{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4088/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4088","id":"gutenberg_4088","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4088","summary":null,"tags":["Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Scottish Borders -- History and criticism","Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Popular culture -- Scotland -- Scottish Borders","Scott, Walter, 1771-1832 -- Knowledge -- Literature","Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- In literature"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1910 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David\nPrice, email ccx074@pglaf.org\n\n\n\n\n\n                             SIR WALTER SCOTT\n                                 AND THE\n                            BORDER MINSTRELSY\n\n\n                                    BY\n                               ANDREW LANG\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                         LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.\n                        39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON\n                      NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA\n                                   1910\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nPERSONS not much interested in, or cognisant of, \u201cantiquarian old\nwomanries,\u201d as Sir Walter called them, may ask \u201cwhat all the pother is\nabout,\u201d in this little tractate.  On my side it is \u201cabout\u201d the veracity\nof Sir Walter Scott.  He has been suspected of helping to compose, and of\nissuing as a genuine antique, a ballad, _Auld Maitland_.  He also wrote\nabout the ballad, as a thing obtained from recitation, to two friends and\nfellow-antiquaries.  If to Scott\u2019s knowledge it was a modern imitation,\nSir Walter deliberately lied.\n\nHe did not: he did obtain the whole ballad from Hogg, who got it from\nrecitation\u2014as I believe, and try to prove, and as Scott certainly\nbelieved.  The facts in the case exist in published works, and in\nmanuscript letters of Ritson to Scott, and Hogg to Scott, and in the\noriginal MS. of the song, with a note by Hogg to Laidlaw.  If we are\ninterested in the truth about the matter, we ought at least to read the\nvery accessible material before bringing charges against the Sheriff and\nthe Shepherd of Ettrick.\n\nWhether _Auld Maitland_ be a good or a bad ballad is not part of the\nquestion.  It was a favourite of mine in childhood, and I agree with\nScott in thinking that it has strong dramatic situations.  If it is a bad\nballad, such as many people could compose, then it is not by Sir Walter.\n\nThe _Ballad of Otterburne_ is said to have been constructed from Herd\u2019s\nversion, tempered by Percy\u2019s version, with additions from a modern\nimagination.  We have merely to read Professor Child\u2019s edition of\n_Otterburne_, with Hogg\u2019s letter covering his MS. copy of _Otterburne_\nfrom recitation, to see that this is a wholly erroneous view of the\nmatter.  We have all the materials for forming a judgment accessible to\nus in print, and have no excuse for preferring our own conjectures.\n\n\u201cNo one now believes,\u201d it may be said, \u201cin the aged persons who lived at\nthe head of Ettrick,\u201d and recited _Otterburne_ to Hogg.  Colonel Elliot\ndisbelieves, but he shows no signs of having read Hogg\u2019s curious letter,\nin two parts, about these \u201cold parties\u201d; a letter written on the day when\nHogg, he says, twice \u201cpumped their memories.\u201d\n\nI print this letter, and, if any one chooses to think that it is a crafty\nfabrication, I can only say that its craft would have beguiled myself as\nit beguiled Scott.\n\nIt is a common, cheap, and ignorant scepticism that disbelieves in the\nexistence, in Scott\u2019s day, or in ours, of persons who know and can recite\nvariants of our traditional ballads.  The strange song of _The Bitter\nWithy_, unknown to Professor Child, was recovered from recitation but\nlately, in several English counties.  The ignoble lay of _Johnny\nJohnston_ has also been recovered: it is widely diffused.  I myself\nobtained a genuine version of _Where Goudie rins_, through the kindness\nof Lady Mary Glyn; and a friend of Lady Rosalind Northcote procured the\nlow English version of _Young Beichan_, or _Lord Bateman_, from an old\nwoman in a rural workhouse.  In Shropshire my friend Miss Burne, the\npresident of the Folk-Lore Society, received from Mr. Hubert Smith, in\n1883, a very remarkable variant, undoubtedly antique, of _The Wife of\nUsher\u2019s Well_. {0a}  In 1896 Miss Backus found, in the hills of Polk\nCounty, North Carolina, another variant, intermediate between the\nShropshire and the ordinary version. {0b}\n\nThere are many other examples of this persistence of ballads in the\npopular memory, even in our day, and only persons ignorant of the facts\ncan suppose that, a century ago, there were no reciters at the head of\nEttrick, and elsewhere in Scotland.  Not even now has the halfpenny\nnewspaper wholly destroyed the memories of traditional poetry and of\ntraditional tales even in the English-speaking parts of our islands,\nwhile in the Highlands a rich harvest awaits the reapers.\n\nI could not have produced the facts, about _Auld Maitland_ especially,\nand in some other cases, without the kind and ungrudging aid, freely\ngiven to a stranger, of Mr. William Macmath, whose knowledge of\nballad-lore, and especially of the ballad manuscripts at Abbotsford, is\nunrivalled.  As to _Auld Maitland_, Mr. T. F. Henderson, in his edition\nof the _Minstrelsy_ (Blackwood, 1892), also made due use of Hogg\u2019s MS.,\nand his edition is most valuable to every student of Scott\u2019s method of\nediting, being based on the Abbotsford MSS.  Mr. Henderson suspects, more\nthan I do, the veracity of the Shepherd.\n\nI am under obligations to Colonel Elliot\u2019s book, as it has drawn my\nattention anew to _Auld Maitland_, a topic which I had studied \u201csomewhat\nlazily,\u201d like Quintus Smyrn\u00e6us.  I supposed that there was an\ninconsistency in two of Scott\u2019s accounts as to how he obtained the\nballad.  As Colonel Elliot points out, there was no inconsistency.  Scott\nhad two copies.  One was Hogg\u2019s MS.: the other was derived from the\nrecitation of Hogg\u2019s mother.\n\nThis trifle is addressed to lovers of Scott, of the Border, and of\nballads, _et non aultres_.\n\nIt is curious to see how facts make havoc of the conjectures of the\nHigher Criticism in the case of _Auld Maitland_.  If Hogg was the forger\nof that ballad, I asked, how did he know the traditions about Maitland\nand his three sons, which we only know from poems of about 1576 in the\nmanuscripts of Sir Richard Maitland?  These poems in 1802 were, as far as\nI am aware, still unpublished.\n\nColonel Elliot urged that Leyden would know the poems, and must have\nknown Hogg.  From Leyden, then, Hogg would get the information.  In the\ntext I have urged that Leyden did not know Hogg.  I am able now to prove\nthat Hogg and Leyden never met till after Laidlaw gave the manuscript of\n_Auld Maitland_ to Hogg.