If I could hope for these things I should die with the greater
contentment; for long since I HEARD A PROPHESIE THAT A DEAD MAN SHOULD
WINNE A FIELD, AND I HOPE IN GOD IT SHALL BE I." {75a}
I saw a dead man won the fight,
And I think that man was I!
Godscroft, up to the mention of Melrose and the prophecy, took his tale
direct from Froissart, or, if he took it from George Buchanan's Latin
History, Buchanan's source was Froissart, but Froissart's was evidence
from Scots who were in the battle.
But who changed the prophecy to a dream of Douglas, and who versified
Godscroft's "a dead man shall winne a field, and I hope in God it shall
be I"? Did Godscroft take that from the ballad current in his time and
quoted by him? Or did a remanieur of Godscroft turn HIS words into
I saw a dead man win the fight,
And I think that man was I?
Scott did not make these two noble lines out of Godscroft, he found
them in Hogg's copy from recitation, only altering "I saw" into "I
dreamed," and the ungrammatic "won" into "win"; and "THE fight" into "A
fight.
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