Note 79 — LETTERS ON ART.
Reading edition
In illustration of the old Scottish ballad of “Burd Helen,” who, fearing her lover’s desertion, followed him, dressed as a foot-page, through flood, if not through fire—
“Lord John he rode, Burd Helen ran, The live-lang sumer’s day, Until they cam’ to Clyde’s Water, Was filled frae bank to brae. “ ‘See’st thou yon water, Helen,’ quoth he, ‘That flows frae bank to brim?’ ‘I trust to God, Lord John,’ she said, ‘You ne’er will see me swim.’ ”
This picture (No. 141 in the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1858) was first exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1856. In the postscript to his Academy Notes of that year, Mr. Ruskin, after commenting on the “crying error of putting it nearly out of sight,” so that he had at first hardly noticed it, estimates this picture as second only to the “Autumn Leaves” of Mr. Millais in that exhibition. The following is a portion of his comment on it: “I see just enough of the figures to make me sure that the work is thoughtful and intense in the highest degree. The pressure of the girl’s hand on her side; her wild, firm, desolate look at the stream—she not raising her eyes as she makes her appeal, for fear of the greater mercilessness in the human look than in the glaze of the gliding water—the just choice of the type of the rider’s cruel face, and of the scene itself—so terrible in haggardness of rattling stones and ragged heath,—are all marks of the action of the very grandest imaginative power, shortened only of hold upon our feelings, because dealing with a subject too fearful to be for a moment believed true.”
The picture was originally purchased by Mr. John Miller, of Liverpool; at the sale of whose collection by Christie and Manson, two years later, in 1858, it fetched the price of two hundred guineas. At the same sale the “Blind Girl,” alluded to in the previous letter, was sold for three hundred.
For the poem illustrated by the picture, see Aytoun’s “Ballads of Scotland,” i. 219, where a slightly different version of it is given: it may also be found in “Percy’s Reliques” (vol. iii. p. 59), under the title of “Child Waters.” Other versions of this ballad, and other ballads of the same name, and probably origin, may be found in Jameson’s collection, vol. i. p. 117, vol. ii. p. 376, in Buchan’s “Ancient Ballads of the North,” ii. 29 (1879 ed.) and in “Four Books of Scottish Ballads,” Edin., 1868, Bk. ii. p. 21, where it is well noted that “Burd Helen” corresponds to the “Proud Elise” of northern minstrels, “La Prude Dame Elise” of the French, and the “Gentle Lady Elise” of the English—(Burd, Prud, Preux). It is also possible that it is a corruption of Burdalayn, or Burdalane, meaning an only child, a maiden, etc.