THE LINDESAY FRAE BRAUNSBERG
A Historical Ballad in Scots
DANIIL LAZKO
The snaw lay lang on Angus braes,
The Esk ran slaw an black,
Lord Crawford's brither, Jamie, rade
Wi nae man at his back.
He lichtit at a herd's laich door
An chappit twice, an thrice,
An a grey man in a hodden coat
Said, "Come ben frae the ice."
It was Robert Abercromby
Had crossed the Baltic faem;
He set twa caunles on the kist,
An the Latin cam like hame.
He knelt upon the yirden floor,
The wind cried in the lum;
A hand-bell, happit in a cloot,
Rang ance, an syne was dumb.
The bere was green on Angus rigs
The morn he took the Tay;
The skipper held a wat thoom up
An said, "She'll dae the day."
They lost the Angus hills astern,
They warstled wi the swaw,
An at the Sound they paid the Dane
The toll he taks frae a'.
The watter lay as still as milk,
The lift hung laich as leid,
The Danskin steeples, brick on brick,
Stood up, an they were reid.
Five days ayont the Lammas-tide
He cam tae Braunsberg toun;
His name gaed in the college buik
Amang the names set doun.
The wa's were brick an no grey stane,
The ruifs were steep an hie,
The fremmit tongues gaed roun the yaird
Like birds he couldna see.
Nae cloot was happit roun the bell,
Nae man keepit the door;
It rang as the Host gaed up, an rang
As it ne'er rang afore.
The Haff lay white frae shore tae shore,
The snaw cam ower the wa';
It lichtit on the Prussian brick,
But it was Angus snaw.
He wrocht at Latin nicht by nicht
Till caunles burnt awa,
An whiles he luikit tae the wast
Whaur there was nocht ava.
In sleep he heard the Esk rin by
Ower stanes he kent by name,
An waukened, an it was the bell,
An he was no at hame.
The winters cam, the winters gaed,
The ice cam hard as steel;
An aye he socht the Faithers' door,
An aye he turned his heel.
He drew the ring frae his richt haund,
The chequer on it bricht,
An laid it on the Faithers' buird
Aneath the caunle-licht.
The year was saxteen hunner an ane;
They brocht the black goun ben;
He pat it on ower his Scots sark,
An they wrate his name again.
Whaur he gaed syne, the auld buiks keep
But little for tae tell;
The road rins east frae Braunsberg toun
By mony a fremmit bell.
He gaed intil the risin sun
Wi the black goun on his back;
His shadow on the Prussian snaw
Lay lang, an wast, an black.
Tuapse, 22 September 2026
The poem is written in literary Scots rather than in dialect spelling. The glossary below lists words whose sense may not be obvious to a reader of English. Stanza numbers are given in brackets for words that carry a specific historical or local sense.
Scots Gloss
aye always, continually
ayont; amang beyond; among
braes hillsides, slopes
slaw slow
lichtit alighted, dismounted; (xi) settled, fell
herd; laich herdsman; low
chappit knocked
gaed went
hodden coarse, undyed homespun cloth; the dress of a countryman
ben in, inside (of a house)
kent knew
nicht night
faem foam; the sea
caunles; kist candles; chest, coffer
yirden; lum earthen; chimney
happit; cloot wrapped; cloth, rag
syne then, afterwards
bere; rigs bere, a hardy barley; ridged strips of arable land
wat thoom wet thumb, held up to find the wind
dae the day do today, serve for today
warstled; swaw wrestled; the swell of the sea
the Sound (vi) the Øresund, where the Danish crown levied a toll on passing ships
lift; leid sky; lead (the metal)
Danskin (vii) of Danzig (Gdańsk); an attested Older Scots adjective
reid red
Lammas-tide (viii) the season of Lammas, 1 August; five days after it is 6 August
buik; wa's; ruifs; hie book; walls; roofs; high
fremmit foreign, strange
yaird yard, courtyard
the Host (x) the consecrated bread raised at the elevation of the Mass
ne'er; afore never; before
the Haff (xi) the Frisches Haff, the Vistula Lagoon near Braunsberg
whiles at times, now and then
wrocht; ava worked; at all
wast; waukened west; woke
stanes stones
socht; the Faithers sought; the Jesuit Fathers
chequer (xv) the chequy fess of the Lindsay arms
buird board, table
saxteen hunner an ane sixteen hundred and one (1601)
goun; pat; sark gown; put; shirt
wrate wrote
intil into
Form and metre
The ballad runs to eighteen quatrains, seventy-two lines, in common measure: lines of four stresses alternate with lines of three. The syllabic base is eight and six. Sixty-five lines keep that base exactly; the remaining seven (ii.3, iii.4, x.3, xvi.1, xvi.4, xvii.4, xviii.2) admit an extra unstressed syllable in the manner of the traditional ballad, without altering the stress pattern. The counts were checked by script. The rhyme is ABCB throughout: the second and fourth lines rhyme, the first and third are free.
