Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wardlaw, Elizabeth
WARDLAW, ELIZABETH, Lady (1677–1727), the supposed authoress of the ballad of ‘Hardyknute,’ was the second daughter of Sir Charles Halket, bart., of Pitfirrane, Fifeshire. She was born in April 1677, and on 13 June 1696 she married Sir Henry Wardlaw, bart., of Pitcruivie. The ballad of ‘Hardyknute,’ which she was the first to make known to the world, was at first circulated by her as the fragment of an ancient ballad discovered in a vault in Dunfermline. But no original manuscript of this fragment is forthcoming; and while the ballad is manifestly in great part modern, several of her friends, professing to be intimately acquainted with the circumstances of its production, positively ascribe to her its authorship. It was nevertheless published in 1719, during her lifetime, as an ancient poem, at the expense of Lord-president Forbes and Sir Gilbert Eliot, and in 1724 Allan Ramsay included it as an ancient ballad in his ‘Evergreen.’ Lady Wardlaw is stated to have remodelled the ballad of ‘Gilderoy;’ and the ballad of ‘Sir Patrick Spens,’ published in Percy's ‘Reliques’ from two manuscripts sent from Scotland, has also been ascribed to her. This last hypothesis was first suggested by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe [q. v.] in additional notes to Johnson's ‘Musical Museum,’ and the proposition was also supported, as regards other ballads, by Robert Chambers in his ‘Remarks on Scottish Ballads,’ 1859. A feasible reason for suggesting Lady Wardlaw as the writer of ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ is the reference to the king in Dunfermline; but it is so immensely superior to ‘Hardyknute’ that Lady Wardlaw's authorship of this last is rather presumptive evidence against than for her authorship of ‘Sir Patrick Spens.’ It is, however, by no means improbable that Lady Wardlaw amended ‘Sir Patrick Spens’ and other ballads.
[Percy's Reliques; Johnson's Musical Museum, ed. Laing; Chambers's Remarks on Scottish Ballads; Professor Child's Ballads; Anderson's Scottish Nation.]