And having a context outside of a particular historical time frame is one indication of a story with mythical significance.
Comparison of the Ballad and the Prophecies
The Ballad of Thomas the Rhymer runs to between eighty and ninety lines according to which of the available versions are consulted. The corresponding narrative in Fytte One of the ‘Prophecies’ of Thomas of Ercildoune runs to 308 lines, with a partial extension into Fytte Two. So the material in the ‘Prophecies’ is obviously more detailed.
The ballad is widely available in different versions. My standard reference in these discussions will be to the version that appeared in Walter Scott’s Border Minstrelsy(1802). Three versions of the Ballad as collected by Child can be found HERE
The texts from the various manuscript sources for the ‘Prophecies’ were published in James Murray’s Early English Texts Society edition in 1875. The earliest manuscript source dates from c.1430, a little more than a hundred years after Thomas of Ercildoune died.
Here are the opening lines of the ‘Prophecies’ in their transcribed original form. I give this for a flavour of the text, but will after this quote from the text in my translation from the northern dialect of Middle English in which it is written.
Als j me wente Þis Eldres daye
Ffull faste in mynd makand my mone,
In a mery mornynge of maye
By huntle bankkes my selfe alone,
I herde Þe jaye & Þe throstyll coke,
The Mawys menyde hir of hir songe,
Þe wodewale beryde als a belle
That alle Þe wode a-bowte me ronge.
Allonne in longynge thus als j laye
Vndre-nethe a seemly tree,
J was whare [of] a lady gaye
Come rydynge ouer a longe lee.
If j solde sytt to domesdaye,
With my tongue, to wrobbe and wrye,
Certanely Þat lady gaye
Neuer bese scho askryede for mee.
Hir palfraye was a dappill graye
Swylke one ne saghe j neuer none
Als dose Þe sonne on someres daye
Þat faire lady hir selfe scho schone.
Hir selle it was of roelle bone
Full seemly was Þat syghte to see
Stefly sett with precious stones
And compaste all with crapote,
Stones of Oryente, grete plente,
Hir hare abowte hir hede it hange;
Scho rade ouer Þat lange lee
A whylle scho blewe, a-noÞer scho sange.
The first thing to notice here is that, unlike the ballad, this is written in the first person. The ballad is about Thomas. This purports to be written by him, though there are parts of this narrative that change to third person narration. Another difference is that the Ballad launches straight into the action while the ‘Prophecies’ spend some time setting the scene. It is a May Morning, the birds are singing and, as the Lady come riding towards him, she is described in great detail. Thomas is overwhelmed. He says, ‘If I were to live until Doomsday, I couldn’t describe her splendour’. She is ‘shining like the sun on a summer’s day’ as she approaches with her jewel be-studded trappings. As she comes, she sings out and blows upon her horn like a hunter. It takes 72 lines to describe her approach. The Ballad does it in eight lines.
As the Lady approaches him, Thomas assumes that she is the Virgin Mary and he addresses her as such, but she informs him he is mistaken. She is, rather, as the Ballad has it, The Queen of Elfland, though in the ‘Prophecies’ she simply says that she is from ‘another country’.
In the Ballad, the Queen invites Thomas to give her a kiss and then almost immediately carries him off to Elfland after identifying other possible roads they could take. But in the ‘Prophecies’ much more happens. After being told that she is not Mary, Thomas begins to suggest that they ‘lie down’ together. At first she refuses, saying that it would ‘mar’ and ‘spill’ her beauty. But Thomas persists and she then agrees:
Down then came that lady bright
Underneath the greenwood spray
And if the story tells it right
Seven times with her he lay.
She said ‘man you like your play”
But after this, as she predicted, she is transformed and she takes on a hideous appearance. All of this is covered by the kiss in the Ballad, which appears to put Thomas under her spell.
Y Mabinogi
Now, for comparison, consider the from the First Branch of Y Mabinogi:
“As they were sitting on this hill a woman dressed in shining gold brocade and riding a great pale horse approached the highway which ran past them. Anyone who saw the horse would have said it was moving at a slow steady pace as it drew adjacent to the hill. "Men," said Pwyll, "does anyone know that horsewoman?" "No, lord," they answered. "Then let someone go and find out who she is." A man rose to go after her but by the time he reached the highway she had already gone past. He tried to follow her on foot, but she drew farther ahead of him. When he saw his pursuit was in vain he returned and told Pwyll, "Lord, it is pointless for anyone to follow her on foot." "All right. Go to the court and take the fastest horse you know and go after her." The man fetched the horse and set out after her. Once he reached open country his spurs found his mount, but no matter how much he urged the steed onward the farther ahead she drew, all the while going at the same pace as before.”
