Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 20, 1909.djvu/110

90 described, by my wife, as much less elaborate than that shown in Folk-Lore, vol. xix., Plates viii. and ix., and he had no flowers, unless this be an error of memory. However, he had flowers in the description published by Fyfe in 1851. At the moment I thought "Burry-man," and the burrs, came from a folk etymology of Burghman, and was analogous to "Burlymen," the men who "ride the Burly" at Selkirk Common-riding, that is, ride round the bounds of the town's lands. "Riding the Burly" is, really, riding the Burgh, territorially. But Jamieson does not note this use of Burly and Burlymen.

The use of burry or burrie as an epithet of a dog, meaning "rough," "shaggy," is only a guess of Jamieson's to explain the employment of the term by the old poet Henryson. He gives no other example of this use of the word, and prefers another guess;—that "burry" is bourreau, executioner. At Eton, I think a bureau is called a "burry," and bourreau might as easily become "burry" in old Scots. If so, the nameless Burry-man was once the hangman of Queensferry!

This does not help our quest. It would be desirable to learn why August 9 is the day of the Queensferry fair. Is it a local Saint's day? How old is the fair? Across the Forth, as at Cupar and St. Andrews, fairs fall in August; Miss Dickson might make researches into the dates and origins of these fairs. The Burry-man business is now a quête, as was Robin Hood's business in the sixteenth century, and probably earlier. But a quête, "asking money from door to door," is not necessarily "a modern form of sacrifice." (Miss Dickson, vol. xix., p. 387.) M. Henri Gaidoz, in Mélusine, published a minute inquiry into quêtes: I have not the book here, but Miss Dickson might examine it, in search for a connection, if any exists, between sacrifices and quêtes. The old Greek quête of the Swallow song, corresponding, at the close, almost verbally with the song of the Scottish quête of Hogmanay, was not a sacrificial hymn. Is the idea that the Burry-man was the decorated victim? I have no theory on the subject; Robin Hood and Maid Marion, who also had their quête, may also represent the victims in a rather remote human sacrifice at May Day.