BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Recycled and Reincarnated Relics

of Ancient Poetry: Editorial Practice
in Percy’s Reliques
Minoru Mihara

hen in 1765 Thomas Percy published his compilation of old bal-

W lads, he titled the volumes Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.1 For
Percy, the word relique, or relic, bore an antiquarian connotation, associ-
ating the collection with fragments of ancient monuments, architectures,
or sculptures. Teresa Lynn Barnett argues that eighteenth-century anti-
quarians used the word “always clearly as a synonym for ‘remnant,’”
and that “in the usage of British and early American antiquarians . . .
the word served simply to denote the physical remains of the past.”2
An editorial source of Percy’s Reliques, his folio manuscript (MS), which

1. The collection appeared in five editions: Reliques of Ancient English Poetry:

Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets, (Chiefly
of the Lyric Kind.) Together with Some Few of Later Date, ed. Thomas Percy, 1st ed.,
3 vols. (London, 1765); 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London, 1767); 3rd ed., 3 vols. (London,
1775); 4th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1794); 5th ed., 3 vols. (London, 1812). In the textual
adductions from the Reliques, which will be demonstrated in this research note, no
substantial differences are found between these five editions, unless otherwise noted.
2. Teresa Lynn Barnett, “The Nineteenth-Century Relic: A Pre-History of the
Historical Artifact” (PhD diss., University of California at Los Angeles, 2008), 81–82.

Minoru Mihara is an Associate Professor of British and American Studies at Aichi Pre-
fectural University. He completed his PhD. at the University of Osaka. His journal ar-
ticles appear in Textual Cultures and the Electronic British Library Journal.

PBSA 114:3 (2020): 365–374 © 2020 Bibliographical Society of America.

All rights reserved. 0006-128X/2020/0114-0003$10.00
366 Bibliographical Society of America
was on the verge of ruin when discovered by accident,3 is described as a
“seventeenth-century commonplace book of popular songs and ballads”
that can be explained as metrical relics.4
The term relics can also refer to textual fragments. Focusing on the fact
that “Shakespeare’s texts were cut up, circulated, and consumed in various
forms” in the eighteenth century, Christopher Salamone explains that “his
words were scattered through essays, novels, and, most importantly, poetic
miscellanies,” and that the Bard’s fragmented texts became “‘relics’ to be
revered, memorized, and quoted” anew.5 The textual relics removed from
Shakespeare’s plays were recycled and presented as newly minted relics.6
In the compilation process, the Reliques underwent an editorial trans-
formation: “ancient” textual relics were reincarnated as new relics, namely,
sophisticated ballads; fresh relics were fashioned in verse miscellanies,
whether Percy’s Reliques or Shakespeare-related collections. Unlike the
Shakespearean texts that can be directly reused as sententiae or wise say-
ings after being extracted, Percy’s ballads were published as literary works
through a refinement procedure based on a textual combination among
some relics and others. This suggests that the Reliques carries both textual
and antiquarian implications; in the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-
century Britain, artisans freely combined discrete fragments and trans-
formed them into completed ancient marbles.7 Percy edited old ballads just
as antiquaries refurbished fragmentary artifacts.
Examining Percy’s position as a textual reconstructor and antiquarian,
this research note expands the scope of what relics cover, from Shake-
speare to the non-canonical anonymous authors who created ancient

3. The manuscript is now stored in the British Library (Additional MS 27879)

and was printed during the Victorian era (Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript: Ballads
and Romances, ed. John W. Hales and Frederick J. Furnivall, 3 vols. [London,
1867–68]).
4. Nick Groom, The Making of Percy’s “Reliques” (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 20.
5. Christopher Salamone, “ ‘The Fragments, Scraps, the Bits and Greasy Relics’:
Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Poetic Miscellany,” Eighteenth-Century
Life 41 ( January 2017): 7, https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-3695918. Salamone does
not make any special reference to Percy’s Reliques, giving only its name in one of his
notes.
6. Salamone, “ ‘The Fragments,’ ” 10.
7. Viccy Coltman, Fabricating the Antique: Neoclassicism in Britain, 1760–1800
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 179–80.
 Recycled and Reincarnated Relics of Ancient Poetry 367
ballads. It redefines the word relics as literary fragments or scraps that
were revived and recycled: fragmentary ballads and scraps taken from
other poems. Some ballads that Percy believed were incomplete before
being printed in the Reliques he perfected with the aid of snips transferred
from other poems. The incomplete part of these ballads and the recycled
snippets were forcibly united without any grounds for the connection. By
affording examples of the forcible union, this research note demonstrates
that in editing “Gil Morrice,” “Valentine and Ursine,” “Sir Aldingar,” and
“The Child of Elle” in his Reliques, Percy fleshed them out with bits from
other poems.
“gil morrice”
Gill Morice, an Ancient Scottish Poem was published in quarto by Rob-
ert and Andrew Foulis in 1755. In editing the Reliques, which offers this
ballad under the title of “Gil Morrice,” Percy made adjustments to
Foulis’s version by adding new lines, which form heterogeneous constit-
uents. He recycled other Reliques poems, “Fair Rosamond” and “Mar-
garet’s Ghost,” providing the hybrid text. Foulis’s version advertises that
“if any reader can render it more correct or complete, or can furnish the
printers with any other old Fragments of the like kind, they will very
much oblige them.”8 Ten years later, in the headnote to “Gil Morrice”
in the Reliques, Percy claims that “[i]n consequence of this advertisement six-
teen additional verses have been produced and handed about in manuscript,
which are here inserted in their proper places: (these are from ver. 109. to
ver. 121. and from ver. 124. to ver. 129.).”9 Percy suggests that he had dis-
covered some verses including those two Reliques poems, which could
serve as materials for a “more correct or complete” version, and added
the new lines recycled from the verses.
Despite Danni Lynn Glover’s argument that “he [Percy] composed
these lines himself,” they are partly derived from “Fair Rosamond” and
“Margaret’s Ghost”:10

