Chapter XXXIV: Appendix: E

THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS

The casual treatment of the Casket Letters by Mary’s accusers, and by the English Commissioners, is demonstrated by an inspection of the texts as they now exist. One thing is absolutely certain, the Letters were produced, at Westminster and Hampton Court, in the original French, whether that was forged, or garbled, or authentic. This is demonstrated by the occurrence, in the English translation, of the words ‘I have taken the worms out of his nose.’ This ugly French phrase for extracting a man’s inmost thoughts is used by Mary in an authentic letter.[423] But the Scots version of the passage runs, ‘I have drawn all out of him.’ Therefore the English translator had a French original before him, _not_ the French later published by the Huguenots, where for _tiré les vers du nez_, we find _j’ay sçeu toutes choses de luy_.

Original French letters were therefore produced; the only doubt rests on part of Crawford’s deposition, where it verbally agrees with Letter II. But we may here overlook Crawford’s part in the affair, merely reminding the reader that the French idioms in that portion of the Letter (Scots version) which most closely resembles his very words, in his deposition, may have come in through the process of translating Crawford’s Scots into French, and out of French into Scots again, to which we return.

The Casket Letters were produced, in French, on December 7 and 8. On December 9, the English Commissioners read them, ‘being duly translated into English.’[424] We are never told that the Scottish Lords prepared and produced the _English_ translations. These must have been constructed on December 7 and 8, in a violent hurry. So great was the hurry that Letter VI. was not translated from French at all: the English was merely done, and badly done, out of the Scots. Thus, Scots, ‘I am wod;’ English, ‘I am wood.’ As far as this Letter goes, there need have been no original French text.[425] In this case (Letter VI.) the English is the Scots Anglified, word for word. The same easy mode of translating French is used in Letter V.; it is the Scots done word for word into English. In Letters I. and II., M. Philippson makes it pretty clear that the English translator had a copy of the Scots version lying by him, from which he occasionally helped himself to phrases. M. Cardauns, in _Der Sturz der Maria Stuart_, had proved the same point, which every one can verify. Dozens of blunders occur in the English versions, though, now and then, they keep closer to the originals than do the Scots translators.

Of this we give a singular and significant proof. In the Scots of Letter I. the first sentence ends, ‘Ze promisit to mak me advertisement of zour newis from tyme to tyme.’ The next sentence begins: ‘The waiting upon yame.’ In the English we read ‘at your departure you promised to send me newes from you. _Nevertheless I can learn none_:’ which is not in the Scots, but is in the published French, ‘et toutes fois je n’en puis apprendre.’ The _published_ French is translated from the Latin, which is translated from the Scots, but each of the French _published_ letters opens with a sentence or two from the _original_ French: thus the published French, in one of these sentences, keeps what the Scots omits.

Therefore, the Scots translator undeniably, in the first paragraph of