Grizel Baillie (1665-1746). Courtesy Gazetteer for Scotland.
| Lady Grizel Baillie | |
|---|---|
| Born |
25 December 1665 Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire |
| Died |
6 December 1746 (aged 80) London |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Occupation | songwriter |
| Notable works | Were na my heart licht I wad die |
Lady Grizel (sometimes Grisell) Baillie (25 December 1665 - 6 December 1746) was a Scottish songwriter.
Life[]
Baillie was born Grizel Hume at Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire, the eldest daughter of Sir Patrick Hume (or Home), afterwards first earl of Marchmont, and was born at Redbraes Castle, Berwickshire.[1]
As early as her 12th year she gave proof of a singularly mature character; for she was entrusted by her father with a perilous duty. Her father was the bosom friend of the illustrious patriot, Robert Baillie of Jerviswood; and the latter being imprisoned, Sir Patrick Hume was specially anxious to communicate with him by letter. He dared not himself attempt to gain admission; but he employed the services of his daughter, "little Grizel." To her the all-important letter was handed over with the charge to deliver it personally, and to bring back as much intelligence from the state prisoner as possible. She contrived to deliver the letter and carry back grateful and useful messages from her father's friend. In the performance of this task she had to consult with the prisoner's son, George Baillie of Jerviswood, who fell in love with her.[1]
The same womanly heroism and self-possession were shown by young Grizel on behalf of her own father. As the trial of Robert Baillie of Jerviswood — described in the contemporary broad-sheets and elsewhere — attests. Sir Patrick Hume boldly went to the court and, wherever he could, interfered in defense of his great friend, sometimes blunting with rare skill the edge of manufactured "false witness," to the rage of the prosecutors. He was equally with Baillie a suspected man; and, the troopers having taken possession of his house, Redbraes Castle, he had to hide in the vaults of neighbouring Polwarth parish kirk. There. at midnight, his brave little daughter would carry her father food, contriving at the dinner-table to drop into her lap as much as she could.[1]
On the death, by hanging, of Baillie of Jerviswood, the Hume family fled to Holland. They settled at Utrecht, Sir Patrick passing as a Dr. Wallace.[1] In the Memoirs of Lady Murray of Stanhope, Lady Grizel's daughter, delightful glimpses are obtained of their bright though straitened life in Holland. Grizel was the manager of the humble establishment, and she used to tell in her old age that those years in Holland were about the happiest of all their lives.[2]
At the Restoration, Lady Grizel was offered the post of maid of honour to the Princess of Orange. She preferred returning to Scotland, where she was married to George Baillie on 17 September 1692. They had a son, who died in childhood, and 2 daughters: Grizel, who married Sir Alexander Murray of Stanhope; and Rachel, who married Charles, Lord Binning. From the latter are descended the earls of Haddington.[2]
George Baillie died at Oxford 6 August 1738, after 46 years of an incomparable married life. Grizel died 6 December 1746, in her 81st year, and was buried beside her husband at Mellerstain. Judge Burnet (Monboddo) wrote an inscription for her monument.[2]
Writing[]
Songs[]
From earliest youth Grizel wrote in verse and prose. Her daughter had in her possession a manuscript volume with varied compositions, "many of them interrupted, half writ, some broken off in the middle of a sentence." Some of her Scottish songs appeared in Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany and other collections of Scottish songs. One has passed into the song-literature of Scotland imperishably — "And werena my heart light I wad dee." "Its sudden inspiration," says Tytler, "has fused and cast into one perfect line, the protest of thousands of stricken hearts in every generation" (Tytler and Watson's Songstresses of Scotland).[2]
Household book[]
Lady Grisell Baillie's account books reveal information about social life in Scotland in the eighteenth-century. Her account books were meticulously kept from 1692 to 1746. Her entries, which begin late into her 1st year of marriage and finish just before her death, consist of more than 1,000 pages of entries.Historians have cited these accounts to demonstrate cost of goods and to provide evidence of what servants' caloric intake was during this period.[3]
Recognition[]
There are few more charming Memoirs than that of Lady Grizel by her daughter, Lady Murray. It was originally appended to Rose's Observations on Fox's historical work on James II, and afterwards republished in a thin quarto by Thomas Thomson (1822).[2]
Lady Grizel was memorialized by Scottish poet Joanna Baillie, who claimed to be a distant relative, in a poem first published in Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters in 1821.
The Scottish Historical Society published a 400-page scholarly edition of her accounts in 1911. This edition was edited by Robert Scott-Moncrieff, and focused mainly on the entries from 1692 to 1718, which gives extensive details about the early years of the Baillies' marriage, the births and upbringing of their children and the marriages of their daughters.[3]
Her lyric "Werena My Heart’s Licht I Wad Dee" was anthologized in the Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900]].[4]
Publications[]
- The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie, 1692-1733 (edited with notes and Introduction by Robert Scott- Moncrieff). Edinburgh: T. And A. Constable at the University Press, for the Scottish History Society, 1911.[5]
See also[]
References[]
Grossart, Alexander Baloch (1885) "Baillie, Grizel" in Stephen, Leslie Dictionary of National Biography 2 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 413-414 . Wikisource, Web, Mar. 15, 2017.
Notes[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Grosart, 413.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Grosart, 414.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Jasmine Macdonald, The Baillies of Mellerstain: The Household Economy in an Eighteenth-Century Elite Household (masters thesis). University of Saskatchewan, 2010.
- ↑ "Werena My Heart’s Licht I Wad Dee," Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900 (edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch), Oxford, UK: Clarendon Pres, 1919. Bartleby.com, Web, May 5, 2012.
- ↑ The Household Book of Lady Grisell Baillie, 1692-1733 (edited with notes and Introduction by Robert Scott- Moncrieff). Edinburgh: T. And A. Constable at the University Press, for the Scottish History Society, 1911.
External links[]
- Poems
- "Werena My Heart’s Licht I Wad Dee"
- Lady Grizel Baillie 1665-1746 at the Poetry Foundation
- Baillie in A Book of Women's Verse: "Werena my Heart’s licht," "The Ewe-Buchtin’s Bonnie"
- Lady Grizel Baillie at PoemHunter
- Books
- Grisell Baillie at Amazon.com
- About
- Lady Grizel Baillie in the Encyclopædia Britannica
- Lady Grizel Baillie in the Gazetteer for Scotland
- Lady Grissell Baillie at Undiscovered Scotland
- "Women in History of Scots Descent: Song writers" at Electric Scotland
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen & Sidney Lee). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Baillie, Grizel
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