The book of British ballads . ARTHKAMS DIRGE. This beautiful and mosttouching fragment was originally published in the Border Minstrelsy ; we know far too little con-cerning it to satisfy the interest it excites. Ac-cording to Sir Walter Scott, it was taken downby Mr. Surtees (the historian of Durham county)from the recitation of Anne Douglas, an old womanwho weeded in his garden. Her memory, how-ever, was defective, and she was enabled to preserveonly snatches of the old song — the breaks thus leftwere filled up by Mr. Surtees ; so that the appendedcopy is in reality made complete, — even so
The book of British ballads . ARTHKAMS DIRGE. This beautiful and mosttouching fragment was originally published in the Border Minstrelsy ; we know far too little con-cerning it to satisfy the interest it excites. Ac-cording to Sir Walter Scott, it was taken downby Mr. Surtees (the historian of Durham county)from the recitation of Anne Douglas, an old womanwho weeded in his garden. Her memory, how-ever, was defective, and she was enabled to preserveonly snatches of the old song — the breaks thus leftwere filled up by Mr. Surtees ; so that the appendedcopy is in reality made complete, — even so far as it exists, — by the aidof a modern pen. The hero of the ditty, says Sir Walter, if the reciterbe correct, was shot to death by nine brothers, whose sister he had se-duced, but was afterwards buried, at her request, near their usual place of meet-ing ; which may account for his being laid, not in holy ground, but beside the name of Barthram, or Bertram, would argue a Northumbrian origin; and thereis, or w
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, bookidg, bookpublisherlondonjhow