\n\nThe fact is given in the original manuscript of Laidlaw\u2019s _Recollections\nof Sir Walter Scott_ (among the Laing MSS. in the library of the\nUniversity of Edinburgh).  Carruthers, in publishing Laidlaw\u2019s\nreminiscences, omitted the following passage.  After Scott had read _Auld\nMaitland_ aloud to Leyden and Laird Laidlaw, the three rode together to\ndine at Whitehope.\n\n\u201cNear the Craigbents,\u201d says Laidlaw, \u201cMr. Scott and Leyden drew together\nin a close and seemingly private conversation.  I, of course, fell back.\nAfter a minute or two, Leyden reined in his horse (a black horse that Mr.\nScott\u2019s servant used to ride) and let me come up.  \u2018This Hogg,\u2019 said he,\n\u2018writes verses, I understand.\u2019  I assured him that he wrote very\nbeautiful verses, and with great facility.  \u2018But I trust,\u2019 he replied,\n\u2018that there is no fear of his passing off any of his own upon Scott for\nold ballads.\u2019  I again assured him that he would never think of such a\nthing; and neither would he at that period of his life.\n\n\u201c\u2018Let him beware of forgery,\u2019 cried Leyden with great force and energy,\nand in, I suppose, what Mr. Scott used afterwards to call the _saw tones\nof his voice_.\u201d\n\nThis proves that Leyden had no personal knowledge of \u201cthis Hogg,\u201d and did\nnot supply the shepherd with the traditions about Auld Maitland.\n\nMr. W. J. Kennedy, of Hawick, pointed out to me this passage in Laidlaw\u2019s\n_Recollections_, edited from the MS. by Mr. James Sinton, as reprinted\nfrom the _Transactions_ of the Hawick Arch\u00e6ological Society, 1905.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n                                                    PAGE\nSCOTT AND THE BALLADS                                  1\nAULD MAITLAND                                         18\nTHE BALLAD OF OTTERBURNE                              53\nSCOTT\u2019S TRADITIONAL COPY AND HOW HE EDITED IT         67\nTHE MYSTERY OF THE BALLAD OF JAMIE TELFER             87\nKINMONT WILLIE                                       126\nCONCLUSIONS                                          148\n\n\n\n\nSCOTT AND THE BALLADS\n\n\nIT was through his collecting and editing of _The Border Minstrelsy_ that\nSir Walter Scott glided from law into literature.  The history of the\nconception and completion of his task, \u201ca labour of love truly, if ever\nsuch there was,\u201d says Lockhart, is well known, but the tale must be\nbriefly told if we are to understand the following essays in defence of\nScott\u2019s literary morality.\n\nLate in 1799 Scott wrote to James Ballantyne, then a printer in Kelso, \u201cI\nhave been for years collecting Border ballads,\u201d and he thought that he\ncould put together \u201csuch a selection as might make a neat little volume,\nto sell for four or five shillings.\u201d  In December 1799 Scott received the\noffice of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, or, as he preferred to say, of Ettrick\nForest.  In the Forest, as was natural, he found much of his materials.\nThe people at the head of Ettrick were still, says Hogg, {1a} like many\nof the Highlanders even now, in that they cheered the long winter nights\nwith the telling of old tales; and some aged people still remembered, no\ndoubt in a defective and corrupted state, many old ballads.  Some of\nthese, especially the ballads of Border raids and rescues, may never even\nhave been written down by the original authors.  The Borderers, says\nLesley, Bishop of Ross, writing in 1578, \u201ctake much pleasure in their old\nmusic and chanted songs, which they themselves compose, whether about the\ndeeds of their ancestors, or about ingenious raiding tricks and\nstratagems.\u201d {2a}\n\nThe historical ballads about the deeds of their ancestors would be far\nmore romantic than scientifically accurate.  The verses, as they passed\nfrom mouth to mouth and from generation to generation, would be in a\nconstant state of flux and change.  When a man forgot a verse, he would\nmake something to take its place.  A more or less appropriate stanza from\nanother ballad would slip in; or the reciter would tell in prose the\nmatter of which he forgot the versified form.\n\nAgain, in the towns, street ballads on remarkable events, as early at\nleast as the age of Henry VIII., were written or printed.  Knox speaks of\nballads on Queen Mary\u2019s four Maries.  Of these ballads only one is left,\nand it is a libel.  The hanging of a French apothecary of the Queen, and\na French waiting-maid, for child murder, has been transferred to one of\nthe Maries, or rather to an apocryphal Mary Hamilton, with Darnley for\nher lover.  Of this ballad twenty-eight variants\u2014and extremely various\nthey are\u2014were collected by Professor Child in his _English and Scottish\nPopular Ballads_ (ten parts, 1882\u20131898).  In one mangled form or another\nsuch ballads would drift at last even to Ettrick Forest.\n\nA ballad may be found in a form which the first author could scarcely\nrecognise, dozens of hands, in various generations, having been at work\non it.  At any period, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth\ncenturies, the cheap press might print a sheet of the ballads, edited and\ninterpolated by the very lowest of printer\u2019s hacks; that copy would\ncirculate, be lost, and become in turn a traditional source, though full\nof modernisms.  Or an educated person might make a written copy, filling\nup gaps himself in late seventeenth or in eighteenth century ballad\nstyle, and this might pass into the memory of the children and servants\nof the house, and so to the herds and to the farm lasses.  I suspect that\nthis process may have occurred in the cases of _Auld Maitland_ and of\n_The Outlaw Murray_\u2014\u201cthese two bores\u201d Mr. Child is said to have styled\nthem.\n\nWhen Allan Ramsay, about 1720, took up and printed a ballad, he altered\nit if he pleased.  More faithful to his texts (wherever he got them), was\nDavid Herd, in his collection of 1776, but his version did not reach, as\nwe shall see, old reciters in Ettrick.  If Scott found any traditional\nballads in Ettrick, as his collectors certainly did, they had passed\nthrough the processes described.  They needed re-editing of some sort if\nthey were to be intelligible, and readable with pleasure.\n\nIn 1800, apparently, while Scott made only brief flying visits from the\nlittle inn of Clovenfords, on Tweed, to his sheriffdom, he found a\ncoadjutor.  Richard Heber, the wealthy and luxurious antiquary and\ncollector, looked into Constable\u2019s first little bookselling shop, and saw\na strange, poor young student prowling among the books.  This was John\nLeyden, son of a shepherd in Roxburghshire, a lad living in extreme\npoverty.\n\nLeyden, in 1800, was making himself a savant.  Heber spoke with him,\nfound that he was rich in ballad-lore, and carried him to Scott.  He was\npresently introduced into the best society in Edinburgh (which would not\nhappen in our time), and a casual note of Scott\u2019s proves that he did not\nleave Leyden in poverty.  