THE BALLAD O JAMES LINDSAY O POSEN

Daniil Lazko

An original Scots historical ballad in Common Measure · Poznań, 1654

I

He cam in at the Posen port

Wi stour upon his shoon,

A letter buttoned at his breist

And nae friend in the toun.

II

The carts gaed by the weigh-hoose wa,

The bells cried oot the hour;

He speired his gate in college Latin

Aneath the tolbooth tower.

III

Doun the Jewish Street he gaed

Amang the furs and wares,

And heard, abune the Polish tongue,

A Scots voice on the stairs.

IV

James Lindsay sat at his ain buird,

His coat o black braid-claith,

An Aiberdeen man, a burgess sworn,

And the burgh-book had his aith.

V

Men said, when Scots in Poland paid

Their siller for the king,

Five-and-forty hunder florins

Were Lindsay’s, ring on ring.

VI

He broke the seal, he read it through,

He didna bid him sit;

He lookit at the laddie’s coat

And the worn sole at his fit.

VII

He speired him as a bailie speirs

A packman at the Cross,

That weighs the man, and weighs his pack,

And bites his groats for dross.

VIII

“Wha’s your faither? Whaur’s his hame?

Wha schuled ye, and hoo lang?

Whit roads hae brocht ye here tae me,

And whit road will ye gang?”

IX

He answered him as he was bid,

The college and the sea,

And last the names his parents bore:

Gordon, and Ogilvie.

X

“Gordon and Ogilvie!” he cried,

“Twa clans o great renoon!

Sure ye maun be a gentleman,”

And he lookit at his shoon.

XI

The laddie kent it for a scorn;

He kent it, and said nocht.

The letter lay atween them baith

That the lang road had brocht.

XII

Whit Lindsay thocht he didna tell,

Nor Gordon ever kent;

But syne he set a stool at the buird,

And bread and ale were sent.

XIII

He bade a while by Warta side

Amang his kintramen,

Whaur ae Scots door led tae the neist,

And that tae anither ben.

XIV

Robert Farquhar, James Fergusson,

And James Lindsay, James White,

James Watson, and some ithers mair

That Gordon didna write.

XV

There was a young lord, Opaliński,

Was ridin furth tae see

The warld ayont the Polish march,

And wantit company.

XVI

Sae ae Scots word gaed tae the lord,

And ane, and ane again,

And Lindsay’s word was in amang

The words o the ither men.

XVII

And when he rade, the siller cam

Frae mair nor ae Scots hand,

Wi linen for his back, and boots

Weel soled for ony land.

XVIII

He rade oot at the Posen port

Amang the young lord’s train;

The letter bade in Lindsay’s hoose,

The road ran on again.

Literary Analysis

1. Form and metre

The ballad is written in Common Measure: eighteen quatrains, seventy-two lines, alternating four-stress and three-stress lines, rhymed ABCB. The metre is iambic in its base but follows the licences of the traditional ballad: headless lines (Doun the Jewish Street he gaed), anapaestic substitutions (But syne he set a stool at the buird), feminine endings in the unrhymed lines (He speired his gate in college Latin), and a trochaic opening where a number must be spoken as it is spoken (Five-and-forty hunder florins). One rhyme falls on a secondary stress, as in the older Scots ballads: sea / Ogilvie. All the others are fully stressed, among them shoon / toun, king / ring, Cross / dross and nocht / brocht. The Polish name is given its own penultimate stress, Opaliński, and the line is built around it with the formula There was a young lord, which supplies the fourth beat and the traditional narrative entry at once.

2. Architecture

The poem moves in six compressed scenes: arrival (I–III), Lindsay at his table (IV–VI), the examination and the clan names (VII–X), silence and the turn (XI–XII), the Scottish circle and the recommendation (XIII–XVI), and departure (XVII–XVIII). There is no introductory history of Scottish migration and no concluding moral. The narrative enters on a traveller at a gate and leaves on the same gate, and everything between is scene, speech or object.

3. The letter as structural axis

The letter of recommendation, the one document Gordon carries, appears three times and changes function each time:

A letter buttoned at his breist …

The letter lay atween them baith …

The letter bade in Lindsay’s hoose …

First it is a possession and a hope; then it lies on the table as a formal claim that has not yet become trust; finally it stays behind when the man it introduced has gone. The letter opens the door, then stands between the two men, then becomes superfluous: what replaces it is the spoken word of several countrymen (XVI). The motif carries the social history of the episode without a single explanatory line.

