Thomas of Erceldoune, called also the Rhymer (c. 1225–c. 1300), occupies a prominent place as a poet and prophet in the mythical and legendary literature of Scotland. The historical person of that name figures in two charters of the 13th century, and from these it appears that he owned lands in Erceldoune (now Earlston), in Berwickshire, which were made over by his son and heir to the cloister of the Holy Trinity at Soltra, or Soutra, on the borders of the same county. He figures in the works of Barbour and Blind Harry as the sympathizing contemporary of their heroes, and Wyntoun tells how he prophesied a battle. In the folk-lore of Scotland his name is associated with numerous fragments of rhymed or alliterative verse of a more or less prophetic and oracular character; but the chief extant work with which his name is associated is the poem of “Sir Tristrem,” edited from the Auchinleck MS. by Sir Walter Scott in 1804, and again in 1886 for the Scottish Text Society by Mr. G. P. M’Neill. In the latter edition the claim of Thomas to the authorship of this work (conceded by both editors) is fully discussed.

  The prophecies yet extant in Scottish Rithmes, whereupon he was commonly called Thomas the Rhymer, may justly be admired, having foretold, so many ages before, the union of England and Scotland, in the ninth degree of the Bruce’s blood, with the succession of Bruce himself to the crown, being yet a child, and other diuers particulars which the event hath ratified and made good…. Whence or how he had this knowledge, can hardly be affirmed; but sure it is, that he did divine and answer truly of many things to come.

  For, let it be considered that the name of Thomas the Rhymer is not forgotten in Scotland, nor his authority altogether slighted, even at this day. Within the memory of man, his prophecies, and the prophecies of other Scotch soothsayers, have not only been reprinted, but have been consulted with a weak, if not criminal curiosity. I mention no particulars; for I behold it ungenerous to reproach men with weaknesses of which they themselves are ashamed. The same superstitious credulity might again spring up. I flatter myself that my attempts to eradicate it will not prove altogether vain.

  “Sir Tristrem,” even as it now exists, shows likewise that considerable art was resorted to in constructing the stanza, and has, from beginning to end, a concise, quaint, abstract turn of expression, more like the Saxon poetry than the simple, bald, and diffuse details of the French minstrel.

  The romance ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune is deservedly regarded as a precious relique of early British poetry; it is highly curious as a specimen of language, and not less curious as a specimen of composition. The verses are short, and the stanzas somewhat artificial in their structure; and amid the quaint simplicity of the author’s style, we often distinguish a forcible brevity of expression. But his narrative, which has a certain air of originality, is sometimes so abrupt as to seem obscure, and even enigmatical.

  He had the fame not only of an epic poet or bard, but of a prophet, occupying in his own country somewhat of the position held by Merlin in England, and afterwards by Nostradamus in France.

  We can see in him, as he lived, an obvious awakening to the powers of outward nature, the feeling of the spring-tide and the rejoicing birds, the love of lonely lingering among the hills, the sense of the unspeakable silence and solitude of the benty moorland, and the poetic yearning for some form of a mysterious life with which he might commune on the wild. Thomas of Erceldoune was the man of the time who felt these influences, and doubtless expressed them, more powerfully than any other. The mythical story of his intercourse and selection by the Queen of Faerie was the imaginative embodiment in a free, wild, and graceful form of the Rhymour as he appeared to the people around him—the theory of his somewhat mysterious life.

  Whether the earlier figure of Thomas of Erceldoune is more than a phantom may still be doubted, and there is no satisfactory evidence for believing him to be the author of the “Romance of Sir Tristrem” which Scott published in 1804. We are not even certain that this romance has any claim to be regarded as a product of Scottish literature; it exists only in a transcript executed in England, and it has no Scottish peculiarities.

  The arguments which assail the trustworthiness of these documents are suggested by somewhat hypercritical doubts, and the theories designed to supplant them are based upon conjectures wholly unsupported by evidence.

  The poem is written in an involved stanza in striking contrast to the simple style of the narrative and the obvious eagerness of the narrator to press on with his tale. The design of the composition, as in most old romances, is of the character best adapted for recitation—a series of adventures, each complete in itself, strung upon the lives of the lovers. At the same time there is a certain arrangement, a proportion and balance of parts around the central idea, which give to the story an artistic unity. The situations frequently possess strong dramatic point, as when Tristrem, having drunk the love-potion with Isonde, has to fulfil his mission and hand her over in marriage to the king. Most notable of all, the characters of the tale from first to last are firmly and even subtly drawn. Limned from the outside by their action and words, they stand distinct as if reproduced from life or from the most intimate tradition.

  “Thomas the Rhymer” … is a brilliant example of a ballad in which the art of minstrelsy is employed to preserve, in a glorified form, the memory of a real man in whom the popular imagination is interested. From the beginning of the fourteenth century the fame of Thomas of Erceldoune, or Thomas Rymour, or True Thomas, for prophecy, was celebrated through Scotland; and the predictions attributed to him had so much consistency, that in 1603 they were collected into a volume with the Prophecies of Merlin. Thomas Rymour of Erceldoune is known to have been a real person, who is reported to have been alive in the closing years of the thirteenth century…. Not original enough to invent a story for himself, the minstrel who took Thomas as his hero sought his materials in existing romances, and by the middle of the fifteenth century a poem, which forms the groundwork of the ballads on the subject, was committed to writing. In its most essential features the story in the poem was taken from the romance of “Ogier le Danois,” which relates how that hero was carried to Avalon by Morgan the Fay, and lived there for centuries without perceiving the lapse of time; moreover, the style of the narrative, particularly the length and detail of the descriptions, was in the approved manner of metrical romance.