Early in 1802, Leyden got the promise of an\nEast Indian appointment, read medicine furiously, and sailed for the East\nin the beginning of 1803.  It does not appear that Leyden went\nballad-hunting in Ettrick before he rode thither with Scott in the spring\nof 1802.  He was busy with books, with editorial work, and in aiding\nScott in Edinburgh.  It was he who insisted that a small volume at five\nshillings was far too narrow for the materials collected.\n\nScott also corresponded with the aged Percy, Bishop of Dromore, editor of\nthe _Reliques_, and with Joseph Ritson, the precise collector, Percy\u2019s\nbitter foe.  Unfortunately the correspondence on ballads with Ritson, who\ndied in 1803, is but scanty; nor has most of the correspondence with\nanother student, George Ellis, been published.  Even in Mr. Douglas\u2019s\nedition of Scott\u2019s _Familiar Letters_, the portion of an important letter\nof Hogg\u2019s which deals with ballad-lore is omitted.  I shall give the\nletter in full.\n\nIn 1800\u201301, \u201c_The Minstrelsy_ formed the editor\u2019s chief occupation,\u201d says\nLockhart; but later, up to April 1801, the Forest and Liddesdale had\nyielded little material.  In fact, I do not know that Scott ever procured\nmuch in Liddesdale, where he had no Hogg or Laidlaw always on the spot,\nand in touch with the old people.  It was in spring, 1802, that Scott\nfirst met his lifelong friend, William Laidlaw, farmer in Blackhouse, on\nDouglasburn, in Yarrow.  Laidlaw, as is later proved completely,\nintroduced Scott to Hogg, then a very unsophisticated shepherd.\n\u201cLaidlaw,\u201d says Lockhart, \u201ctook care that Scott should see, without\ndelay, James Hogg.\u201d {4a}  These two men, Hogg and Laidlaw, knowing the\ncountry people well, were Scott\u2019s chief sources of recited balladry; and\nprobably they sometimes improved, in making their copies, the materials\nwon from the failing memories of the old.  Thus Laidlaw, while tenant in\nTraquair Knowe, obtained from recitation, _The D\u00e6mon Lover_.  Scott does\nnot tell us whether or not he knew the fact that Laidlaw wrote in stanza\n6 (half of it traditional), stanza 12 (also a ballad formula), stanzas 17\nand 18 (necessary to complete the sense; the last two lines of 18 are\npurely and romantically modern).\n\nWe shall later quote Hogg\u2019s account of his own dealings with his raw\nmaterials from recitation.\n\nIn January 1802 Scott published the two first volumes of _The\nMinstrelsy_.  Lockhart describes the enthusiasm of dukes, fine ladies,\nand antiquarians.  In the end of April 1803 the third volume appeared,\nincluding ballads obtained through Hogg and Laidlaw in spring 1802.\nScott, by his store of historic anecdote in his introductions and notes,\nby his way of vivifying the past, and by his method of editing, revived,\nbut did not create, the interest in the romance of ballad poetry.\n\nIt had always existed.  We all know Sidney\u2019s words on \u201cThe Douglas and\nthe Percy\u201d; Addison\u2019s on folk-poetry; Mr. Pepys\u2019 ballad collection; the\nballads in Tom Durfey\u2019s and other miscellanies; Allan Ramsay\u2019s\n_Evergreen_; Bishop Percy\u2019s _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_; Herd\u2019s ballad\nvolumes of 1776; Evans\u2019 collections; Burns\u2019 remakings of old songs;\nRitson\u2019s publications, and so forth.  But the genius of Burns, while it\ntransfigured many old songs, was not often exercised on old narrative\nballads, and when Scott produced _The Minstrelsy_, the taste for ballads\nwas confined to amateurs of early literature, and to country folk.\n\nSir Walter\u2019s method of editing, of presenting his traditional materials,\nwas literary, and, usually, not scientific.  A modern collector would\npublish things\u2014legends, ballads, or folk-tales\u2014exactly as he found them\nin old broadsides, or in MS. copies, or received them from oral\nrecitation.  He would give the names and residences and circumstances of\nthe reciters or narrators (Herd, in 1776, gave no such information).  He\nwould fill up no gaps with his own inventions, would add no stanzas of\nhis own, and the circulation of his work would arrive at some two or\nthree hundred copies given away!\n\nAs Lockhart says, \u201cScott\u2019s diligent zeal had put him in possession of a\nvariety of copies in various stages of preservation, and to the task of\nselecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials he brought\na knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of\ntaste, such as had never before been united in the person of a poetical\nantiquary.\u201d\n\nLockhart speaks of \u201cThe editor\u2019s conscientious fidelity . . . which\nprevented the introduction of anything new, and his pure taste in the\nbalancing of discordant recitations.\u201d  He had already written that \u201cScott\nhad, I firmly believe, interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of\nhis own.\u201d {8a}\n\nIt is clear that Lockhart had not compared the texts in _The Minstrelsy_\nwith the mass of manuscript materials which are still at Abbotsford.\nThese, copied by the accurate Mr. Macmath, have been published in the\nmonumental collection of _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, in ten\nparts, by the late Professor Child of Harvard, the greatest of scholars\nin ballad-lore.  From his book we often know exactly what kinds of copies\nof ballads Scott possessed, and what alterations he made in his copies.\nThe _Ballad of Otterburne_ is especially instructive, as we shall see\nlater.  But of the most famous of Border historical ballads, _Kinmont\nWillie_, and its companion, _Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead_, Scott has\nleft no original manuscript texts.  Now into each of these ballads Scott\nhas written (if internal evidence be worth anything) verses of his own;\nstanzas unmistakably marked by his own spirit, energy, sense of romance,\nand, occasionally, by a somewhat inflated rhetoric.  On this point doubt\nis not easy.  When he met the names of his chief, Buccleuch, and of his\nfavourite ancestor, Wat of Warden, Scott did, in two cases, for those\nheroes what, by his own confession, he did for anecdotes that came in his\nway\u2014he decked them out \u201cwith a cocked hat and a sword.\u201d\n\nSir Walter knew perfectly well that he was not \u201cplaying the game\u201d in a\ntruly scientific spirit.  He explains his ideas in his \u201cEssay on Popular\nPoetry\u201d as late as 1830.  He mentions Joseph Ritson\u2019s \u201cextreme attachment\nto the severity of truth,\u201d and his attacks on Bishop Percy\u2019s purely\nliterary treatment of the materials of his _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_\n(1765).\n\nAs Scott says, \u201cby Percy words were altered, phrases improved, and whole\nverses were inserted or omitted at pleasure.\u201d  Percy \u201caccommodated\u201d the\nballads \u201cwith such emendations as might recommend them to the modern\ntaste.\u201d  Ritson cried \u201cforgery,\u201d but Percy, says Scott, had to win a\nhearing from his age, and confessed (in general terms) to his additions\nand decorations.