4. James Lindsay: character through action

Lindsay is established by setting, clothing and legal standing before he speaks: his own table, a coat of black broadcloth, the burgess oath in the burgh book. His first act towards Gordon is a refusal so small it is almost invisible, He didna bid him sit, and his first look goes to the worn sole of the young man’s shoe. The simile of VII places him socially: he questions Gordon as a burgh magistrate questions a pedlar at the market cross, weighing the man with his pack and biting his coins to test the metal.

The reversal is given no psychology. Stanza XII states the limit of the narrator’s knowledge (Whit Lindsay thocht he didna tell, / Nor Gordon ever kent) and then records only an act: a stool set at the same table where the young man was not asked to sit, and bread and ale brought. The word syne, “afterwards”, keeps faith with Gordon’s own account, in which Lindsay’s kindness follows the interview rather than interrupting it. Lindsay is neither villain nor saint; the poem lets the sting and the generosity stand side by side.

5. “Gordon and Ogilvie!”

Stanza X is the historical nucleus. Gordon’s diary preserves the words in English; the ballad renders them in Scots and cuts them to the metre, keeping the essential irony: Sure ye maun be a gentleman. The line that follows is the poem’s own and carries the sting: And he lookit at his shoon. Great clan names are measured against a worn pair of shoes. The rhyme renoon / shoon closes the joke physically, and the word shoon returns deliberately from the first stanza, so that the reader sees the shoes twice: once as dust from the road, once as evidence against a pedigree.

Gordon’s answer is silence. He kent it, and said nocht: the diary records that he understood the derision and did not retaliate, and the ballad keeps exactly that. The rhyme word nocht passes directly into the first line of XII, Whit Lindsay thocht, so that one man’s unspoken reply sits against the other man’s unspoken thought.

6. Money and valuation

Money appears three times, each with a different function. In V it is rumour and sound: the florins paid for the exiled king, ring on ring, attributed with the caution of Men said. In VII it is suspicion: the magistrate bites the pedlar’s groats for dross. In XVII it is gift: silver comes frae mair nor ae Scots hand. The sequence moves from what Lindsay is said to have given a king, through the testing of a poor man’s worth, to what the community gives the poor man. The poem does not comment on the contrast.

7. The Scottish network

Stanzas XIII–XVI deliberately dissolve Lindsay into a group. The image of doors (Whaur ae Scots door led tae the neist, / And that tae anither ben) shows a diaspora as a physical sequence of houses and inner rooms. Stanza XIV gives the five names in the order in which Gordon writes them, and its last line, That Gordon didna write, turns the diary’s “and others” into verse: the poem acknowledges the limit of its source. Stanza XVI then states Lindsay’s share with exactness: And Lindsay’s word was in amang / The words o the ither men. He contributes; he does not arrange.

8. Frame and ending

The first and last stanzas open with the same line structure: He cam in at the Posen port and He rade oot at the Posen port. The traveller arrives on foot, dusty and friendless; he leaves mounted, in a nobleman’s retinue, with linen, boots weel soled for ony land, and money from several hands. The boots answer the worn sole of VI without comment. The final couplet divides the story between its two men: the letter stays in Lindsay’s house, and the road goes on. The reader who knows Patrick Gordon’s later life knows how far that road went; the ballad does not say so.

9. Historical discipline in the verse

The poem distinguishes its levels of certainty within the verse itself. Documented events from Gordon’s diary are narrated directly. The identification of the burgess of 1650 with the payer of the 1651 subsidy, which the SSNE database records as probable, is introduced by Men said. Everything added for the life of the scene (the weigh-house and tolbooth tower, the stool, the bread and ale, the linen and boots, the letter left in the house) belongs to ordinary reconstruction of the physical world and makes no claim about Lindsay’s biography, motives, family or trade. The Historical Note sets these levels out in detail.

