Origins and setting
“Tam Lin” is a celebrated Scottish Border ballad (often numbered among the classic Child ballads) that has travelled the oral tradition for centuries. Its scene is the greenwood of Carterhaugh, near the confluence of the Ettrick and Yarrow Waters. Its dramatis personae are constant: Janet (or Margaret), a wilful high-born maiden; Tam Lin, a mortal knight held in thrall by the Queen of Fairies; and the Fairy Court, which must pay a tithe to Hell on Hallowe’en. The tale’s hallmark moments are Janet’s defiance at Carterhaugh, her pregnancy and steadfast claim of agency, Tam Lin’s confession of his enchantment, the midnight rescue at Miles Cross, and the breathless sequence of shape-shiftings she must withstand to win him back. The ballad is remembered for its spare, potent lines—warnings, vows, and a queen’s cold fury—that feel as old as oak and iron.
The tale
Carterhaugh and the forbidden rose
Word runs through the town that Carterhaugh’s wood is fair but perilous, for there a green-clad rider takes toll of any maiden who plucks a flower. The warning goes round:
“I forbid ye, maidens a’,
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.”
Janet, the Earl’s daughter, will not be ruled by hearsay. She braids her hair with gold, wraps herself in her green mantle, and walks alone to Carterhaugh. In the hush under the trees she bends and plucks a rose. A horse stamps; a rider is suddenly at her bridle—Tam Lin, grey-eyed and quick.
“Why pluck ye my roses?” he demands. “This is my charge.”
Janet does not flinch. “Carterhaugh is my father’s,” she says, “and I’ll pull the roses there if it pleases me.”
They match will for will. In some tellings Tam offers choices for trespass—“your mantle, your gold rings, or your maidenhead”—and Janet chooses her own way without shame. What passes between them under the green leaves binds them more surely than any toll.
The green mantle and the child
Weeks turn; Janet grows pale and proud with news no one gave her leave to speak. Courtiers whisper; her father questions her. She answers with the iron dignity that makes listeners sit straighter:
“If that I be with child, father,
My ain will it shall be;
And if I be not shamed myself,
There’s none shall shame me.”
She dresses again in her green mantle and goes back to Carterhaugh to find the man whose hand she has already chosen. Tam Lin comes at once to her calling.
“Who are you,” she asks, “that take your stand in my father’s wood and ask toll of gentlewomen?”
Tam’s tale runs out like a wound. He was a mortal knight, hunting here in spring; his horse stumbled; he fell. The Queen of Fairies found him on the moss, took him to herself, and keeps him—honoured, cherished, but not free. Each Hallowe’en, the Fairy Court must pay a tithe to Hell; this year, Tam fears, his is the life to be given.
“The night is Hallowe’en, Janet,
The morn is Hallowday;
And, if ye love me as ye say,
Ye’ll win me, an ye may.”
He tells her what to do.
The instructions at Miles Cross
On Hallowe’en she must keep watch at Miles Cross, where the road runs bare and the wind keeps its own counsel. At midnight the fairy cavalcade will pass—white horses first, then brown, then black; some riders bearing candles, some none; the Queen last, “like the moon among her train.” Tam Lin will ride the milk-white steed, and she will know him by the glove on his right hand, or by the whitest horse and the place he keeps in the throng.
“Pull me from the saddle,” he says. “Hold me fast, no matter what I become; for they will change me in your arms to make you flee or fail. I’ll be a newt, a snake, a lion, a bear; a red-hot bar of iron; a burning bough. Grip me still. And when at last I am a coal of fire, douse me in the well. Then I shall be a naked man—cast your green mantle over me. If you do all this, you shall win me out of their hand.”
Janet listens once, and once is enough.
The ride of the fairies
Night falls like a dropped cloak. The moor grows silver with frost; the cross stands black against the sky. On the stroke of midnight, a sound like distant surf comes over the heather—the trot of many horses. Janet gathers her mantle close and waits.
They pass: fair folk in an unearthly procession, their horses’ eyes like lanterns, their harness chiming. Janet sees the milk-white steed; she leaps and wrenches its rider down. Hands grasp at her hair; voices hiss; but her arms are locked about Tam Lin and will not open.
Then begins the trial. In her grasp Tam Lin writhes and changes—a slick newt, a coiling adder; she holds. A roaring lion with hot breath and killing jaws; she holds. A bear with raking claws; she holds. A red-hot iron that sears her skin; she holds. A burning brand that spits sparks; she holds, teeth set and eyes steady. At last he is a glowing coal—she runs the two steps to the well and plunges it deep. The water hisses; steam blooms; and up from the dark she draws a man, breathing hard and mortal.
She throws her green mantle over his shoulders. The spell breaks.
The Queen’s wrath
The Fairy Queen rides up, pale with a cold fury that does not show in human tears. She looks at Janet and at the man under the mantle and knows she has lost. Her words are like frost on a leaf:
“Out and alas!” quo’ the Queen,
“Some fiend has changed his hand;
I would that I had reft his heart,
Or ta’en out his two grey een.
And shame betide her ill-fared face,
And an ill death may she die,
For she has ta’en the fairest knight
In a’ my companie.”
But law is law, even in Elfland. Janet held. Tam Lin is won.
The cavalcade melts into the dark, candle after candle winking out until the moor is only moor again. Janet and Tam Lin stand hand in hand beneath the cross, their breaths smoking in the starlight.
Aftermath
They go home by the long path between broom and birch. Janet, who walked out under whispers, walks back without shame. In some tellings the Earl receives Tam Lin with courtesy for his daughter’s sake; in others, they must prove their steadfastness against a colder world. However it falls, the bond they forged in the wood and tempered in fire and water holds. The child Janet bears is acknowledged; the lover she claimed beneath the roses lies no more under any queen’s command.
The greenwood at Carterhaugh remains itself—sweet and dangerous. Maidens will always be warned away, and some, hearing Janet’s story, will always go.
Iconic lines and moments
- The warning that sets the tale:
“I forbid ye, maidens a’, / That wear gowd on your hair, / To come or gae by Carterhaugh, / For young Tam Lin is there.” - Janet’s assertion of agency:
“If that I be with child, father, / My ain will it shall be.” - Tam Lin’s charge for Hallowe’en:
“Hold me fast, and fear me not… and when I am a coal of fire, / Then cast me in the well.” - The breaking of the spell:
“And when I am a naked man, / Cast your green mantle o’er me.” - The Fairy Queen’s thwarted rage:
“Shame betide her ill-fared face… for she has ta’en the fairest knight / In a’ my companie.”
So runs “Tam Lin”: a Border wonder in which courage is a grip that will not loosen, love is a choice made twice over, and the old laws of Hallowe’en—fire, water, iron, and green—are kept to the letter until a man is won back from the hills.
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