\n\nScott then speaks reprovingly of Pinkerton\u2019s wholesale fabrication of\n_entire ballads_ (1783), a crime acknowledged later by the culprit\n(1786).  Scott applauds Ritson\u2019s accuracy, but regrets his preference of\nthe worst to the better readings, as if their inferiority was a security\nfor their being genuine.  Scott preferred the best, the most poetical\nreadings.\n\nIn 1830, Scott also wrote an essay on \u201cImitations of the Ancient\nBallads,\u201d and spoke very leniently of imitations passed off as authentic.\n\u201cThere is no small degree of cant in the violent invectives with which\nimpostors of this nature have been assailed.\u201d  As to _Hardyknute_, the\nfavourite poem of his infancy, \u201cthe first that I ever learned and the\nlast that I shall forget,\u201d he says, \u201cthe public is surely more enriched\nby the contribution than injured by the deception.\u201d  Besides, he says,\nthe deception almost never deceives.\n\nHis method in _The Minstrelsy_, he writes, was \u201cto imitate the plan and\nstyle of Bishop Percy, observing only more strict fidelity concerning my\noriginals.\u201d  That is to say, he avowedly made up texts out of a variety\nof copies, when he had more copies than one.  This is frequently\nacknowledged by Scott; what he does not acknowledge is his own occasional\ninterpolation of stanzas.  A good example is _The Gay Gosshawk_.  He had\na MS. of his own \u201cof some antiquity,\u201d a MS. of Mrs. Brown, a famous\nreciter and collector of the eighteenth century; and the Abbotsford MSS.\nshow isolated stanzas from Hogg, and a copy from Will Laidlaw.  Mr. T. F.\nHenderson\u2019s notes {10a} display the methods of selection, combination,\nemendation, and possible interpolation.\n\nBy these methods Scott composed \u201ca standard text,\u201d now the classical\ntext, of the ballads which he published.  Ballad lovers, who are not\nspecialists, go to _The Minstrelsy_ for their favourite fare, and for\nhistorical elucidation and anecdote.\n\nScott often mentions his sources of all kinds, such as MSS. of Herd and\nMrs. Brown; \u201can old person\u201d; \u201can old woman at Kirkhill, West Lothian\u201d;\n\u201can ostler at Carlisle\u201d; Allan Ramsay\u2019s _Tea-Table Miscellany_; Surtees\nof Mainsforth (these ballads are by Surtees himself: Scott never\nsuspected him); Caw\u2019s _Hawick Museum_ (1774); Ritson\u2019s copies, others\nfrom Leyden; the Glenriddell MSS. (collected by the friend of Burns); on\nseveral occasions copies from recitations procured by James Hogg or Will\nLaidlaw, and possibly or probably each of these men emended the copy he\nobtained; while Scott combined and emended all in his published text.\n\nSometimes Scott gives no source at all, and in these cases research finds\nvariants in old broadsides, or elsewhere.\n\nIn thirteen cases he gives no source, or \u201cfrom tradition,\u201d which is the\nsame thing; though \u201ctradition in Ettrick Forest\u201d may sometimes imply,\nonce certainly does, the intermediary Hogg, or Will Laidlaw.\n\nWe now understand Scott\u2019s methods as editor.  They are not scientific;\nthey are literary.  We also acknowledge (on internal evidence) his\ninterpolation of his own stanzas in _Kinmont Willie_ and _Jamie Telfer_,\nwhere he exalts his chief and ancestor.  We cannot do otherwise (as\nscholars) than regret and condemn Scott\u2019s interpolations, never\nconfessed.  As lovers of poetry we acknowledge that, without Scott\u2019s\ninterpolation, we could have no more of _Kinmont Willie_ than verses,\n\u201cmuch mangled by reciters,\u201d as Scott says, of a ballad perhaps no more\npoetical than _Jock o\u2019 the Side_.  Scott says that \u201csome conjectural\nemendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible.\u201d\nAs it is now very intelligible, to say \u201cconjectural emendations\u201d is a way\nof saying \u201cinterpolations.\u201d\n\nBut while thus confessing Scott\u2019s sins, I cannot believe that he, like\nPinkerton, palmed off on the world any ballad or ballads of his own sole\nmanufacture, or any ballad which he knew to be forged.\n\nThe truth is that Scott was easily deceived by a modern imitation, if he\nliked the poetry.  Surtees hoaxed him not only with _Barthram\u2019s Dirge_\nand _Anthony Featherstonhaugh_, but with a long prose excerpt from a\nnon-existent manuscript about a phantom knight.  Scott made the plot of\n_Marmion_ hinge on this myth, in the encounter of Marmion with Wilfred as\nthe phantasmal cavalier.  He tells us that in _The Flowers of the Forest_\n\u201cthe manner of the ancient minstrels is so happily imitated, that it\nrequired the most positive evidence to convince the editor that the song\nwas of modern date.\u201d  Really the author was Miss Jane Elliot (1747\u20131805),\ndaughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto.  Herd published a made-up copy\nin 1776.  The tune, Scott says, is old, and he has heard an imperfect\nverse of the original ballad\u2014\n\n    \u201cI ride single on my saddle,\n    For the flowers o\u2019 the forest are a\u2019 wede awa\u2019\u201d\n\nThe _constant_ use of double rhymes within the line\u2014\n\n    \u201cAt e\u2019en, in the gloaming, nae younkers are roaming,\u201d\n\nan artifice rare in genuine ballads, might alone have proved to Scott\nthat the poem of Miss Elliot is not popular and ancient.\n\nI have cleared my conscience by confessing Scott\u2019s literary sins.  His\ninterpolations, elsewhere mere stopgaps, are mainly to be found in\n_Kinmont Willie_ and _Jamie Telfer_.  His duty was to say, in his preface\nto each ballad, \u201cThe editor has interpolated stanza\u201d so and so; if he\nmade up the last verses of _Kinmont Willie_ from the conclusion of a\nversion of _Archie o\u2019 Ca\u2019field_, he should have said so; as he does\nacknowledge two stopgap interpolations by Hogg in _Auld Maitland_.  But\nas to the conclusion of _Kinmont Willie_, he did, we shall see, make\nconfession.\n\nProfessor Kittredge, who edited Child\u2019s last part (X.), says in his\nexcellent abridged edition of Child (1905), \u201cIt was no doubt the feeling\nthat the popular ballad is a fluid and unstable thing that has prompted\nso many editors\u2014among them Sir Walter Scott, whom it is impossible to\nassail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove\u2014to deal\nfreely with the versions that came into their hands.\u201d\n\nTwenty-five years after the appearance of _The Border Minstrelsy_, in\n1827, appeared Motherwell\u2019s _Minstrelsy_, _Ancient and Modern_.\nMotherwell was in favour of scientific methods of editing.  Given two\ncopies of a ballad, he says, \u201cperhaps they may not have a single stanza\nwhich is mutual property, except certain commonplaces which seem an\nintegral portion of the original mechanism of all our ancient ballads\n. . . \u201d  By selecting the most beautiful and striking passages from each\ncopy, and making those cohere, an editor, he says, may produce a more\nperfect and ornate version than any that exists in tradition.  Of the\noriginals \u201cthe individuality entirely disappears.