Several rhymes are true only in Scots pronunciation: leid / reid, faem / hame, door / afore. This is deliberate in effect if not in origin. A reader who tries to hear the poem in standard English will find the rhymes failing, and the poem thereby insists on its own voice. The Scots is not a surface colouring laid over English verse; the verse does not work without it.
Architecture
The narrative falls into six movements: Scotland and the conversion (i–iv), the voyage (v–vii), arrival at Braunsberg (viii–x), the years of study and exile (xi–xiii), the decision (xiv–xvi), and the road (xvii–xviii). Transitions are omitted in the Border manner. Between the fourth and fifth stanzas an unknown span of time passes without comment: the snow of the opening gives way to green bere, and the reader is left to supply the interval.
The poem is closed by a ring. The first stanza ends on a solitary rider, Wi nae man at his back; the last on the black goun on his back. The Esk that ran slaw an black in the second line returns, transformed, in the final word: the shadow that Lay lang, an wast, an black. The rhyme pair of the first stanza, black / back, is also the rhyme pair of the last.
The bell
The structural thread of the ballad is a bell, and its meaning lies in its changing condition rather than in any symbolic statement. In the fourth stanza it is a hand-bell wrapped in a cloth so that it will not be heard beyond the walls of a herd's house:
A hand-bell, happit in a cloot,
Rang ance, an syne was dumb.
At Braunsberg the cloth is gone and no one watches the door. The pronoun it in the closing line of the tenth stanza makes the Prussian bell the same bell, now released:
It rang as the Host gaed up, an rang
As it ne'er rang afore.
In the thirteenth stanza the bell becomes the sound that wakes him out of a dream of the Esk; in the seventeenth it multiplies into the fremmit bell of every church on an unrecorded road. The bell thus traces the whole arc of the poem: hidden, open, displacing, foreign.
Place and the principle of the object
A second axis is geographical and material. Scotland is grey stone, an earthen floor, wind in the chimney and the Esk running over stanes he kent by name; Royal Prussia is red brick, steep roofs and the frozen Haff. The contrast is made once, plainly, in the ninth stanza, and is then allowed to work. Its sharpest turn comes in the eleventh stanza, where snow, the one thing the two countries share, is given a nationality:
It lichtit on the Prussian brick,
But it was Angus snaw.
The poem never says that James Lindsay was homesick. It shows a man looking west at nothing, and waking from the sound of a river to the sound of a bell:
An waukened, an it was the bell,
An he was no at hame.
Emotion is left to the reader. The same restraint governs the religious decision. It is represented by objects and a ritual action: two candles on a chest, a muffled bell, a ring bearing the Lindsay chequer laid on a table under candlelight, a black gown put on over a Scots shirt. No doctrine is argued and no other church is named or blamed. The danger of Catholic worship in Scotland in the 1590s is carried entirely by the cloth around the bell.
The poem and the archive
The ballad is conscious of the records from which it is made. Lindsay's name gaed in the college buik on arrival (viii); in 1601 they wrate his name again (xvi); and afterwards the auld buiks keep / But little for tae tell (xvii). The poem thus writes the limits of the historical record into its own narrative instead of filling the silence with invented biography. Dates are given in the idiom of the chronicle rather than of the reference book. Five days ayont the Lammas-tide is exactly 6 August, the documented date of his entry at Braunsberg, and saxteen hunner an ane has the weight of an entry in a register.
Voice and tradition
The deepest model is the Border ballad: abrupt entry, economy, incremental repetition (The winters cam, the winters gaed; An aye … An aye), sparse dialogue and a final image instead of a moral. Other Scots traditions are absorbed rather than imitated. From Ramsay comes speech that sounds lived rather than antique, as in the skipper's She'll dae the day. From Fergusson comes the exact noun: bere, rigs, lum, kist, buird. From Scott comes the sense of a life set inside roads, coasts and borders, from the Angus hills through the Sound to the Haff. From Hogg comes the dream of the Esk, an inward crisis told as a sensory event with no supernatural machinery. From Burns comes a singable ease of line. Only two voices speak directly. The skipper's words concern the wind; Abercromby's only words are an invitation in from the cold.
Found lines
A small number of lines carry the poem: But it was Angus snaw; An he was no at hame; His shadow on the Prussian snaw / Lay lang, an wast, an black. The ending depends on a physical fact. A man walking east into the rising sun casts his shadow behind him, to the west, toward Scotland. The paradox at the heart of the poem, that a man may leave his country without ceasing to belong to it, is never stated. It is left lying on the snow.
