He hadna gane a step, a step, A step, but barely ane, 70 When a bout flew out of our goodly ship, And the salt sea it came in.
"Gae fetch a web o' the silken claith, Another o' the twine, And wap them into our ship's side, 75 And letna the sea come in."
They fetched a web o' the silken claith, Another o' the twine, And they wapped them roun' that gude ship's side, But still the sea came in. 80
"O laith laith were our gude Scots lords To weet their cork-heeled shoon! But lang or a' the play was played, They wat their hats aboon.
And mony was the feather-bed 85 That flatter'd on the faem; And mony was the gude lord's son That never mair cam hame.
The ladyes wrang their fingers white, The maidens tore their hair; 90 A' for the sake of their true loves, For them they'll see nae mair.
O lang lang may the ladyes sit, Wi' their fans into their hand, Before they see Sir Patrick Spens 95 Come sailing to the strand!
And lang lang may the maidens sit, Wi' their goud kaims in their hair, A' waiting for their ain dear loves, For them they'll see nae mair. 100
O forty miles off Aberdeen 'Tis fifty fathoms deep, And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens Wi' the Scots lords at his feet.
From _Reliques of English Poetry_, i. 65.
"This romantic legend," says Percy, "is given from two copies, one of them in the Editor's folio MS., but which contained very great variations." This second copy has been conjectured to be of Percy's own making, the ballad never having been heard of by any one else, out of his manuscript. Judging from the internal evidence, the alterations made in the printed text were not very serious.
King Easter and King Wester have appeared in the ballad of _Fause Foodrage_, (vol. iii. p. 40.) In another version of the same, they are called the Eastmure king and the Westmure king, (Motherwell's _Minstrelsy_, p. lix.) There is also a tale cited in the _Complaynt of Scotland_, (i. 98,) of a king of Estmureland that married the daughter of the king of Westmureland. This is plausibly supposed by Ritson to have been a romance of Horn, in which case the two countries should mean England and Ireland. King Esmer is one of King Diderik's champions (in the Danish ballad, _Kong Diderik og hans Kæmper_), and the father of Svend Vonved (in _Svend Vonved_). In the Flemish and German romances of _The Knight of the Swan_, Essmer, or Esmerés, is one of the seven sons of Oriant, and in _Le Dit de Flourence de Romme_ (Jubinal, _Nouveau Recueil de Contes_, etc., i. 88), Esmère is a Roman prince. (Grundtvig, i. 78, 236.) For the nonce, we are told that King Estmere was an English prince, and we may, perhaps, infer from the eighth stanza that King Adland's dominions were on the same island. But no subject of inquiry can be more idle than the geography of the romances.