the invasion of Scotland by Henry IV, or at least 1388, the date of the battle of Otterbourne’ (Introd. pp. xxvi, xxiv). Brandl is of opinion that the writer was an Englishman. The whole of the events under fytte ii. can be identified, and, with one exception, are arranged in chronological order. Most of the predictions in the third fytte appear to be old legends adapted to later requirements. The first fytte was printed by Scott as an appendix to the modern traditionary ballad in the ‘Border Minstrelsy,’ and the whole by Jamieson (Popular Ballads and Songs, Edinburgh, 1806), by Dr. Laing (Select Remains, 1822, new ed. 1885), and by Halliwell-Phillipps (Illustr. of Fairy Mythology, 1845). The most complete edition is that of Dr. J. A. H. Murray, ‘The Romance and Prophecies printed from Five MSS., with illustrations from the Prophetic Literature of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ (E. E. T. S., 1875), with valuable introduction and notes. A. Brandl also edited the romance in 1880 at Berlin. Professor Child gives several texts of the first fytte with an introduction (Popular Ballads, pt. ii. 1884, 317–29).
‘During the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries,’ says Chambers, ‘to fabricate a prophecy in the name of Thomas the Rhymer appears to have been found a good stroke of policy on many occasions’ (Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 212). Collections were made of these forebodings by various persons, generally in alliterative verse. The earliest printed edition is ‘The whole Prophesie of Scotland, England, and some part of France and Denmark, prophesied bee mervellous Merling, Beid, Bertlington, Thomas Rymour, Waldhaue, Eltraine, Banester, and Sibbilla, all according in one,’ R. Waldegrave, 1603, sm. 8vo. This was collated with an edition of 1615 and reproduced by the Bannatyne Club (1833). Numerous reprints in chapbook form have appeared down to quite recent times. Certain predictions of Thomas were printed by the Rev. J. R. Lumby from a manuscript of the early part of the fifteenth century (Bernardus de Cura Rei Fam., with some Early Scottish Prophecies, E. E. T. S., 1870). At the time of the accession of James VI to the English throne the reputation of Thomas as a successful prophet was renewed. The Earl of Stirling and Drummond of Hawthornden, in dedicating to the king their respective works, ‘Monarchicke Tragedies’ and ‘Forth Feasting,’ refer to the ‘propheticke rimes’ of Thomas foreshadowing the event. Archbishop Spottiswoode speaks of Thomas ‘having foretold, so many ages before, the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland in the ninth degree of the Bruce's blood’ (History of the Church of Scotland, Spottiswoode Soc. 1851, i. 93). The sayings were consulted even so late as during the Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745. The name of Thomas of Erceldoune was reverenced in England as well as in Scotland. He is always coupled in popular lore with Merlin and other English soothsayers, and it is remarkable that all the texts of his romances and predictions are preserved in English transcripts. More or less plausible explanations of his sayings are still applied to modern events.
To Thomas of Erceldoune is attributed a poem on the Tristrem story, belonging to the Arthurian cycle of romance, which has reached us in a single copy, the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates' Library, transcribed by a southern hand about 1450 from a northern text written probably between 1260 and 1300. It commences with a reference to Thomas, and there are other allusions (ll. 397, 408, 2787). Robert Manning of Brunne connects the romance with the name of Thomas. Scott and Irving considered the poem the undoubted work of Thomas, but Warton, Wright, Halliwell, G. Paris, Murray, and Kölbing agree in thinking that when the unknown translator from the French original found a Thomas mentioned he himself inserted the designation of Erceldoune. The latest editor, Mr. McNeill, contends that ‘the reasonable probability is that Robert Mannyng of Brunne was right when he ascribed the poem to Thomas of Erceldoune’ (Sir Tristrem, p. xliv). It was printed for the first time by Sir W. Scott, ‘Sir Tristrem, a metrical romance of the 13th century, by Thomas of Erceldoune, called the Rhymer,’ London, 1804, large 8vo. A second edition appeared in 1806, a third in 1811, again in 1819, and in the collective editions of the poetical works of Scott. The first issue of Scott's text swarms with errors; some are corrected in the later editions, which are still very inaccurate according to Kölbing. Scott's 1806 text with a German glossary is reprinted in ‘Gottfried's von Strassburg Werke, herausg. durch H. von der Hagen,’ Breslau, 1823. A considerable portion of the text from Scott's ‘Poetical Works,’ v. 1833, is reproduced with introduction and notes by E. Mätzner (Altenglische Sprachproben, i. 231–242). The first critical text is that of E. Kölbing (Die nordische und die englische Version der Tristansage, Heilbronn, 1882, vol. ii.), with an elaborate introduction and complete glossary. The text has been again thoroughly edited by Mr. G. P. McNeill (Scottish Text Soc. 1886), with introduction, notes, and glossary. The numerous local tra-
