Battle of Otterburn, The [Child 161]

DESCRIPTION: As armies under Earls Douglas of Scotland and Percy (aka Hotspur) of Northumberland battle, the dying Douglas asks Montgomery to conceal his corpse under a bush. Percy refuses to surrender to the bush but does yield to Montgomery
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: c. 1550 (British Library, MS. Cotton Cleopatra C.IV, folio 64)
KEYWORDS: battle borderballad death nobility
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Aug 1388 (probably August 19) - Battle of Otterburn. Scots under Douglas attack England. Although Douglas is killed in the battle, the Scots defeat the English and capture their commander Harry "Hotspur" Percy.
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (22 citations):
Child 161, "The Battle of Otterburn" (5 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #1}
Bronson 161, "The Battle of Otterburn" (2 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 161, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 version: #1)
Percy/Wheatley-ReliquesOfAncientEnglishPoetry I, pp. 35-51+notes on pp. 53-54, "The Battle of Otterbourne" (1 text)
Rimbault-Musical IllustrationsOfBishopPercysReliques, I, p. 46, "The Battle of Otterbourne" (1 partial text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #2}
Bell-Combined-EarlyBallads-CustomsBalladsSongsPeasantryEngland, pp. 92-103, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 12-18, "The Battle of Otterbourne" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 436-446, "The Battle of Otterburn" (2 texts)
Leach-HeritageBookOfBallads, pp. 63-72, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 344-349, "The Battle of Otterbourne" (1 text)
Ritson-AncientSongsBalladsFromHenrySecondToTheRevolution, pp. 83-91, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 127, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 94-104+323-325, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
HarvardClassics-EnglishPoetryChaucerToGray, pp. 88-93, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
DT 161, OTTRBURN*
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1620
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse #2713
ADDITIONAL: Rossell Hope Robbins, _Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Century_, Columbia University Press, 1959, #26, [[/ 64-74, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text)
Michael Brander, _Scottish and Border Battles and Ballads_, 1975 (page references to the 1993 Barnes & Noble edition), pp. 43-47, "The Battle of Otterburn" (1 text, 2 tunes) {Bronson's #1, #2}
Karin Boklund-Lagopolou, _I have a yong suster: Popular song and Middle English lyric_, Four Courts Press, 2002, pp. 166-175, "(The Battle of Otterburn)" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Harley 293, folio 52
MANUSCRIPT: London, British Library, MS. Cotton Cleopatra C.IV, folio 64
Roud #3293
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Hunting of the Cheviot" [Child 162] (subject)
NOTES [1346 words]: For a fuller discussion of the Battle of Otterburn, see the notes to "The Hunting of the Cheviot" [Child 162]. That is not a very good discussion, however, because our sources for Otterburn are very brief, somewhat contradictory, and often not really intent on being actual history.
Needless to say, despite texts such as Child's "A" and "C," it was not Harry "Hotspur" Percy who killed Douglas at Otterburn. It is likely that Douglas's raid would not have been so successful had not the English been divided; as often happened, the Percies of Northumberland were feuding with the other great border family, the Nevilles (of Raby and Westmoreland).
Boardman notes that the Scots and French were creating a semi-coordinated attack on the English, with the inept government of Richard II not really able to do much about it (John of Gaunt had recently conducted a very damaging raid on Scotland, but the war in France was going badly).
It appears that the Scots sent down two armies, the western army raiding into Cumbria toward Carlisle and and the eastern one toward Northumberland and Newcastle. The Battle of Otterburn involved the eastern army as it retreated from County Durham.
It has been theorized that the two Scottish armies were supposed to meet for an attack on Carlisle. But Douglas decided to go his own way. Without Douglas's troops, the western army ended up turning back. A possible explanation, but hard to prove. For that matter, it might have been the other way: The western army might have been intended to turn east; Boardman argues that all our Scottish sources are biased by a political quarrel in Scotland between pro- and anti-Douglas factions.
Indeed, the death of Douglas almost certainly caused Scotland more harm than his victory gained them; apart from pushing Richard II of England to try harder to defeat them, the Earl had no son, and the quarrels over the Douglas succession led to many political difficulties.
Sir Philip Sidney, in his Apologie for Poetrie of 1595, write, "I neuer heard the olde song of Percy and Duglas (sic.), that I found not my heart mooued more then with a Trumpet." It is not possible, however, to tell whether this is a reference to "The Battle of Otterburn" [Child 161] or "The Hunting of the Cheviot" [Child 162]. A caution, pointed out by Friedman, pp. 33-34, is that Sidney was descended from a Duke of Northumberland. Not from the Percys, but still, the story had personal interest to him.
