Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/392

 weather forecast: ‘Thomas presaged to the Earl of March that the next day would be windy; the weather proved calm; but news arrived of the death of Alexander III, which gave an allegorical turn to the prediction, and saved the credit of the prophet. It is worthy of notice that some of the rhymes vulgarly ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune are founded apparently on meteorological observation. And doubtless before the invention of barometers a weather-wise prophet might be an important personage’ (‘Sir Tristrem,’ in Works, v. 12). The incident occurred in 1285, and Harry the Minstrel associates Thomas with a critical passage in the life of Wallace in 1296 or 1297, when seized by English soldiers and left for dead at Ayr. Thomas Rimour in to the faile was than. As the son of Thomas had already in 1294 devised the paternal estate, it seems natural to suppose that Thomas was dead three years later, but Dr. Murray inclines to the theory that he was still alive in retirement at the Faile or Feale, a Cluniac priory near Ayr (Introduction, p. xvi).

The reputed sayings of Thomas were proverbial soon after his death. Barbour (c. 1375) refers to a prophecy concerning Robert I. After Bruce had slain the Red Cumyn at Dumfries in 1306 the Bishop of St. Andrews is introduced (Bruce, bk. ii. v. 85–7) as saying: sekerly I hop Thomas prophecy Off hersildoune sall weryfyd be. Androw of Wyntoun affirms that ‘qwhylum spak Thomas’ of the battle of Kilblane fought by Sir Andrew Moray against the Baliol faction in 1335 (Orygynale, bk. viii. c. 31). Sir Thomas Grey, constable of Norham, in his Norman-French ‘Scalacronica,’ written during his captivity at Edinburgh Castle in 1355, alludes to the predictions of Merlin, which, like those of ‘William Banastre ou de Thomas de Erceldoun … furount ditz en figure.’ But there is yet earlier evidence of the popular belief in his prophetic gifts. Among the Harleian MSS. (No. 2253, l. 127) in the British Museum we find a prediction written before 1320, with the superscription, ‘La countesse de Donbar demanda a Thomas de Essedoune quant la guere descoce prendreit fyn.’ The answers to this question are given in seventeen brief paragraphs in a southern (or south midland) dialect, and probably by an English author. They describe the various improbabilities which are to take place before the war shall come to an end within twenty-one years. From one vaticination, ‘when bambourne [Bannockburn] is donged Wyth dedemen,’ it is highly probable that the piece was composed on the eve of the battle of Bannockburn in 1314, and the forgery circulated under the name of the national seer in order to damp the courage of the Scots and to give good omen to the English. Twenty-one years back was 1293, when Thomas may have been alive. The lines were first printed by Pinkerton (Ancient Scottish Poems, 1786, i. lxxviii), who is followed by W. Scott (Border Minstrelsy, iv. 130) in assuming the Countess of Dunbar to be the famous Black Agnes, the defender of Dunbar Castle in 1337; but this is not possible from the age of the Harleian MS., and the countess is no doubt meant as the wife of the earl to whom Thomas predicted the death of Alexander III (, Introduction, p. xix).

The earliest composition attributed to him in his double character of seer and poet, the romance of Thomas and the ‘ladye gaye,’ which is, of course, a work long posterior to his date, may be placed shortly after 1400. He is represented as meeting the lady on Huntly Banks by Eildon Tree, as making love to her, and being carried to her country, which is not in heaven, paradise, hell, purgatory, or ‘on middel-erthe,’ but ‘another cuntre.’ There he lives for three years or more. The time comes when the customary tribute to hell has to be paid, and, so that he should not be chosen by the fiend, the elf-queen conducts him back to earth. She gives him the power of prophecy as a token, and in compliance with repeated wishes furnishes him with a specimen of her own art in a prospective view of the wars between England and Scotland from the time of Bruce to the death of Robert III in 1406. The poem is in three fyttes, and has come down to us in four complete copies. The earliest is the Thornton MS. at Cambridge, written 1430–40. All the copies are in English, and speak of an older story, Scottish, possibly the actual work of Thomas. The opinion of Professor Child is that the original story ‘was undoubtedly a romance which narrated the adventure of Thomas with the elf-queen simply, without specification of his prophecies. In all probability it concluded, in accordance with the ordinary popular tradition, with Thomas's return to fairyland after a certain time passed in this world. For the history of Thomas and the elf-queen is but another version of what is related of Ogier le Danois and Morgan the Fay’ (Popular Ballads, pt. ii. 1884, 319). Dr. Murray considers that as a whole the prophecies flow naturally from the tale, and have not been tacked on by a subsequent writer. ‘The poem in its present form bears evidence of being later than 1401, the date of