Two final revisions
Two changes were made at the last stage, and both correct objective defects. In the seventh stanza Danskin's steeples became The Danskin steeples. The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue records Danskin chiefly as an adjective (Danskin kist, Danskin irne, and a Danskyne pulder dated 1596), so the attributive use now follows attested usage. In the tenth stanza the identical rhyme yett / yet was replaced by door / afore. This also removed a repetition of the Haff in adjacent stanzas and bound the Braunsberg bell to the hand-bell of the fourth stanza.
The Jesuit James Lindsay: family and conversion
James Lindsay (Lindesay) was a Scot of noble birth, described in the sources as a brother of the Earl of Crawford, head of the Lindsays whose lands lay chiefly in Angus. He was converted to Catholicism by the Jesuit Robert Abercromby (c. 1532/36–1613), one of a number of high-born Scots won over by Abercromby during his clandestine mission in Scotland. The sources consulted do not name the earl, and the genealogical identification of this James Lindsay should be confirmed from a specialist source before any claim beyond "brother of the Earl of Crawford" is made.
Robert Abercromby
Abercromby entered the Society of Jesus in Rome in 1563. From 1564 he taught at the Jesuit college in Braunsberg (Braniewo) in Royal Prussia, where he served as professor of grammar and as novice master, and he later worked at Poznań, Vilnius and Kraków. From 1587 he spent about twenty years in Scotland, working largely in hiding. He is best known for the reported conversion of Queen Anne of Denmark, consort of James VI. During his time in Scotland he also organised the sending of young Scots to be educated in Polish schools. He left Scotland in 1606–07, when he was being hunted after the Gunpowder Plot, and died at Braunsberg in 1613. The man who converted Lindsay therefore already knew, from long experience, the college to which Lindsay would go. This is the historical ground of the line Had crossed the Baltic faem.
Braunsberg
The Jesuit college at Braunsberg, in the Prince-Bishopric of Warmia, was founded in 1565 by Cardinal Stanislaus Hosius. It was among the most important Catholic schools of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and drew students from across northern Europe, among them a steady stream of Scots. The college records place James Lindsay among the students entering on 6 August 1596; this date is taken from the research brief for the poem, and the published edition of the register was not consulted directly for this note. The poem renders the date as Five days ayont the Lammas-tide.
The Society of Jesus, 1601
Scholarship on British Jesuit exiles in Poland-Lithuania identifies James Lindsay as one of the Scotsmen who entered the Society of Jesus in 1601. His later career is not documented in the sources used for this edition, and the poem does not follow him beyond that point.
Other James Lindsays in the Commonwealth
The name is not unique in the Polish-Lithuanian record, and at least three later entries must be kept apart from the Jesuit of 1596–1601.
The first is the Scot James Lindsay (Lindesay) whom the young Patrick Gordon, later a general in Russian service, met in Poznań in 1654. Gordon, who carried a letter of recommendation to him, records that Lindsay first questioned him haughtily about his parents, education and intentions, and on hearing the names Gordon and Ogilvy remarked with mockery on the two great clans; afterwards he treated Gordon kindly. With other Scots of the town Lindsay helped to place Gordon in the retinue of the young magnate Opaliński, who was setting out on a journey abroad. Peter Paul Bajer identifies this man, as most probably the same person, with the James Lindsay from Aberdeen who became a burgess of Poznań in 1650 and contributed to the Polish subsidy for Charles II in 1651. He belongs to the Scottish mercantile community of mid-seventeenth-century Poland, half a century after the Jesuit entered the Society.
The second is the James Lindsay named in letters patent confirming noble status, issued in Scotland by Robert Carnegie, third Earl of Southesk, on 6 May 1680, and preserved in the State Archive in Kraków. This is a Scottish certificate of noble birth of the kind that Scots abroad obtained to support their standing, not a Polish grant of nobility, and nothing in the sources consulted connects its bearer with the Jesuit.
The third is a family of Lindsays whose nobility was recognised by the Sejm of 1764 under the Polonised name Lindesin. A. Francis Steuart, citing the Lives of the Lindsays, describes them as apparently descended from the Lindsays of Fesdo. Steuart attaches this information as a footnote to Gordon's mention of James Lindesay, but he does not state that the family descended from him, and no such descent is documented in the sources consulted. Lindesin is a form of the surname, not the name of a Polish coat of arms.
The question of nobility in the Commonwealth
Many foreign families naturalised into the Polish nobility were Scottish and Irish Catholics. The formal instrument was the indygenat. In Norman Davies's summary it required proof of service to the Commonwealth, proof of noble birth issued abroad, an oath of allegiance and the purchase of land; these conditions were not applied uniformly across the whole period, and from 1641 a grant was valid only with the Sejm's approval. Scottish families in the Commonwealth also had their nobility recognised in other ways.