Rhiannon tells Pwyll she has come because she wants him for a husband and he agrees to visit her to formalize this arrangement.
She is clearly of a faery nature from the outset and not mistaken for Mary, though she only identifies herself by her name and her father’s name.
The Loathly Lady
The incident where the Lady turns into a hideous hag-like figure is not in the Ballad. But the figure of the ‘Loathly Lady’ is well known in medieval literature. Chaucer used it in The Wife of Bath’s Tale. Usually, the hero has to kiss the Loathly Lady, or agree to marry her, after which she becomes a beautiful young woman. ‘Kissing the Hag’ is a test, when a hero has to prove himself worthy and these stories are usually interpreted as ‘sovereignty’ themes, the would-be king or leader having to wed the land as winter as well as summer. But the pattern seems to be reversed here. Thomas has done a lot more than kiss the Lady, and the result is that she is transformed from beauty to hideousness. The ‘test’ here, if it is a test, is that Thomas has to accompany the Lady in her hideous form back to her own land, leaving ‘Middle Earth’ behind them . This involves a frightening journey underground and through water.
The Journey to the Otherworld
In the Ballad, after Thomas has kissed the Elfin Queen, she takes him up on her horse and they ride ‘swifter than the wind’ across a desert leaving the ‘living land’ behind them. In the ‘Prophecies’, following the lady’s transformation, Thomas is distraught and reverts to addressing her as the Queen of Heaven, supposing what they have done will bring him great trouble. But in one of the manuscript sources of the ‘Prophecies’ the wording suggests, rather, that he prays separately to the Virgin Mary and although this is less clear in the other manuscripts, it is a possible reading there too. The Lady’s response is to guide him to a ‘secret’ way under the hill where it is ‘dark as midnight mirk’ and where he must wade through a river. He hears nothing but the constant sound of running water for three days before arriving in a fair garden. In guiding him through the terrible ways to the Otherworld, the Lady, though having refused the title, seems to offer him the help and protection he prays for to ‘Mary mild’. Though he is faint with hunger and reaches out to eat some of the fruit in the garden, she tells him not to touch it or he will never return. This is a common theme of visits to the Otherworld and again, here, the lady is his guide and protector.
The briefer narrative of the Ballad dispenses with most of this but does include references to riding through rivers of blood. Both the Ballad and the ‘Prophecies’, though not in the same place in the narrative, have a scene where the Lady tells Thomas to put his head upon her knee while she points out the different roads that could be taken. The Ballad has three of these: ‘the road to righteousness’, ‘the road to wickedness, which some call the road to heaven’, and the ‘bonnie road across the ferny brae’ which will take them to Elfland. In the ‘Prophecies’, the five roads identified are to heaven, to paradise, to purgatory, to hell, and to a castle on a hill which is their destination. The Ballad makes its point without these theological distinctions, simply asserting that ‘Elfland’ is different from heaven and hell.
In the version of the Ballad given by Walter Scott (but not in a later, possibly corrupt version) the Elfin Queen, rather than warning Thomas not to eat the fruit, offers him an apple which will give him ‘a tongue that can never lie’. We are then simply told that he returns after seven years wearing a coat ‘of the even cloth’ and ‘shoes of velvet green’. In both the Ballad and the ‘Prophecies’ Thomas is told not to speak while he is in the Otherworld. In the ‘Prophecies’ the reason given for this is that the Lady doesn’t want him to be questioned by her husband in case he reveals what they have been up to. The Ballad has no explanation except that if he does speak he will never return home.
As they ride towards the castle, the Lady’s beauty returns to her. Thomas stays there for what seems like three days but he is told it is three years (compare the Ballad’s seven years). He must leave, the Lady tells him, as the ‘foul fiend of hell’ will come to claim one of the company and if Thomas is there she fears it will be him. There is a parallel here with the story of Tamlane. Fytte One ends with the lady bringing Thomas back to the Eildon Tree. In fyttes two and three she keeps trying to take leave of him with repeated statements like ‘I must wend my way’ and ‘I may no longer dwell’. But Thomas keeps asking her for ‘ferlies’ and a series of prophecies are delivered.
And the Mabinogi? There are no obvious ‘loathly lady’ parallels, but consider the ‘penance’ that Rhiannon has to perform at the horse block when she is suspected of killing her son. She doesn’t become a loathly lady, but she has to endure a humiliation and a diminution in status until Pryderi is returned. As for Pwyll, he is ‘tested’ by the incident when Gwawl, the prospective husband Rhiannon does not want, outwits him and he needs Rhiannon’s help to regain the advantage.