\u201d\n\nMotherwell disapproved of this method, which, as a rule, is Scott\u2019s, and,\nscientifically, the method is not defensible.  Thus, having three ballads\nof rescues, in similar circumstances, with a river to ford, Scott\nconfessedly places that incident where he thinks it most \u201cpoetically\nappropriate\u201d; and in all probability, by a single touch, he gives poetry\nin place of rough humour.  Of all this Motherwell disapproved. (See\n_Kinmont Willie_, _infra._)\n\nAytoun, in _The Ballads of Scotland_, thought Motherwell hypercritical;\nand also, in his practice inconsistent with his preaching.  Aytoun\nobserved, \u201cwith much regret and not a little indignation\u201d (1859), \u201cthat\nlater editors insinuated a doubt as to the fidelity of Sir Walter\u2019s\nrendering.  My firm belief, resting on documentary evidence, is that\nScott was most scrupulous in adhering to the very letter of his\ntranscripts, whenever copies of ballads, previously taken down, were\nsubmitted to him.\u201d  As an example, Aytoun, using a now lost MS. copy of\nabout 1689\u20131702, of _The Outlaw Murray_, says \u201cSir Walter has given it\nthroughout just as he received it.\u201d  Yet Scott\u2019s copy, mainly from a lost\nCockburn MS., contains a humorous passage on Buccleuch which Child half\nsuspects to be by Sir Walter himself. {15a}  It is impossible for me to\nknow whether Child\u2019s hesitating conjecture is right or wrong.  Certainly\nwe shall see, when Scott had but one MS. copy, as of _Auld Maitland_, his\nediting left little or nothing to be desired.\n\nBut now Scott is assailed, both where he deserves, and where, in my\nopinion, he does not deserve censure.\n\nScott did no more than his confessed following of Percy\u2019s method implies,\nto his original text of the _Ballad of Otterburne_.  This I shall prove\nfrom his original text, published by Child from the Abbotsford MSS., and\nby a letter from the collector of the ballad, the Ettrick Shepherd.\n\nThe facts, in this instance, apparently are utterly unknown to\nLieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliot, in his _Further Essays on\nBorder Ballads_ (1910), pp. 1\u201345.\n\nAgain, I am absolutely certain, and can demonstrate, that Scott did not\n(as Colonel Elliot believes) detect Hogg in forging _Auld Maitland_, join\nwith him in this fraud, and palm the ballad off on the public.  Nothing\nof the kind occurred.  Scott did not lie in this matter, both to the\nworld and to his intimate friends, in private letters.\n\nOnce more, without better evidence than we possess, I do not believe\nthat, in _Jamie Telfer_, Scott transferred the glory from the Elliots to\nthe Scotts, and the shame from Buccleuch to Elliot of Stobs.  The\ndiscussion leads us into very curious matter.  But here, with our present\nmaterials, neither absolute proof nor disproof is possible.\n\nFinally, as to _Kinmont Willie_, I merely give such reasons as I can find\nfor thinking that Scott _had_ \u201cmangled\u201d fragments of an old ballad before\nhim, and did not merely paraphrase the narrative of Walter Scott of\nSatchells, in his doggerel _True History of the Name of Scott_ (1688).\n\nThe positions of Colonel Elliot are in each case the reverse of mine.  In\nthe instance of _Auld Maitland_ (where Scott\u2019s conduct would be\nunpardonable if Colonel Elliot\u2019s view were correct), I have absolute\nproof that he is entirely mistaken.  For _Otterburne_ I am equally\nfortunate; that is, I can show that Scott\u2019s part went no further than\n\u201cthe making of a standard text\u201d on his avowed principles.  For _Jamie\nTelfer_, having no original manuscript, I admit _decorative_\ninterpolations, and for the rest, argue on internal evidence, no other\nbeing accessible.  For _Kinmont Willie_, I confess that the poem, as it\nstands, is Scott\u2019s, but give reasons for thinking that he had ballad\nfragments in his mind, if not on paper.\n\nIt will be understood that Colonel Elliot does not, I conceive, say that\nhis charges are _proved_, but he thinks that the evidence points to these\nconclusions.  He \u201chopes that I will give reasons for my disbelief\u201d in his\ntheories; and \u201chopes, though he cannot expect that they will completely\ndispose of\u201d his views about _Jamie Telfer_. {17a}\n\nI give my reasons, though I entertain but slight hope of convincing my\ncourteous opponent.  That is always a task rather desperate.  But the\ntask leads me, in defence of a great memory, into a countryside, and into\nold times on the Border, which are so alluring that, like Socrates, I\nmust follow where the _logos_ guides me.  To one conclusion it guides me,\nwhich startles myself, but I must follow the _logos_, even against the\nverdict of Professor Child, _notre ma\u00eetre \u00e0 tous_.  In some instances, I\nrepeat, positive proof of the correctness of my views is impossible; all\nthat I can do is to show that Colonel Elliot\u2019s contrary opinions also\nfall far short of demonstration, or are demonstrably erroneous.\n\n\n\n\nAULD MAITLAND\n\n\nTHE ballad of _Auld Maitland_ holds in _The Border Minstrelsy_ a place\nlike that of the _Doloneia_, or Tenth Book, in the _Iliad_.  Every\nprofessor of the Higher Criticism throws his stone at the _Doloneia_ in\npassing, and every ballad-editor does as much to _Auld Maitland_.\nProfessor Child excluded it from his monumental collection of \u201cEnglish\nand Scottish Popular Ballads,\u201d fragments, and variants, for which Mr.\nChild and his friends and helpers ransacked every attainable collection\nof ballads in manuscript, and ballads in print, as they listened to the\nlast murmurings of ballad tradition from the lips of old or young.\n\nMr. Child, says his friend and pupil, Professor Kittredge, \u201cpossessed a\nkind of instinct\u201d for distinguishing what is genuine and traditional, or\nmodern, or manipulated, or, if I may say so, \u201cfaked\u201d in a ballad.\n\n\u201cThis instinct, trained by thirty years of study, had become wonderfully\nswift in its operations, and almost infallible.  A forged or retouched\npiece could not escape him for a moment: he detected the slightest jar in\nthe ballad ring.\u201d {18a}\n\nBut all old traditional ballads are masses of \u201cretouches,\u201d made through\ncenturies, by reciters, copyists, editors, and so forth.  Unluckily,\nChild never gave in detail his reasons for rejecting that treasure of Sir\nWalter\u2019s, _Auld Maitland_.  Child excluded the poem _sans phrase_.  If he\ndid this, like Falstaff \u201con instinct,\u201d one can only say that antiquarian\ninstincts are never infallible.  We must apply our reason to the problem,\n\u201cWhat is _Auld Maitland_?\u201d\n\nColonel Elliot has taken this course.  By far the most blighting of the\nmany charges made by Colonel Elliot against Sir Walter Scott are\nconcerned with the ballad of _Auld Maitland_. {19a}  After stating that,\nin his opinion, \u201cseveral stanzas\u201d of the ballad are by Sir Walter\nhimself, Colonel Elliot sums up his own ideas thus:\n\n\u201cMy view is that Hogg, in the first instance, tried to palm off the\nballad on Scott, and failed; and then Scott palmed it off on the public,\nand succeeded . . . let us, as gentlemen and honest judges, admit that\nthe responsibility of the deception rests rather on the laird (Scott)\nthan on the herd\u201d (Hogg.) {19b}\n\nIf Colonel Elliot\u2019s \u201cviews\u201d were correct (and it is absolutely\nerroneous), the guilt of \u201cthe laird\u201d would be great.  