For the Jesuit James Lindsay of the 1596–1601 record, no grant of indygenat or confirmation of Polish-Lithuanian nobility specifically identifiable with him has been found in the sources consulted for this edition. The conditions of the indygenat, above all public service to the Commonwealth, are also difficult to reconcile with the life of a Jesuit bound by a vow of poverty. His noble status rests on his Scottish birth as the Earl of Crawford's brother. The later Lindsay records described above should not be attributed to him without genealogical evidence, and the poem accordingly makes no claim of Polish confirmation of his nobility. He should likewise be distinguished from Ludovic Lindsay, later sixteenth Earl of Crawford, who served Władysław IV in 1633–34.
The ballad separates what is documented from what is poetically reconstructed. The table below states the status of each historical element. Reconstructed details are chosen to be plausible for the period and are nowhere presented as documentary fact.
Element in the poem Status Basis or comment
Noble birth; brother of the Earl of Crawford (i) Documented Described so in accounts of Abercromby's converts
Angus, the Esk (i, xiii) Contextual Angus is the heartland of the Crawford Lindsays; no specific residence is claimed
Conversion by Robert Abercromby in Scotland (ii–iv) Documented (fact); reconstructed (scene) Abercromby's Scottish mission ran from 1587; the herd's house, candles and muffled bell are imagined
Abercromby's Baltic past (iii) Documented Braunsberg from 1564; he also sent Scottish youths to Polish schools
Sailing by the Tay (v) Reconstruction A plausible route from Angus; Abercromby himself came home by the Tay in 1580
The Sound toll (vi) Contextual Ships passing the Øresund paid the Danish toll
Danzig on the way (vii) Reconstruction The main Scottish trading port on the Baltic; route not documented
Entry at Braunsberg, 6 August 1596 (viii) Documented College records
Brick buildings, bells, many languages (ix–x) Contextual Brick architecture of Royal Prussia; an international college
Frozen Haff (xi) Contextual The Vistula Lagoon near Braunsberg
Years of hesitation, 1596–1601 (xiv) Reconstruction The interval is documented; the hesitation is poetic inference
Ring with the Lindsay chequer (xv) Reconstruction The Lindsay arms bear a chequy fess; the ring and gesture are symbolic
Entry into the Society of Jesus, 1601 (xvi) Documented Scholarship on British Jesuit exiles in Poland-Lithuania
Later life; road east (xvii–xviii) Undocumented The poem states the silence of the record
Polish confirmation of nobility for the Jesuit Not claimed No record specifically identifiable with him found
Later James Lindsays: Poznań 1650–54; letters patent 1680; Lindesin 1764 Excluded Separate persons or families; not conflated with the Jesuit (see Historical Note)
Sources consulted
Robert Abercromby (Jesuit). Wikipedia (accessed 22 September 2026).
ABERCROMBIE, ROBERT [SSNE 5217]. The Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database, University of St Andrews.
LINDSAY, JAMES [SSNE 1101]. The Scotland, Scandinavia and Northern European Biographical Database, University of St Andrews (the Poznań burgess, 1650).
Abercromby, Robert. Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), via catholic.com and encyclopedia.com.
Records of the Jesuit College at Braunsberg (entry of 6 August 1596), as cited in the research brief; not consulted directly.
“The one with Jesuistes and blackmail”. Murthly local history, 10 March 2020.
“‘The Sweetness of Polish Liberty’: Sixteenth-Century British Jesuit Exiles to Poland-Lithuania”. Jesuit Online Bibliography, Boston College.
Danskin, adj. and n. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, Dictionaries of the Scots Language.
P. P. Bajer, Scots in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 16th to 18th Centuries (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
N. Davies, God's Playground: A History of Poland, vol. I (Oxford, 2005), on the indygenat.
Ludovic Lindsay, 16th Earl of Crawford. Wikipedia.
Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, 1635–1699 (Aberdeen: Spalding Club, 1859); Polish excerpts in “Patrick Gordon rodaków spotyka i do wojska wstępuje”, Muzeum Pałacu Króla Jana III w Wilanowie.
A. Francis Steuart, General Introduction to Papers Relating to the Scots in Poland, 1576–1793 (Edinburgh: Scottish History Society, 1915), citing Lord Lindsay, Lives of the Lindsays, vol. II, p. 281 n.
P. P. Bajer, Scots in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (2012), cover and front matter (letters patent of 6 May 1680, Archiwum Państwowe, Kraków).
Daniil Lazko
Tuapse, 22 September 2026