Sources
Having looked at the parallel narratives of the ‘Prophecies’ and the Ballad, what can now be said of the likely source of the story? We know that the earliest manuscript of the ‘Prophecies’ is from the 14th century and that it is supposed to be the work of the historical Thomas of Ercildoune who lived over a hundred years earlier. There are two reason to think that the four extant manuscripts stem from an earlier version rather than being accurate copies of an earlier text. The first is that, although the story seems to have originated in Scotland, the language indicates that the author was from the North of England. This suggests an adaptation of a Scottish tale. Some commentators have felt that the change from the First Person to the Third Person, and then back again, also suggests a source in an earlier version. The tales begins “As I went out …” and continues using ‘I’ until Thomas sees the Lady. The narration then changes with “He said …” and remains in the Third Person through all the central events until “My lovely lady said to me” when she informs Thomas that they are to return. It then remains in the First Person. Was there an earlier version entirely in the First Person, told by Thomas of Ercildoune, and if so was he relating on his own account a story already known to him? This trail ends here.
The Ballad can be traced back a little beyond its first emergence in print. Two versions appeared early in the Nineteenth Century, one from Walter Scott and the other from Robert Jamieson. Information about how their versions were obtained is contained in the letters of Robert Anderson, a doctor from Edinburgh who was also a literary historian. He carried on an extensive correspondence with other literary men including Bishop Percy, whose Reliques of Ancient English Poetry had been published in 1765. In communicating with Percy about Scottish border ballads in September 1800, Anderson refers to “a pretty large MS collection of old Scottish ballads, communicated by Mrs Brown, wife of Dr Brown, minister of Falkirk”. He reports that Mrs Brown “learned them all when she was a child by hearing them sung by her mother and an old maid-servant”. Mrs Brown had also been visted by Robert Jamieson earlier that year. Anderson then relates that, together with Robert Jamieson, he visited Walter Scott and they discussed the Ballad of True Thomas which had been obtained from Mrs Brown. Anderson “hinted my suspicion of modern manufacture, in which Scott had secretly anticipated me”, as Mrs Brown was fond of ballads and herself wrote verse. But he concluded that “her character places her above the suspicion of literary imposture”.
It should be noted that, in December 1800 Anderson again wrote to Percy about some ballads that had been passed to Wm Tytler by Professor Thomas Gordon of Aberdeen in 1783. Gordon was Mrs Brown’s father. These ballads had come from the same woman later identified by Mrs Brown, together with an aunt, a Mrs Farquharson, although Gordon does not mention his wife as a source. Mrs Brown herself later wrote to Tytler’s son who had enquired about the ballads, saying “I do not pretend that these ballads are correct in any way as they are written down entirely from my recollection, for I never saw one of them in print or manuscript”.
As Mrs Brown seems to have communicated a large number of ballads to a variety of different people, all apparently from memory, it is possible that she did not give all of them exactly the same versions. But this does not explain the considerable difference between Scott’s and Jamieson’s versions. We might think that Jamieson was more likely to anglicize the ballad in order to popularise it, or that Scott would be more likely to want to keep the Scottish flavour. Jamieson’s version certainly has all the indications of an adaptation by him in line with his previously stated intentions to publish his own collection of old ballads “with interpolated stanzas written by himself”, which later appeared as Popular Ballads and Songs (1806). Scott, however, was also working from the much longer ‘Prophecies’ of Thomas of Ercildoune containing the story related in the Ballad. Elsewhere Scott included the ‘traditional’ Ballad together with some pieces of his own devising based on the ‘Prophecies’ in a creative sequence. Could his reading and re-working of the ‘Prophecies’ have influenced his presentation of the Ballad?
For Anderson’s correspondence, see Illustrations of Literary History of the Eighteenth Century by J B Nichols (1848)
Associated Faery Lore
In addition to the Ballad and the 'Prophecies' of True Thomas, there is a body of Scottish fairy lore associated with Thomas. His coming and goings from the Otherworld feature in many tales such as this one-> in which Thomas having been recalled to the Otherworld, continues to move between the worlds.
Whether these stem from the Ballad, or are a parallel development with the Ballad, is difficult to establish. Just as it is difficult to be certain whether either or both of these came from the tale which opens the 'Prophecies' or whether all stem from a common earlier source.
What is likely is that Thomas became a magnet for the folklore of the Otherworld, attracting stories to himself whose themes are also expressed elsewhere. He became a typical figure of the Otherworld journeyer, moving backwards and forwards across the borders of the two worlds.