Scott conspires\nwith a shepherd, a stranger, to palm off a forgery on the public.  Scott\nissues the forgery, and, what is worse, in a private letter to a learned\nfriend, he utters what I must borrow words for: he utters \u201ccold and\ncalculated falsehoods\u201d about the manner in which, and the person from\nwhom, he obtained what he calls \u201cmy first copy\u201d of the song.  If Hogg and\nScott forged the poem, then when Scott told his tale of its acquisition\nby himself from Laidlaw, Scott lied.\n\nColonel Elliot is ignorant of the facts in the case.  He gropes his way\nunder the misleading light of a false date, and of fragments torn from\nthe context of a letter which, in its complete form, has never till now\nbeen published.  Where positive and published information exists, it has\nnot always come within the range of the critic\u2019s researches; had it done\nso, he would have taken the information into account, but he does not.\nOf the existence of Scott\u2019s \u201cfirst copy\u201d of the ballad in manuscript our\ncritic seems never to have heard; certainly he has not studied the MS.\nHad he done so he would not assign (on grounds like those of Homeric\ncritics) this verse to Hogg and that to Scott.  He would know that Scott\ndid not interpolate a single stanza; that spelling, punctuation, and some\nslight verbal corrections, with an admirable emendation, were the sum of\nhis industry: that he did not even excise two stanzas of, at earliest,\neighteenth century work.\n\nI must now clear up misconceptions which have imposed themselves on all\ncritics of the ballad, on myself, for example, no less than on Colonel\nElliot: and must tell the whole story of how the existence of the ballad\nfirst became known to Scott\u2019s collector and friend, William Laidlaw, how\nhe procured the copy which he presented to Sir Walter, and how Sir Walter\nobtained, from recitation, his \u201csecond copy,\u201d that which he printed in\n_The Minstrelsy_ in 1803.\n\nIn 1801 Scott, who was collecting ballads, gave a list of songs which he\nwanted to Mr. Andrew Mercer, of Selkirk.  Mercer knew young Will Laidlaw,\nfarmer in Blackhouse on Yarrow, where Hogg had been a shepherd for ten\nyears.  Laidlaw applied for two ballads, one of them _The Outlaw Murray_,\nto Hogg, then shepherding at Ettrick House, at the head of Ettrick, above\nThirlestane.  Hogg replied on 20th July 1801.  He could get but a few\nverses of _The Outlaw_ from his maternal uncle, Will Laidlaw of Phawhope.\nHe said that, from traditions known to him, he could make good songs,\n\u201cbut without Mr. Scott\u2019s permission this would be an imposition, neither\ncould I undertake it without an order from him in his own handwriting\n. . . \u201d {21a}  Laidlaw went on trying to collect songs for Scott.  We now\ntake his own account of _Auld Maitland_ from a manuscript left by him.\n{21b}\n\n\u201cI heard from one of the servant girls, who had all the turn and\nqualifications for a collector, of a ballad called _Auld Maitland_, that\na grandfather (maternal) of Hogg could repeat, and she herself had\nseveral of the first stanzas, which I took a note of, and have still the\ncopy.  This greatly aroused my anxiety to procure the whole, for this was\na ballad not even hinted at by Mercer in his list of desiderata received\nfrom Mr. Scott.  I forthwith wrote to Hogg himself, requesting him to\nendeavour to procure the whole ballad.  In a week or two I received his\nreply, containing _Auld Maitland_ exactly as he had received it from the\nrecitation of his uncle Will of Phawhope, corroborated by his mother, who\nboth said they learned it from their father, a still older Will of\nPhawhope, and an old man called Andrew Muir, who had been servant to the\nfamous Mr. Boston, minister of Ettrick.\u201d  Concerning Laidlaw\u2019s evidence,\nColonel Elliot says not a word.\n\nThis copy of _Auld Maitland_, with the superscription outside\u2014\n\n                             MR. WILLIAM LAIDLAW,\n                                 BLACKHOUSE,\n\nall in Hogg\u2019s hand, is now at Abbotsford.  We next have, through\nCarruthers using Laidlaw\u2019s manuscript, an account of the arrival of Scott\nand Leyden at Blackhouse, of Laidlaw\u2019s presentation of Hogg\u2019s manuscript,\nwhich Scott read aloud, and of their surprise and delight.  Scott was\nexcited, so that his _burr_ became very perceptible. {23a}\n\nThe time of year when Scott and Leyden visited Yarrow was not the\n_autumn_ vacation of 1802, as Lockhart erroneously writes, {23b} but the\n_spring_ vacation of 1802.  The spring vacation, Mr. Macmath informs me,\nran from 11th March to 12th May in 1802.  In May, apparently, Scott\nhaving obtained the _Auld Maitland_ MS. in the vernal vacation of the\nCourt of Session, gave his account of his discovery to his friend Ellis\n(Lockhart does not date the letter, but wrongly puts it after the return\nto Edinburgh in November 1802).\n\nScott wrote thus:\u2014\u201cWe\u201d (John Leyden and himself) \u201chave just concluded an\nexcursion of two or three weeks through my jurisdiction of Selkirkshire,\nwhere, in defiance of mountains, rivers, and bogs, damp and dry, we have\npenetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest . . . I have . . .\nreturned _loaded_ with the treasures of oral tradition.  The principal\nresult of our inquiries has been a complete and perfect copy of \u201cMaitland\nwith his Auld Berd Graie,\u201d referred to by [Gawain] Douglas in his _Palice\nof Honour_ (1503), along with John the Reef and other popular characters,\nand celebrated in the poems from the Maitland MS.\u201d (_circ._ 1575).  You\nmay guess the surprise of Leyden and myself when this was presented to\nus, copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd, by a country\nfarmer . . . Many of the old words are retained, which neither the\nreciter nor the copyer understood.  Such are the military engines,\nsowies, _springwalls_ (springalds), and many others . . . \u201d {24a}\n\nThat Scott got the ballad in spring 1802 is easily proved.  On 10th April\n1802, Joseph Ritson, the crabbed, ill-tempered, but meticulously accurate\nscholar, who thought that ballad-forging should be made a capital\noffence, wrote thus to Scott:\u2014\n\n\u201cI have the pleasure of enclosing my copy of a very ancient poem, which\nappears to me to be the original of _The Wee Wee Man_, and which I learn\nfrom Mr. Ellis you are desirous to see.\u201d  In Scott\u2019s letter to Ellis,\njust quoted, he says: \u201cI have lately had from him\u201d (Ritson) \u201c_a copie_ of\n\u2018Ye litel wee man,\u2019 of which I think I can make some use.  In return, I\nhave sent him a sight of _Auld Maitland_, the original MS . . . I wish\nhim to see it _in puris naturalibus_.