Even earlier, The Complaynt of Scotland of 1549 refers to separate songs "The hunttis of the cheviot" and "The persee & the mongomrye met"; again, we can't know which song is meant -- although, if both are references to the extant ballads, then "The Percy and Montgomery Met" is "Otterburn" and "The hunttis of the Cheviot" is that ballad. The Complaynt also mentions "That day, that day, that gentil day," which Child thinks another citation of a Harlaw ballad, but that is disputed. For citations, see James A. H. Murray, editor, The Complaynt of Scotland, volume I (Introduction plus Chapters I-XIII), Early English Text Society, 1872 (I use the 1906 reprint; the Complaynt was published in 1549), pp. lxxxv-lxxvii).
David Fowler, on p. 1774 of volume 6 of Severs/Hartung, describes MS. Cotton Cleopatra C.IV, the presumed earliest copy of the text: "The date of this manuscript has been disputed and indeed one authority states that 'it is not really a single MS. but a made-up collection'" -- but the text of this ballad "belong[s] to the first half of the sixteenth century." The manuscript is diverse: a poem on the Battle of Agincourt (not the Agincourt Carol; it's alliterative), a poem by John Lydgate about the young Henry VI; this song; a short poem opening "When that Phoebus beams shining as gold"; and several prophecies.
Some notes on the text itself (which may make more sense if you read the historical background at "The Hunting of the Cheviot"):
-- A, Stanza 1: It fell about the Lammas tide. Lammas is the beginning of August, and the Otterburn campaign took place in August -- although this gives us an interesting chronological problem. Sources give two dates for Otterburn, August 5 and August 19. The latter is almost certainly correct, but we can't assume any particular writer knew the correct date. If the date of Otterburn was August 19, then August 1 would be about when Douglas might have started to plan the raid -- but if Otterburn was August 5, then August 1 would be about the time Douglas actually rode out. So "Otterburn" is perhaps slightly more likely to support a date of August 5 than August 19 for the battle.
-- A, Stanza 2: The earl of Fife... he bound him over the Solway: A reference to Fife's western army starting on its way. Note that this actually happened, but it isn't mentioned in "The Hunting of the Cheviot."
-- A, Stanzas 3-6: The path the raiders took south. We don't have enough information to check each place, but the song says they went as far south as Newcastle before turning around, which is correct.
-- A, Stanza 8: It appears Hotspur was at Alnwick, not Newcastle, at the time of the Otterburn raid -- but the song is right that he "kept Berwick upon Tweed," which was part of his responsibility as a March warden. And Percy did head for Newcastle during the raid.
-- A, Stanza 13: Douglas tells Hotspur he will await him at Otterburn. That was, of course, where they actually fought, and the Scots did camp there -- but there is every reason to believe that they were simply resting, thinking they were safe; Hotspur's arrival surprised them.
-- A, Stanza 17: While there may have been a parley between Douglas and Hotspur -- after all, Douglas is said to have snatched Hotspur's pennon -- I haven't seen any evidence of them sending wine over the walls of Newcastle!
-- A, Stanza 18: Douglas is said to have camped at Otterburn on a Wednesday. This is wrong; the day of the battle (August 19 or, just possibly, August 5) was a Tuesday. So the day Douglas halted had to be Monday or Tuesday.
-- A, Stanzas 26-28: The Earl of "Mentaye" (Menteith?) and Earl of Huntey, Lords Bowghan, Johnstone, Maxwell, Sir Davy Scott, Sir Walter Steward, Sir John of Agurstone: Given our lack of information on who was in Douglas's army, we can't be sure that some of these weren't with Douglas -- but I think most of them weren't
-- A, Stanza 35: Hotspur is credited with 9000, the Scots with 40,000. Which makes it clear that this is an English song -- but it's twice absurd. We don't have any actual numbers for the armies at Otterburn, but 10,000 combined is probably high, and anything in excess of 15,000 combined is simply impossible. The Scots probably did have a slight edge in numbers, since the English were probably all mounted and Hotspur had very little time to gather a mounted army.
-- A, Stanza 37: "My Lord your father" refers to Hotspur's father, also Henry Percy, who was the first Earl of Northumberland and thus the man in charge of the defense. He had seemingly earlier ordered Hotspur to leave Alnwick but didn't want him to be too aggressive.
-- A, Stanza 38: "The Baron of Grastoke": The Greystokes were barons by this time (the first Baron Greystoke had been elevated to the peerage in the early 1320s), and they were based in the north of England, but I haven't heard of an incident like this.
-- A, Stanza 45: "The blodye harte in the Dowglas armes": The bloody heart was indeed a Douglas emblem, derived from the fact that, when Robert Bruce died, he wanted the Douglas to carry his heart to the Holy Land.
-- A, Stanza 46: The White Lion. This surprises me a bit. There was a lion on the Percy Family arms, but it was an azure lion (on a yellow background). The same stanza refers to a crescent, and the white crescent was also a Percy emblem. I wonder if the lines got mixed up.
-- A. Stanzas 47-48: Saint Amdrew/Saint George. Respectively the patrons of Scotland and England, though the former was better established at this time (since Saint George is basically an invented saint; see the notes to "Padstow May Day Song").
- RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 6.6
File: C161

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