10. Language and voice

The Scots is literary and speakable: speir, syne, ben, kent, buird, siller, nocht, used where they are the natural word, without comic interjections, Highland stereotype or excessive phonetic spelling. The Border ballad supplies the structure: abrupt entry, compressed scenes, direct speech, incremental repetition (Whit roads … whit road; And ane, and ane again) and a closing image in place of a moral. Ramsay’s conversational ease is heard in Lindsay’s questions and his jibe; Fergusson’s urban exactness in the carts, the weigh-house wall and the stairs; Scott’s sense of travellers crossing a large historical world in the Posen port and the Polish march; Burns’s compact irony in And he lookit at his shoon; Hogg’s gap between conduct and motive in Whit Lindsay thocht he didna tell. These are functions, not imitations, and the voice is the author’s own.

Glossary: Scots – English

Words are glossed in the sense in which they are used in the ballad. Roman numerals refer to stanzas.

Scots English Stanza

abune above III

ae one (before a noun) XIII, XVI, XVII

aith oath IV

amang among III, XIII, XVI, XVIII

ane one (standing alone) XVI

aneath beneath II

atween between XI

ayont beyond XV

bade stayed, remained XIII, XVIII

bailie burgh magistrate VII

baith both XI

ben inner room of a house XIII

braid-claith broadcloth, fine woollen cloth IV

breist breast I

brocht brought VIII, XI

buird table IV, XII

burgess enfranchised citizen of a burgh, with trading rights IV

burgh-book register of burgesses IV

cam came I, XVII

cried oot called out; (of bells) struck II

Cross market cross; the market place of a burgh VII

didna did not VI, XII, XIV

doun down III

dross base metal; worthless alloy VII

faither father VIII

fit foot VI

frae from XVII

furth forth, abroad XV

gaed went II, III, XVI

gang go VIII

gate way, road (as in “speir one’s gate”, ask the way) II

groats small silver coins VII

hame home VIII

hoo how VIII

hoose house XVIII

hunder hundred V

ither other; ithers, others XIV, XVI

kent knew; understood XI, XII

kintramen countrymen, fellow Scots XIII

laddie lad, youth VI, XI

lang long VIII, XI

lookit looked VI, X

mair more XIV, XVII

march border, frontier XV

maun must X

nae no I

neist next XIII

nocht nothing XI

nor than (after a comparative: mair nor, more than) XVII

o of passim

ony any XVII

oot out II, XVIII

packman pedlar, travelling merchant with a pack VII

port town gate I, XVIII

rade rode XVII, XVIII

renoon renown X

ring on ring coin ringing on coin as it is counted out V

sae so XVI

schuled schooled, educated VIII

shoon shoes I, X

siller silver; money V, XVII

speir ask, question; speired, asked II, VII

stour dust I

syne then, afterwards XII

tae to VIII, XIII, XV, XVI

thocht thought XII

tolbooth town hall (here the Poznań town hall with its tower) II

toun town I

twa two X

wa wall II

wantit wanted; lacked XV

warld world XV

weel well XVII

weigh-hoose weigh-house, the civic hall for official weighing of goods II

wha who; wha’s, who is VIII

whaur where VIII, XIII

whit what VIII, XII

wi with I, XVII

Historical Note: James Lindsay of Poznań

Identity

The James Lindsay (Lindesay) of this ballad is the Scottish burgess of Poznań (German Posen) whom the young Patrick Gordon met in 1654. He is not the Jesuit James Lindsay who studied at Braunsberg in 1596 and entered the Society of Jesus in 1601, the subject of the companion ballad The Lindesay frae Braunsberg. The two men share a name, a Scottish origin and a Polish-Prussian setting, and nothing else that is documented. They belong to different generations and different ways of life: one a religious scholar, the other a burgher of a trading city.

What the records establish

James Lindsay was a Scot from Aberdeen and is recorded as a burgess of Poznań in 1650. The Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database (SSNE) records that he was probably the same James Lindsay who paid 4,500 florins towards the subsidy raised among the Scots of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for the exiled King Charles II in 1651. The identification is probable, not proven.

In 1654 Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries (1635–1699), then a young man of about nineteen who had left the Jesuit college at Braunsberg, came to Poznań with a letter of recommendation addressed to Lindsay. Gordon’s diary records the meeting in these stages:

Lindsay first questioned him imperiously about his parents, his education, his travels and his intentions. When Gordon named his parents, Lindsay answered mockingly: “Gordon and Ogilvie! These are two great clannes, sure you must be a gentleman!” Gordon understood the remark as derision but did not retaliate. Lindsay was afterwards kind to him.