8. Gill Morice, an Ancient Scottish Poem, 2nd ed. (Glasgow, 1755), 2, ESTC
T86552.
9. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:93.
10. Danni Lynn Glover, “Studies in Language Change in Bishop Percy’s Reliques of
Ancient English Poetry” (MA thesis, University of Glasgow, 2014), 77, http://theses
.gla.ac.uk/5145/.
368 Bibliographical Society of America
His [Gil’s] hair was like the threeds of gold,
Drawne frae Minervas loome:
His lipps like roses drapping dew,
His breath was a’ perfume.
His brow was like the mountain snae
Gilt by the the morning beam:
His cheeks like living roses glow:
His een like azure stream.
The boy was clad in robes of grene,
Sweete as the infant spring:
And like the mavis on the bush,
He gart the vallies ring.
The baron came to the grene wode,
Wi’ mickle dule and care,
And there he first spied Gill Morìce
Kameing his zellow hair:
That sweetly wavd around his face,
That face beyond compare:
He sang sae sweet it might dispel,
A’ rage but fell dispair.11

Clearly, the interpolation never arose from Percy’s experimental attempt

to compose all these poetic lines on his own. The first line of this cita-
tion was relocated from the ninth line of “Fair Rosamond”: “Her crisped
lockes like threads of golde.”12 “Margaret’s Ghost” also serves as a material
for Percy’s interpolation. Two lines from this poem, “The lark sung loud;
the morning smil’d, / With beams of rosy red,” were adapted into the de-
scription of Gil’s brow illuminated like snow by the morning beam and his
rosy cheeks.13 Percy made textual appropriations from other verses in or-
der to improve Foulis’s version. The intermingled textuality was respon-
sible for the reconstruction of “Valentine and Ursine” and “Sir Aldingar.”

11. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:98, ll. 109–28. The definite article is repeated in
l. 114.
12. Percy, Reliques (1765), 2:137.
13. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:313. Lines 57–58 have been quoted from “Margaret’s
Ghost.”
 Recycled and Reincarnated Relics of Ancient Poetry 369
“valentine and ursine” and “sir aldingar”
According to the headnote to “Valentine and Ursine” in the Reliques,
the original version is “an old MS poem in the Editor’s possession; which
being in a wretched corrupt state, the subject was thought worthy of some em-
bellishments.”14 This ballad might be viewed as “largely written by Percy,”
as is explained by M. G. Robinson and Leah Dennis.15 However, this
ballad was not produced solely by Percy’s own creative imagination. Percy
prepared “Valentine and Ursine” in such a way that it would be interwo-
ven with different elements. This section focuses on a golden mantle in
“Valentine and Ursine,” which was adapted from “Sir Lambewell” and
“Libius Disconius” in the folio MS and then recycled in another Reliques
ballad, “Sir Aldingar.”
In “Valentine and Ursine,” while hunting the French King Pepin finds
by chance a child in outstanding costume:
All in a scarlet kercher [kerchief ] lay’d
Of silk so fine and thin:
A golden mantle wrapt him round
Pinn’d with a silver pin.16
The child later turns out to be the king’s nephew. He grows up to be a
gallant knight, whose name is Valentine, and meets his mother (the king’s
sister), from whom he had been separated for a long time:
But, madam, said sir Valentine,
And knelt upon his knee;
Know you the cloak that wrapt your babe,
If you the same should see?
And pulling forth the cloth of gold,
In which himself was found;
The lady gave a sudden shriek,
And fainted on the ground.17
Perhaps Percy used the golden mantle in the Reliques because he discov-
ered descriptions of distinctive apparel in the MS poems unlinked with

14. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:260.

