Bludy Serk, The

DESCRIPTION: A giant imprisons a king's daughter. A knight rescues her but is mortally wounded. He gives her his bloody sark by which to remember him. She stays true to his memory all her days. The ending explains the allegory: the knight is Jesus, etc.
AUTHOR: probably Robert Henryson
EARLIEST DATE: 1568 (Bannatyne MS.); Henryson was dead by 1508
KEYWORDS: MiddleEnglish royalty prison rescue death religious clothes | giant allegory blood
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #3599
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #5687
MANUSCRIPT: Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Advocates’ 1.1.6 [Bannatyne MS], folios. 325-326
ADDITIONAL: Francis James Child, _English and Scottish Ballads_, volume 8, pp. 147-152, "The Bludy Serk" (1 text)
H. Harvey Wood, _The Poems and Fables of Robert Henryson, Schoolmaster of Dunfermline_, Oliver and Boyd, 1933, pp. 173-176, "The Bludy Serk" (1 text)
Denton Fox, _Robert Henryson: the Poems_, Oxford University Press, 1981, 1987, pp. 158-162, "The Bludy Sark" (1 text)
Robert L. Kindrick, editor, _The Poems of Robert Henryson_, TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages), Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1997, pp. 231-234, "The Bludy Serk" (1 text)
Roud #8204
NOTES [1677 words]: This is one of the pieces that Francis James Child included in his original eight volume anthology of ballads, but later omitted from his great ten-volume collection.
To this story compare Thompson motif T85.2, "Princess hangs up weapons of dead lover as continuous reminder."
In broad outlines, the tale is not original. Child, for instance, derives it from the Gesta Romanorum. This is a Latin collection of stories for use (e.g.) by preachers. The author is unknown; best guess is that it dates from about 1300. There are many manuscripts, but the list of tales included varies widely, probably because it was easy to add or subtract a tale to an anthology of unconnected stories. The title ("Deeds of the Romans" or the like) is not really appropriate, since many of the tales are not about Romans.
The tale that Child is referring to is one that Severs/Hartung, p. 981, calls the type "The Tale of the Emperor Frederick's Daughter." Fox, however (whose edition was described as the best by several sources I saw) says on p. 258 that "The story of a lover-knight (Christ) who fights a battle in which he frees his lady (man's soul) and then dies of his wounds is extremely widespread, but I have not found any version which is a satisfactory 'source' for this poem." Without denying this, it seems likely that it is based on a literary tale rather than a folktale.
It has been suggested that Henryson found his reference to a "Bludy serk" in British Library MS. Harley 7333 (Severs/Hartung, p. 981) -- an extensive miscellany that includes much of Chaucer (The Canterbury Tales, the Parliament of Fowls, Anelida and Arcite, the Compleynt of Mars, and other short poems) as well as a Middle English translation of the Gesta Romanorum. This manuscript It has some folky elements, such as "Maidens of England, Sair May Ye Mourn." According to Seymour, p. 22, it contains "extracts of 70 tales," occupying about 53 folios. There were five primary scribes of the manuscript; at least two were involved with the Gesta.
There is no colophon to date the manuscript; the typical estimate is 1450-1475 (Seymour, p. 21, suggests that one piece, "Proverbs quod Impingham," refers to Benedict Burgh, prebend of Empingham, who gained his post in 1463, which would mean that the manuscript must be after that). The general dialect is said (Seymour, p. 22) to be Central Midlands with some southern influence. On p. 23 Seymour suggests a connection with Leicester.
It seems to me that this makes a connection with Henryson unlikely; it's possible that he was dead by the time the manuscript was written, and even if he wasn't, how would he have gotten access to a Leicester manuscript? Of course, he might have had access to another copy of the same translation of the Gesta. Also, he must have had access to at least one other Chaucer manuscript, because Harley 7333 does not contain "Troylus and Criseyde," which we know Henryson knew.
I've also seen suggestions that the opening of this tale-type is an allegory of original sin. I think this is may well be true in some versions, in which the girl is seduced to leave home before being imprisoned. I'm not so impressed with that idea in this version. The poem does not explicitly say the girl has been abducted, but it certainly doesn't say she has gone voluntarily -- and how could she ever be seduced by an ogre such as this? And while anyone would bear the burden of original sin, why would she bear more than the barons and earls who serve her father, or the suitors who court her?
To me, frankly, it sounds more like an allegory of many saints' lives: Saint I've-Heard-This-Story-Before, being beautiful, finds herself at the mercy of some vile old man, but escapes with the help of Jesus and devotes her life to perpetual virginity. The variant story, of a beautiful girl who resists all advances and is killed for it is so common that I started to make a list, and found Saint Agatha, and Saint Agnes, and Saint Barbara... and gave up, because while medieval people may have loved those stories, I certainly don't. Compare also Chaucer's Physician's Tale of the sacrifice of Virginia, and all its numerous parallels going all the way back to Livy, and Chaucer's Second Nun's Tale of St. Cecelia, a virgin martyr who converted her husband and others rather than sleeping with the man she was made to marry. Henryson knew and admitted a debt to Chaucer.
