Heritage-Border Ballads, Badlands
Published at 10:30, Thursday, 05 February 2009
Keith Gregson stops off in Hawick to explore the action-packed ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead as he continues his historical tour of the Scottish Borders
I’ve always felt that the Hollywood directors of the Fifties and Sixties got it wrong. Wild West indeed! In my humble opinion, it had nothing on the Anglo/Scottish Borders some 400 years ago when Elizabeth I was on the English throne and James VI was champing on the bit further north.
Raiding and rustling, loyalty and treachery, law-keeping and lawlessness; they were all there in abundance and the main characters were even larger in life than the likes of Jesse James and Billy the Kid.
There are similarities with the Wild West, though. Over the years, both have provided us with a healthy mix of fact and fiction when it comes to the deeds which are supposed to have taken place.
In the case of the Anglo/Scottish Borders, these tales have often been put into an
all-embracing pigeonhole labelled
Border Ballads.
For some of the ballads, we know who the author was; for others, we don’t. Some tales stay pretty close to historical fact, while others sweep off into the realms of fantasy. Nearly all the stories suffer from being passed down by word of mouth from generation
to generation. (Nothing new here: I was
heartbroken when I discovered that Robin Hood and Maid Marian never really met
and that they had simply been put together when a bungling balladeer muddled up two totally separate songs back in the dim and distant past.)
Most of the ballads, however, are rattling good tales and that certainly applies to the ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead: a story which has had me out and about, and tootling up and down the hills and vales near Hawick in search of the sites where the action took place.
The story of Jamie Telfer is, in many ways, a typical Borders tale. It begins with an Englishman: the Captain of Bewcastle, from just south of the border, raiding up into Scotland along with his kith and kin. In their search for cattle, they travel many a mile across the early stages of the River Teviot and the flowing Borthwick until they reach the Ettrick at Ettrick Bridge.
On a lonely hillside nearby stands Dodhead, home of one Jamie Telfer. He is considered easy pickings and, within a short time, has been robbed of all his possessions.
Well versed in the art of Border law,
Jamie sets out to seek help. He is some athlete as his first journey, made at a run, takes him 10 miles to Stobs Hall, just to the south of Hawick.
Here he is given short shrift by the legendary Gibby Elliot.
“You’re not under my wing,” he tells Telfer. “Get across to the Scotts at Branxholm – I’ve got you down as one
of them.”
Jamie duly obliges and enters the realms of the Magnificent Seven en route. At Coultart Cleuch, he comes across his brother-in–law, Jock Grieve, who gives Jamie a horse. Then, at Catslock Hill, he is joined on horseback by William’s Wat and his two sons.
Together these “magnificent four” ride on to the home of Old Buccleuch at Branxolm, slightly to the west. The head of the Border Scotts listens to Jamie’s tale and gives the order for Hot Trod, instructing his son Willie Scott and Old Wat of Harden, in particular, to take to their horses.
A small army is now on the move and
they catch up with Bewcastle and his raiders down on the plain before they can cross
the border. Willie Scott makes a civil request for the return of Telfer’s goods and cattle and is refused.
A fight breaks out. Willie Scott is killed in dramatic fashion; his helmet and head split open. Wat of Harden cries for revenge and is heard. By the end of the fray, some 30 of Bewcastle’s followers lie bleeding. Two of the most prominent are dead and Bewcastle is a hostage captive; badly wounded and, intriguingly, said to be unlikely to be of interest to women any more!
Without more ado the defeated Englishman hands over his spoils … but it doesn’t end here. The magnificently named Watty Madspurs careers over the border with a handful of men and batters down Bewcastle’s front door with a tree trunk. He takes all the captain’s goods, while managing a quick chat with his fiancée.
She doesn’t seem to want her lover back, embarrassed by the mess he has made of the raid (or perhaps she has heard something about his injury?)
And so Jamie Telfer returns home to Dodhead to discover not only his own goods and cattle, but also those belonging to the Captain of Bewcastle. Now wealthy, Jamie is able to repay all those who helped him.
Hollywood eat your heart out! I’m afraid there is much of the Hollywood about Jamie’s tale, as fact after fact seem to have flown out of the window.
In the 19tth century, this ballad was the cause of many a row between historians and literary writers. For starters, it survived in a number of different versions and the Elliot clan and its supporters savaged the one I’ve used here. They felt that it had been made up by the Scotts to put the Elliots in a bad light since they turned poor Jamie away.
On the plus side, many of the people and places mentioned in the ballad did exist in the late 16th century – Wat of Harden, for example, was a true character of Ettrickside – although, experts claim that the fine detail is all wrong.
The main problem lies with the victim of the tale – Jamie Telfer. If the historians are right, there is no evidence for Telfer family activity in and around the Dodhead area at this time – this was Scott territory. Either Jamie Telfer was an invention or the Dodhead of the ballad is to be found elsewhere.
But this ballad has long meant much to Border folk. Just look up some of the details on the internet and you will soon discover how much squabbling has gone on about its origins over the years.
As far as I’m concerned, fact or fiction, it remains a rattling good tale.
Jamie Telfer of the Fair
It fell about the Martinmas tide
When our border steeds get corn and hay
The Captain of Bewcastle has bound him to ride
And he’s ower ti Tividale to drive a prey
And when they cam to the fair Dodhead,
Right hastily they climbed the peel;
They loosened out the cattle all
And ranshackled the house right weel.
The sun wasna up but the moon was down,
There was the gryming of a new-fallen snaw
Jamie Telfer has run ten miles a-foot
Between the Dodhead and Stob’s Ha’
(Gibby Elliot speaks)
‘Gae seek your succour at Branksome Ha’,
For succour ye’se get nane frae me;
Gae seek your succour where ye paid black-mail,
For, man! Ye ne’er paid money to me’
And when they cam to Branksome Ha’,
They shouted a’ baith loud and hie,
Till up and spak him auld Buccleuch
Said - ‘Whae’s this brings the fray to me?’
‘Warn Wat o’ Harden, and his sons,
Wi’ them will Borthwick Water ride;
Warn Gaudilands, and Allanhaugh
And Gilmanscluegh, and Commonside’.
The Scots they rade, the Scots they ran
Sae starkly and sae steadily!
And aye the watchword o’ the crowd
Was ‘ Rise for Branksome readilie!’
‘Set on them. Lads quo’ Willie than
‘Fye, lads set on them cruelly!
For ere they get to the Ritterford
Many an empty saddle there shall be!’
But Willie was stricken ower the head,
And thro’ the knapscap the sword has gane
And Harden wept for very rage
When Willie on the ground lay slain.
‘Revenge! Revenge!’ auld Wat did cry
‘ Fy, lads, lay on them cruelly!
We’ll never see Tiviotside again
Till Willie’s death revenged shall be
The captain was run thro the thick of the thigh
And broken was his right leg bane;
If he had lived this hundred year,
He had never been loved by woman again.
There was a wild gallant among us all
His name was Watty with the Wudspurs,
Cried –‘On for his house in Stanegirthside
If any man will ride with us’
When they came to the Stanegirthside
The pulled down trees and burst the door
They loosened out the Captain’s kye
And set them forth our lads before.
When they came to the Fair Dodhead
They were a welcome sight to see
For instead of his own ten milk kye
Jamie Telfer had gotten thirty and three.
Published by http://www.dgblife.co.uk