Gordon stayed for a time among his countrymen in Poznań, naming Robert Farquhar, James Fergusson, James Lindsay, James White, James Watson “and others”. Together they recommended him for service in the retinue of a young nobleman of the Opaliński family who was preparing to travel abroad. When he left, his compatriots supplied him generously with money and other necessities.

Lindsay’s documented role is therefore twofold: he was the addressee of the letter and the examiner at the first meeting, and he was one of the group of Scots who afterwards helped Gordon. The recommendation to Opaliński was collective. No source credits him alone with obtaining Gordon’s place.

Records that must be kept separate

Several other Lindsay records from the Commonwealth are sometimes drawn into discussions of this man. None of them is shown to concern him, and the ballad does not use them.

The first is James Lindsay the Jesuit of Braunsberg (studies 1596, Society of Jesus 1601), a different person of an earlier generation. The second is the letters patent of 1680 concerning a James Lindsay’s Scottish noble status. The third is the Lindsay family recorded as Lindesin in the recognition of the Sejm of 1764. No documented genealogical link connects either of these to the Poznań burgess of 1650. In particular, there is no evidence that Gordon’s Lindsay received the Polish indygenat (naturalisation as a noble of the Commonwealth), and later records of noble status among Lindsays in Poland do not establish it.

Documented fact and poetic reconstruction

The ballad keeps three levels of certainty apart. The table below shows where each element comes from.

Element Source / status Stanza

Lindsay a Scot from Aberdeen; burgess of Poznań (1650) SSNE IV

4,500 florins towards the 1651 subsidy for Charles II SSNE (probable identification); marked in the verse by “Men said” V

Letter of recommendation carried to Lindsay (1654) Gordon’s diary I, VI, XI, XVIII

Questions on parents, schooling, travels, intentions Gordon’s diary VIII

“Gordon and Ogilvie!” and the mocking “gentleman” Gordon’s diary (rendered in Scots) X

Gordon perceives derision, does not retaliate Gordon’s diary XI

Lindsay afterwards kind Gordon’s diary XII (“syne”)

Farquhar, Fergusson, Lindsay, White, Watson “and others” Gordon’s diary (same order) XIV

Collective recommendation to the young Opaliński Gordon’s diary XV–XVI

Money and necessities given at departure Gordon’s diary XVII

Poznań setting: gate, weigh-house, town-hall tower, Jewish Street, the Warta Real topography of the city; placement in the scene is poetic I–III, XIII, XVIII

Black broadcloth coat; stool, bread and ale; linen and boots; the letter left in Lindsay’s house Poetic reconstruction of physical detail; no biographical claim IV, VI, XII, XVII, XVIII

The bailie and packman simile; the biting of groats Figurative; not an event VII

What the ballad deliberately does not say

The poem invents no wife, children, trade, fortune, political opinion or motive for Lindsay. It does not say why he mocked Gordon or why he afterwards helped him; stanza XII states outright that this is unknown. It gives him no speech after the interview and no role in the departure beyond what the collective record supports.

Patrick Gordon: context

Patrick Gordon was born in 1635 at Auchleuchries in Aberdeenshire, the son of John Gordon of Auchleuchries and Mary Ogilvie; hence the two clan names. After leaving the Jesuit college at Braunsberg he began the career of a soldier of fortune, serving in the following decades in the Swedish, Polish and finally Russian armies. He rose to the rank of general in Muscovy and died in Moscow in 1699. His diary, kept over most of his adult life, is one of the principal sources for Scots in seventeenth-century Central and Eastern Europe. The Poznań episode belongs to its opening years, before any of that career had begun.

Sources

Patrick Gordon, Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, A.D. 1635–A.D. 1699, Aberdeen: Spalding Club, 1859.

Patrick Gordon, Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, 1635–1699, vol. I: 1635–1659, ed. Dmitry Fedosov, Aberdeen, 2009.

SSNE: Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database, University of St Andrews, entry for James Lindsay (Poznań).

Peter Paul Bajer, Scots in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 16th to 18th Centuries: The Formation and Disappearance of an Ethnic Group, Leiden: Brill, 2012.