15. The Correspondence of Thomas Percy and Thomas Warton, ed. M. G. Robinson
and Leah Dennis, Percy Letters 3 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
1951), 65.
16. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:261, ll. 1.17–20.
17. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:276, ll. 2.197–204.
370 Bibliographical Society of America
“Valentine and Ursine”: “a mantle of white Ermines / [that] was fringed
about with gold fine” in “Sir Lambewell”;18 white kerchiefs “with good
gold wyer” and “a vyolett mantle” which is “ffurred well with gryse gay”
in “Libius Disconius.”19 In “Valentine and Ursine,” these garments were
adapted into the scarlet kerchief and the golden mantle with silver pin,
which involved color change.
The mantle is shared by a boy in the Reliques version of “Sir Aldingar,”
who is contextually irrelevant to Valentine. A gold mantle with which the
boy is embellished is lacking in its MS equivalent, which Percy believed to
have been defective:20
as he [a messenger] rode then by one riuer side,
there he mett with a litle Child,
he seemed noe more in a mans likenesse
then a child of 4 yeeres old;21
When lo! as she rode by a rivers side,
She met with a tinye boye.
A tinye boye she mette, God wot,
All clad in mantle of golde;
He seemed noe more in mans likenèsse,
Then a child of four yeere olde.22
Percy recycled Valentine’s mantle without providing any reasonable
grounds for the textual connection in “Sir Aldingar.” “Valentine and Ur-
sine” provided a poetic relic for textual hybridity. Indeed, we cannot rule
out the possibility that “Valentine and Ursine” received the golden mantle
from “Sir Aldingar.” The vital part, however, is Percy’s random experi-
ments to transfer poetic scraps from one ballad to another within the Rel-
iques, which, in some cases, expanded beyond the collection.
With textual relics recycled from multiple sources both inside and out-
side the Reliques, “Valentine and Ursine” was presented as a pastiche. As
the headnote to “Valentine and Ursine” explains, “the old metrical legend of

18. Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, 1:148; ll. 121–22 in the first
part have been quoted from “Sir Lambewell.”
19. Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, 2:448. These costumes
are described from ll. 898–902 in the fourth part of “Libius Disconius.”
20. Percy, Reliques (1765), 2:48.
21. Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, 1:170, ll. 107–10.
22. Percy, Reliques (1765), 2:53, ll. 119–24.
 Recycled and Reincarnated Relics of Ancient Poetry 371
Sir Bevis” is an editorial source for some parts in this ballad.23 “Sir Cau-
line” in the Reliques and Percy’s anthology of Norse poetry, Five Pieces of
Runic Poetry Translated from the Islandic Language (1763) can also give ev-
idence of their contribution to the pastiche making—recycling fiery eyes
(in lines 95 and 130 of the first part) from “Sir Cauline,”24 and gruesome
image of ravens and wolves (lines 43–44 of the second part) traceable to
Five Pieces of Runic Poetry.25 We will draw a further example of Percy’s
pastiche creation from the Reliques version of “The Child of Elle.”
“the child of elle”
Percy expected that Thomas Warton, a professor of poetry at Oxford
University, would produce a conclusion for “The Child of Elle.” Ulti-
mately Percy himself did so; however, this does not mean that the con-
clusion is a pure product of his imagination. Percy offered a hybrid con-
clusion comprising fragmentary relics separated from other ballads in
the Reliques, “Hardyknute,” “The Birth of St. George,” “Sweet William’s
Ghost,” and “The Children in the Wood.”
In the folio MS “The Child of Elle” consists of only thirty-nine lines.26
Percy revised this fragment to complete his 200 lines. In the headnote to
“The Child of Elle,” Percy implores his readers to pardon its inferiority
when compared with the original folio version, which was caused by
his additional stanzas, in consideration of “how difficult it must be to im-
itate the affecting simplicity and artless beauties of the original.”27 Therefore
Percy initially had it in mind to assign Thomas Warton the responsibility
to revive the ballad’s plainness. Percy’s letter to Warton, written in June
1763, reveals that he asked him to illustrate the technique for generating
the ending parts of this ballad.28 After this request, Percy implores War-
ton to write on his behalf: “I wish Mr Warton would attempt a conclusion
for me. I wish I could boast of his name among the contributors to my

23. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:260.

24. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:264, 266; “Sir Cauline” offers the fire-like eyes in l. 76
of the second part (1:47).
25. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:269; Five Pieces of Runic Poetry Translated from the
Islandic Language, ed. Thomas Percy (London, 1763), 35, 53.
26. Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript, 1:133–34.
27. Percy, Reliques (1765), 1:90.
28. Robinson and Dennis, Correspondence, 91.
372 Bibliographical Society of America
Collection [Percy’s Reliques] with his pen.”29 In the end, Percy recon-
structed the conclusion by borrowing poetic fragments from other Rel-
iques ballads, and thereby resulting in the ballad acquiring textual hybridity.
Percy’s conclusion describes Emmeline’s father, who reconsiders his
refusal to accept Elle and Emmeline as a married couple:
The baron [the father] he stroakt his dark-brown cheeke,
And turnde his heade asyde
To whipe awaye the starting teare,
He proudly strave to hyde.
In deepe revolving thought he stoode,
And musde [read: mused] a little space;
Then raisde faire Emmeline from the grounde,
With many a fond embrace.
Here take her, child of Elle, he sayd,
And gave her lillye hand,
Here take my deare and only child,
And with her half my land:
Thy father once mine honour wrongde
In dayes of youthful pride;
Do thou the injurye repayre
In fondnesse for thy bride.
And as thou love her, and hold her deare,
Heaven prosper thee and thine:
And nowe my blessing wend wi’ thee,
My lovelye Emmeline.30
The reconstructed conclusion comprises extracts from other ballads. The
words “his dark-brown cheeke” in the beginning of the quotation are also
seen in line 57 of “Hardyknute”: “Then reid reid grow his dark-brown
cheiks.”31 In addition, line 54 of “The Birth of St. George” uses the same
phrase as the eighth line above: “Then giving many a fond embrace.”32
Also, Percy reused the floral description of a female hand from line 37

29. Robinson and Dennis, Correspondence, 92.

30. Percy, Reliques (1765), 1:98, ll. 181–200.
31. Percy, Reliques (1765), 2:91.
32. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:218.
 Recycled and Reincarnated Relics of Ancient Poetry 373
of “Sweet William’s Ghost”: “She stretched out her lilly-white hand.”33
The father’s prayer, “Heaven prosper thee and thine,” is recycled from
line 61 of “The Children in the Wood”: “God never prosper me nor
mine.”34 Originally, Percy had no intention of making Emmeline’s father
offer a prayer to heaven. The eight-page transcript of “The Child of Elle”
in Percy’s handwriting, filed at the British Library,35 provides another
version of the last stanza on its seventh page, which was given three x
marks and canceled by Percy:
And as thou love her & hold her deare
So prosper thou & thine
And now my bleßing on you both
on
Thee and thy Emmeline!36
This cancelation indicates that “The Children in the Wood” is a textual
source that provides a finishing touch for the transcript version of
“The Child of Elle.” Together with a scrap relic torn off from “The
Children in the Wood,” those snatched from “Hardyknute,” “The Birth
of St. George,” and “Sweet William’s Ghost” made a textual contribu-
tion to the reconstruction of the imperfect ballad “The Child of Elle.”
This reconstruction reveals that the textual diversity was created by frag-
mented, heterogeneous relics.
conclusion
Glenn W. Most argues that the attempt to reckon the lost whole from a
fragment “poses a formidable and appealing intellectual challenge that can
exert a compelling attraction because it seems to require scholars to inter-
vene into the understanding of tradition by deploying not only their eru-
dition but also their imagination in ways apparently more creative.”37

33. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:130. In the fourth and fifth editions of the Reliques,
“The Child of Elle” presents “lillye white hand” instead of “lillye hand.” See Percy,
Reliques (1794), 1:117; (1812), 1:120.
34. Percy, Reliques (1765), 3:174.
35. Undated autograph drafts related to “The Child of Elle,” Additional MS
42560, ff. 117–20, British Library.
36. Additional MS 42560, f. 120r. Percy’s handwritten conclusion of this ballad,
including the canceled last stanza, is given on pp. 6–7 (ff. 119v–20r). In this citation,
wherein the Eszett is used, the possibility of it being single cannot be denied.
37. Glenn W. Most, “On Fragments,” in The Fragment: An Incomplete History,
ed. William Tronzo (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2009), 18.
374 Bibliographical Society of America
On the contrary, Percy avoided the creative and imaginative course of ac-
tion. He did not imagine a lion from its claw; instead, he tried to create the
lion out of different, heterogeneous component parts that were already ex-
isting and readily available, as if recycling feline whiskers or horsehair. In
this recycling procedure, major and minor relics (something to be filled
and something to fill) were forcibly connected and heterogeneously com-
pounded. As a relic combiner, Percy resurrected some deficient ballads us-
ing scraps fragmentized from other poems.