Or maybe the reference is to an anchoress who withdraws from the world; I seem to recall that one or another of the online articles I read saw a connection between Henryson's story and the Ancrene Wisse, a guide for anchoresses.
As for why I've included the song even though I will argue, below, that it is not a ballad, it is because it has sometimes presented not only as a ballad but as an ancestor or early exemplar of the ballad. In a discussion of the meaning of the word "ballad," and the origins thereof, Wilgus, p. 41, says, "Although [Gregory] Smith attaches less weight [than T. F. Henderson] to William Dunbar's reference to 'ballat-making,' both Smith and Henderson find Robert Henryson's use of ballad technique in 'The Bloody Serk' proof of the literary origin of the ballad." In other words, for them, this poem would be the earliest ballad survival. Aytoun apparently agreed to some extent, since he put it in Ballads of Scotland.
Child obviously did not agree, since he omitted it from his final collection, and I think he is right -- on multiple counts. For starters, it's clearly not the earliest ballad; we'll come back to that. But I would maintain that it is not, in fact, all that much like a ballad. Let's start by looking at the meter. Here is Fox's text of the first stanza, which seems to have suffered less editorial interference than the other versions:
This hindir ȝeir I hard be tald
Thair was a worthy king;
Dukis, erlis, and baronis bald
He had at his bidding;
The lord was anceane nd ald
And sexty ȝeiris cowth ring;
He had a dochter fair to fald,
A lusty lady ȝing.
That is:
This former year, I heard be told,
There was a worthy king;
Dukes, earls, and barons bold
He had at his bidding.
The lord was ancient and old
And sixty years could (i.e. probably "had") reign(ed),
He had a daughter fair to (en)fold [i.e. embrace],
A lusty lady young.
There are fourteen more stanzas of this form.
Now recall that the standard ballad meter is four-line stanzas, with foot count 4343 and rhyme scheme xaxa. This is an eight line stanza with foot count 43434343 and rhyme scheme abababab. Thus the "Bludy Serk" matches the most common ballad meter, but the stanza length and the rhyme scheme are both non-standard. Although we conventionally write ballad stanzas in four lines, they can be written as two line couplets with fourteen-syllable lines. Henryson's poem cannot be so treated. This is not a fatal objection, since some ballads use other formats, but it is significant. And if it be claimed that the ballad stanza had not been standardized in the 1400s, it should be noted that "Judas" [Child 13], which for the most part uses the true ballad stanza, is older than Henryson.
There is also the presence of the moral ("moralitas") at the end -- three full stanzas of explanation of the true meaning of the plot. At minimum, the poem is a parable -- I'd be inclined to call it an all-out allegory. And how many ballads do you know which are allegories with a crudely-drawn moral at the end?
The fact that it is thought to be based on a literary source is another argument against ballad-hood.
Also arguing against this as the earliest ballad (even if you accept it as a ballad) is the date. We don't know much about Henryson's life -- Fox, p. ix says "We know remarkably little about Henryson's life; even his dates are very uncertain." A "venerabilis vir" with his name became a member of the University of Glasgow in 1462. A Robert Henryson served as a notary public in 1477-1478. Several prints say that he was a fifteenth century schoolmaster at Dunfermline (Fox, p. x) William Dunbar, in his poem "Lament for thae Makaris," that is, a lament for former poets published in 1508 and probably written some time between 1505 and when it was published, refers to him as dead (Severs/Hartung, p. 965, which lists that fact and the fact that he was from Dunfermline is all that is certain). The fact that there are some lawyerly references in his works seem to support the idea that he was the same as the Glasgow University member and the notary (Severs/Hartung, p. 966). Several of his poems were printed, without attribution, by Chepman and Myllar, the very first Scottish printers, in 1508-1509 (Beattie, p. viii, with facsimiles later in the book) -- indeed, since it is likely that some of Chepman and Myllar's books have been lost, it is possible that most of our Henryson manuscripts are copied from print!
This isn't much to go on, but we *know* that Henryson could not have lived prior to the fifteenth century, because his Testament of Cresseid is a continuation of, and moral reflection on, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Henryson says so explicitly: "I tuik ane quair... / Writtin be worthie Chaucer glorious / Of fair Creisseid and worthie Troylus" (The Testament of Cresseid, lines 40-42; Fox, p. 112. One witness has "lusty" for "worthie").
On the other hand, there is some question about whether Henryson wrote this particular poem. Only one copy survives, in the Bannatyne Manuscript of 1568. Fox, p. 258, observes that "its rhymes are much more irregular than those of any other poem" attributed to Henryson.
The title "The Bludy Serk" is found in the manuscript, along with the attribution to Henryson, but both are in a later hand.
I've now catalogued eight different pieces that someone has claimed as "The Earliest English Ballad." Some don't even exist any more; some are fragments; only a couple are in the Child collection. The one thing that they can all claim is that they are almost certainly earlier than this. I think we can write this one off as "The Earliest English Ballad." - RBW
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