\u201d  \u201cThe precaution here taken was\nvery natural,\u201d says Lockhart, considering Ritson\u2019s temper and hatred of\nliterary forgeries.  Scott, when he wrote to Ellis, had received Ritson\u2019s\n_The Wee Wee Man_ \u201clately\u201d: it was sent to him by Ritson on 10th April\n1802.  Scott had already, when he wrote to Ellis, got \u201cthe original MS.\nof _Auld Maitland_\u201d (now in Abbotsford Library).  By 10th June 1802\nRitson wrote saying, \u201cYou may depend on my taking the utmost care of _Old\nMaitland_, and returning it in health and safety.  I would not use the\nliberty of transcribing it into my manuscript copy of Mrs. Brown\u2019s\nballads, but if you will signify your permission, I shall be highly\ngratified.\u201d {25} \u201cYour ancient and curious ballad,\u201d he styles the piece.\n\nThus Scott had _Auld Maitland_ in May 1802; he sent the original MS. to\nRitson; Ritson received it graciously; he had, on 10th April 1802, sent\nScott another MS., _The Wee Wee Man_: and when Scott wrote to Ellis about\nhis surprise at getting \u201ca complete and perfect copy of Maitland,\u201d he had\nbut lately received _The Wee Wee Man_, sent by Ritson on 10th April 1802.\nHe had made a spring, not an autumn, raid into the Forest.\n\nWe now know the external history of the ballad.  Laidlaw, hearing his\nservant repeat some stanzas, asks Hogg for the full copy, which Hogg\nsends with a pedigree from which he never wavered.  Auld Andrew Muir\ntaught the song to Hogg\u2019s mother and uncle.  Hogg took it from his\nuncle\u2019s recitation, and sent it, directed outside,\n\n                           TO MR. WILLIAM LAIDLAW,\n                                 BLACKHOUSE,\n\nand Laidlaw gave it to Scott, in March 12\u2013May 12, 1802.  But Scott,\npublishing the ballad in _The Minstrelsy_ (1803), says it is given \u201cas\nwritten down from the recitation of the mother of Mr. James Hogg, who\nsings, or rather chants, it with great animation\u201d (manifestly he had\nheard the recitation which he describes).\n\nIt seems that Scott, before he wrote to Ellis in May 1802, had misgivings\nabout the ballad.  Says Carruthers, he \u201cmade another visit to Blackhouse\nfor the purpose of getting Laidlaw as a guide to Ettrick,\u201d being \u201ccurious\nto see the poetical shepherd.\u201d\n\nLaidlaw\u2019s MS., used by Carruthers, describes the wild ride by the marshes\nat the head of the Loch of the Lowes, through the bogs on the knees of\nthe hills, down a footpath to Ramseycleuch in Ettrick.  They sent to\nEttrick House for Hogg; Scott was surprised and pleased with James\u2019s\nappearance.  They had a delightful evening: \u201cthe qualities of Hogg came\nout at every instant, and his unaffected simplicity and fearless\nfrankness both surprised and pleased the Sheriff.\u201d {26a}  Next morning\nthey visited Hogg and his mother at her cottage, and Hogg tells how the\nold lady recited _Auld Maitland_.  Hogg gave the story in prose, with\ngreat vivacity and humour, in his _Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott_\n(1834).\n\nIn an earlier poetical address to Scott, congratulating him on his\nelevation to the baronetcy (1818), the Shepherd says\u2014\n\n    When Maitland\u2019s song first met your ear,\n    How the furled visage up did clear.\n    Beaming delight! though now a shade\n    Of doubt would darken into dread,\n    That some unskilled presumptuous arm\n    Had marred tradition\u2019s mighty charm.\n    Scarce grew thy lurking dread the less,\n    Till she, the ancient Minstreless,\n    With fervid voice and kindling eye,\n    And withered arms waving on high,\n    Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek,\n    While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek:\n    \u201cNa, we are nane o\u2019 the lads o\u2019 France,\n    Nor e\u2019er pretend to be;\n    We be three lads of fair Scotland,\n    Auld Maitland\u2019s sons a\u2019 three.\u201d\n\n(Stanza xliii. as printed.  In Hogg\u2019s MS. copy, given to Laidlaw there\nare two verbal differences, in lines 1 and 4.)\n\nThen says Hogg\u2014\n\n    Thy fist made all the table ring,\n    By \u2014, sir, but that is the thing!\n\nHogg could not thus describe the scene in addressing Scott himself, in\n1818, if his story were not true.  It thus follows that his mother knew\nthe sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart.  Does any one believe\nthat, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg\u2019s\nhoax?  That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as\nto corroborate his imposture?\n\nThis is absurd.\n\nBut now comes the source of Colonel Elliot\u2019s theory of a conspiracy\nbetween Scott and Hogg, to forge a ballad and issue the forgery.  Colonel\nElliot knows scraps of a letter to Hogg of 30th June 1802.  He has read\nparts, not bearing on the question, in Mr. Douglas\u2019s _Familiar Letters of\nSir Walter Scott_ (vol. i. pp. 12\u201315), and another scrap, in which Hogg\nsays that \u201cI am surprised to hear that _Auld Maitland_ is suspected by\nsome to be a modern forgery.\u201d  This part of Hogg\u2019s letter of 30th June\n1802 was published by Scott himself in the third volume of _The\nMinstrelsy_ (April 1803).\n\nNot having the context of the letter, Colonel Elliot seems to argue,\n\u201cScott says he got his first copy in autumn 1802\u201d (Lockhart\u2019s mistake),\n\u201cyet here are Hogg and Scott corresponding about the ballad long before\nautumn, in June 1802.  This is very suspicious.\u201d  I give what appears to\nbe Colonel Elliot\u2019s line of reflection in my own words.  He decides that,\nas early as June 1802, \u201cHogg\u201d(in the Colonel\u2019s \u2018view\u2019), \u201cin the first\ninstance, tried to palm off the ballad on Scott, and failed; and that\nthen Scott palmed it off on the public, and succeeded.\u201d\n\nThis is all a mare\u2019s nest.  Scott, in March-May 1802, had the whole of\nthe ballad except one stanza, which Hogg sent to him on 30th June.\n\nI now print, for the first time, the whole of Hogg\u2019s letter of 30th June,\nwith its shrewd criticism on ballads, hitherto omitted, and I italicise\nthe passage about _Auld Maitland_:\u2014\n\n                                                 ETTRICK HOUSE, _June_ 30.\n\n    DEAR SIR,\u2014I have been perusing your minstrelsy very diligently for a\n    while past, and it being the first book I ever perused which was\n    written by a person I had seen and conversed with, the consequence\n    hath been to me a most sensible pleasure; for in fact it is the\n    remarks and modern pieces that I have delighted most in, being as it\n    were personally acquainted with many of the modern pieces formerly.\n    My mother is actually a living miscellany of old songs.  I never\n    believed that she had half so many until I came to a trial.  There\n    are some (_sic_) in your collection of which she hath not a part, and\n    I should by this time had a great number written for your amusement,\n    thinking them all of great antiquity and lost to posterity, had I not\n    luckily lighted upon a collection of songs in two volumes, published\n    by I know not who, in which I recognised about half-a-score of my\n    mother\u2019s best songs, almost word for word.  