Tam Lin (March 1, 1814)

“Tam Lin” is a ballad of the Scottish oral tradition. Walter Scott anthologized this version in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Borders. Like many ballads, it is precisely situated in the real world: Carterhaugh lies at the confluence of the rivers Ettrick and Yarrow about a mile from Selkirk. This is near to Walter Scott’s home at Abbotsford, and even nearer to the estate Claire inherited from her grandmother, Sunderland Hall.

The motif of holding on to a person through all sorts of transformations has an obvious appeal for a romance writer:

Hold me fast, and fear me not,

I'll do you nae harm.

The structures and devices used in oral literature to aid the singer’s memory still have a powerful hold on our imagination, too:

Janet has kilted her green kirtle

A little aboon her knee,

And she has broded her yellow hair

A little aboon her bree,

And she's awa to Carterhaugh

As fast as she can hie.

This occurs three times in the ballad, giving the singer a moment to pause and consider before they continue. It’s like a hinge in the narration.

Beautiful bits of description serve as props to memory, too, from individual phrases – the mirk and midnight hour, as green as glass, meek and mild – to an entire stanza:

The steed that my true love rides on

Is lighter than the wind,

Wi siller he is shod before,

Wi burning gowd behind.

Well, I reckon you can tell I’ve read David Buchan’s The Ballad and the Folk (1972)!

And there are moments of piercing sentiment, such as this one:

If my love were an earthly knight,

As he's an elfin grey,

I wad na gie my ain true-love

For nae lord that ye hae.

I did wonder whether this might give Justin pause as he sits there with Mr Baillie, at the bottom of the steps, listening in on the Lammond girls’ singing. The idea that Claire might not have wanted to marry him because she’s in love with someone else doesn’t seem to have occurred to him – but then, it wouldn’t. He’s well able to imagine that she has other things to worry about, that love is not everything, even to a woman, whatever Byron (‘Tis woman’s whole existence) may have to say about it. 

While looking for an image to illustrate my post, I came across this (literally) enchanting setup: https://carterhaughschool.com/