Page:Posthumous poems (IA posthumousswinb00swin).pdf/18

 of Scales was founded in 1299, and continued to exist until 1460, when the seventh and last Lord Scales, who had been a great enemy of the common people and a supporter of Henry IV against Jack Cade at home and the Normans abroad, is said to have been murdered. The barony then fell into abeyance. But these Scaleses were a Herefordshire family, and had no special border reputation. If Swinburne intended to describe Robert, first Lord Scales, that worthy, who died in 1305, had been most active in France. The ballad of "Lord Scales" has nothing to do with the universal poison-ballad of Lord Randal. Nor has "Earl Robert" any connection with the ballad-hero whose mother poisons him because he has married Mary Florence against the mother's will. This is an instance in which Swinburne has retold a well-known ballad-legend; there are four versions of the story in Motherwell, and they all differ from Swinburne's.

But a special interest attaches to "The Worm of Spindlestonheugh," where we find Swinburne attempting to reconstruct the lost work of a real Northumbrian minstrel. There is known to have existed an authentic ballad of "The Laidley Worm of Spindlestoneheugh." When Hutchinson was writing his History of Northumberland in 1768, a local clergyman, the Reverend Robert