Our weights and our measures are lawful and true It is hardly necessary to quote more examples. They are not unknown to the historian, but because they are in rhyme they have been hastily assumed to be spurious or even burlesque.2 But the evidence of a rhyming formula is the opposite to this. It is evidence of their genuineness, and if some of the words appear to be nonsensical it is due to the fact that the sense of the old formula has been misunderstood, and has then become gradually altered. All these rhyming tenures, indeed, find their place among the traditional examples of legal formulæ. 1 Hazlitt, Tenures of Land, 80; other examples refer to the Hundred of Cholmer and Dancing, in Essex, 75; to Kilmersdon, in Somersetshire, 182; to Hopton, in Salop, 165. John of Gaunt is responsible for many of these curious and interesting remains of tribal antiquity. Bisley's Handbook of North Devon, 28, refers to one relating to the manor of Umberleigh, near Barnstaple, and I have a note from Mr. Edmund Wrigglesworth, of Hull, of a parallel to this being preserved by tradition only. There is a tradition respecting the estate of Sutton Park, near Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, which states that it formerly belonged to John of Gaunt, who gave it to an ancestor of the present proprietor, one Roger Burgoyne, by the following grant :— "I, John of Gaunt, Do give and do grant, Until the world's rotten." Potton was a neighbouring village to Sutton. There is a moated site in the park called "John o' Gaunt's Castle," see Notes and Queries, tenth series, vi. 466. Cf. Aubrey, Collections for Wilts, 185, for an example at Midgehall; Cowell's Law Interpreter, 1607, and the Dictionarum Rusticum, 1704, for the custom of East and West Enborn, in Berks, which was made famous by Addison's Spectator in 1714. Sometimes these are called "burlesque conveyances." See an example quoted in Hist. MSS. Commission, v. 459. They are the local offshoots preserved because of their legal significance, preserved by those interested from their legal side. Because they are not preserved in the formal codes they need not be neglected, and they must not be misunderstood. They are not to be put on one side by the historian as freaks of local landowners. They are real descendants by traditional lines from the times when laws were not written, but kept alive in the memory by means of such assistance as rhyme could supply, and from the tribesmen who thus treasured the law they obeyed.1 That this branch of recorded law is not only early but tribal is undoubted, but perhaps it will be well to refer to tribal rhyming formulæ of an independent kind in order to show by parallel evidence the tribal characteristics. In 1884 Mr. Posnett drew attention to this important subject, and noted that "Dr. Brown, in an attempt to sketch the origin of poetry— an attempt which attracted the attention of Bishop Percy in his remarks introductory to the Reliques-proposed more than one hundred years ago to discover the source of the combined dance, song, melody, and mimetic action of primitive compositions in the common festivals of clan life. The student of comparative literature will probably regard 1 It is well to bear in mind the great force of ancient tribal law, which was personal, upon localities. Nottingham is divided into two parts, one having primogeniture and the other junior right as the rule of descent. Southampton and Exeter have also local divisions. But perhaps the most striking example is at Breslau, where there co-existed, until 1st January, 1840, five different particular laws and observances in regard to succession, the property of spouses, etc., the application of which was limited to certain territorial jurisdictions; not unfrequently the law varied from house to house, and it even happened that one house was situated on the borders of different laws, to each of which, therefore, it belonged in part; Savigny, Private Int. Law, cap. i. sect. iv. Dr. Brown's theory as a curious anticipation of the historical method in a study which, in spite of M. Taine's efforts, has made so little progress as yet. The clan ethic of inherited guilt and vicarious punishment has attracted considerable attention. But the clan poetry of the ancient Arabs and of the bard-clans, surviving in the Hebrew sons of Asaph or the Greek Homeridæ, has not received that light from comparative inquiry which the closely connected problems of primitive music and metre would alone amply deserve.”1 Max Not much has been done since this was penned. Müller had previously, in 1847, declared that the Rig Veda consisted of the clan songs of the Hindu people,2 but the importance of such a conclusion has been entirely neglected. In the meantime evidence is accumulating that in Britain there are still preserved many examples of clan songs. Thus Lord Archibald Campbell has published, in the first volume of his Waifs and Strays of Celtic Tradition, some sixteen or seventeen sagas. Some of these are clan-traditions; and the editor notes as evidence of their antiquity the fact that none of them makes any mention of firearms. These clan-traditions all relate to feuds and vendettas ; and in one case it is expressly recorded that the descendants of one of the foes of the clan, in their account of the incident narrated, "altered this tradition and reversed the main facts." This has been followed by a volume definitely devoted to "clan-traditions," while in the Carmina Gadelica and many of the Highland incantations there are preserved specimens of ancient clan songs. 1 Academy, February, 1884; Percy Reliques, edit. Wheatley, i. 384. 2 Trans. British Association, 1847, p. 321. 3 Series No. V., published in 1895. H The most interesting of the tribal songs is that preserved at the Hawick Common riding. The burgh officers form the van of a pageant which insensibly carries us back to ancient times, and in some verses sung on the occasion there is a refrain which has been known for ages as the slogan of Hawick. It is "Teribus ye teri Odin," which is probably a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon, "Tyr habbe us, ye Tyr ye Odin ". May Tyr uphold us, both Tyr and Odin. Fortunately Dr. Murray has investigated this formula, and I will quote what he says: "A relic of North Anglian heathendom seems to be preserved in a phrase which forms the local slogan of the town of Hawick, and which, as the name of a peculiar local air, and the refrain, or 'owerword' of associated ballads, has been connected with the history of the town back to 'fable-shaded eras.' Different words have been sung to the tune from time to time, and none of those now extant can lay claim to any antiquity; but associated with all, and yet identified with none, the refrain 'Tyr-ibus ye Tyr ye Odin,' Tyr hæb us, ye Tyr ye Odin! Tyr keep us, both Tyr and Odin! (by which name the tune also is known) appears to have come down, scarcely mutilated, from the time when it was the burthen of the song of the gleó-mann or scald, or the invocation of a heathen Angle warrior, before the northern Hercules and the blood-red lord of battles had yielded to the 'pale god' of the Christians." And in a note Dr. Murray adds: "The ballad now connected with the air of 'Tyribus' commemorates the laurels gained by the Hawick youth at and after the disastrous battle, when, in the words of the writer, """Our sires roused by "Tyr ye Odin," Marched and joined their king at Flodden.' |