No doubt I was piqued,\n    but it saved me much trouble, paper, and ink; for I am carefully\n    avoiding anything which I have seen or heard of being in print,\n    although I have no doubt that I shall err, being acquainted with\n    almost no collections of that sort, but I am not afraid that you too\n    will mistake.  I am still at a loss with respect to some: such as the\n    Battle of Flodden beginning, \u201cFrom Spey to the Border,\u201d a long\n    poetical piece on the battle of Bannockburn, I fear modern: The\n    Battle of the Boyne, Young Bateman\u2019s Ghost, all of which, and others\n    which I cannot mind, I could mostly recover for a few miles\u2019 travel\n    were I certain they could be of any use concerning the above; and I\n    might have mentioned May Cohn and a duel between two friends, Graham\n    and Bewick, undoubtedly very old.  You must give me information in\n    your answer.  I have already scraped together a considerable\n    quantity\u2014suspend your curiosity, Mr. Scott, you will see them when I\n    see you, of which I am as impatient as you can be to see the songs\n    for your life.  But as I suppose you have no personal acquaintance in\n    this parish, it would be presumption in me to expect that you will\n    visit my cottage, but I will attend you in any part of the Forest if\n    you will send me word.  I am far from supposing that a person of your\n    discernment,\u2014d\u2014n it, I\u2019ll blot out that, \u2019tis so like flattery.  I\n    say I don\u2019t think you would despise a shepherd\u2019s \u201chumble cot an\u2019\n    hamely fare,\u201d as Burns hath it, yet though I would be extremely proud\n    of a visit, yet hang me if I would know what to do wi\u2019 ye.  I am\n    surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely\n    from my mother\u2019s.  Is Mr. Herd\u2019s MS. genuine?  I suspect it.  Jamie\n    Telfer differs in many particulars.  Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie is\n    another song altogether.  I have seen a verse of my mother\u2019s way\n    called Johny Armstrong\u2019s last good-night cited in the _Spectator_,\n    and another in _Boswell\u2019s Journal_.  It begins, \u201cIs there ne\u2019er a man\n    in fair Scotland?\u201d  Do you know if this is in print, Mr. Scott?  In\n    the Tale of Tomlin the whole of the interlude about the horse and the\n    hawk is a distinct song altogether. {30a}  Clerk Saunders is nearly\n    the same with my mother\u2019s, until that stanza [xvi.] which ends, \u201cwas\n    in the tower last night wi\u2019 me,\u201d then with another verse or two which\n    are not in yours, ends Clerk Saunders.  All the rest of the song in\n    your edition is another song altogether, which my mother hath mostly\n    likewise, and I am persuaded from the change in the stile that she is\n    right, for it is scarce consistent with the forepart of the ballad.\n    I have made several additions and variations out, to the printed\n    songs, for your inspection, but only when they could be inserted\n    without disjointing the songs as they are at present; to have written\n    all the variations would scarcely be possible, and I thought would\n    embarrass you exceedingly.  _I have recovered another half verse of\n    Old Maitlan_, _and have rhymed it thus_\u2014\n\n    _Remember Fiery of the Scot_\n    _Hath cowr\u2019d aneath thy hand_;\n    For ilka drap o\u2019 Maitlen\u2019s blood\n    I\u2019ll gie _thee_ rigs o\u2019 land.\u2014\n\n    _The two last lines only are original_; _you will easily perceive\n    that they occur in the very place where we suspected a want_.  _I am\n    surprised to hear that this song is suspected by some to be a modern\n    forgery_; _this will be best proved by most of the old people\n    hereabouts having a great part of it by heart_; many, indeed, are not\n    aware of the manners of this place, it is but lately emerged from\n    barbarity, and till this present age the poor illiterate people in\n    these glens knew of no other entertainment in the long winter nights\n    than in repeating and listening to these feats of their ancestors,\n    which I believe to be handed down inviolate from father to son, for\n    many generations, although no doubt, had a copy been taken of them at\n    the end of every fifty years, there must have been some difference,\n    which the repeaters would have insensibly fallen into merely by the\n    change of terms in that period.  I believe that it is thus that many\n    very ancient songs have been modernised, which yet to a connoisseur\n    will bear visible marks of antiquity.  The Maitlen, for instance,\n    exclusive of its mode of description, is all composed of words, which\n    would mostly every one spell and pronounce in the very same dialect\n    that was spoken some centuries ago.\n\n    Pardon, my dear Sir, the freedom I have taken in addressing you\u2014it is\n    my nature; and I could not resist the impulse of writing to you any\n    longer.  Let me hear from you as soon as this comes to your hand, and\n    tell me when you will be in Ettrick Forest, and suffer me to\n    subscribe myself, Sir, your most humble and affectionate servant,\n\n                                                               JAMES HOGG.\n\nIn Scott\u2019s printed text of the ballad, two interpolations, of two lines\neach, are acknowledged in notes.  They occur in stanzas vii., xlvi., and\nare attributed to Hogg.  In fact, Hogg sent one of them (vii.) to Laidlaw\nin his manuscript.  The other he sent to Scott on 30th June 1802.\n\nColonel Elliot, in the spirit of the Higher Criticism (_chim\u00e6ra bombinans\nin vacuo_), writes, {31a} \u201cFew will doubt that the footnotes\u201d (on these\ninterpolations) \u201cwere inserted with the purpose of leading the public to\nthink that Hogg made no other interpolations; but I am afraid I must go\nfurther than this and say that, since they were inserted on the editor\u2019s\nresponsibility, the intention must have been to make it appear as if no\nother interpolations by any other hand had been inserted.\u201d\n\nBut no other interpolations by another hand _were_ inserted!  Some verbal\nemendations were made by Scott, but he never put in a stanza or two lines\nof his own.\n\nColonel Elliot provides us with six pages of the Higher Criticism.  He\nknows how to distinguish between verses by Hogg, and verses by Scott!\n{32a}  But, save when Scott puts one line, a ballad formula, where Hogg\nhas another line, Scott makes no interpolations, and the ballad formula\nhe probably took, with other things of no more importance, from Mrs.\nHogg\u2019s recitation.  Oh, Higher Criticism!\n\nI now print the ballad as Hogg sent it to Laidlaw, between August 1801\nand March 1802, in all probability.\n\n[Back of Hogg\u2019s MS.: Mr. William Laidlaw, Blackhouse.]\n\n\n\nOLD MAITLAND\nA VERY ANTIENT SONG\n\n\n   THERE lived a king in southern land\n      King Edward hecht his name\n   Unwordily he wore the crown\n      Till fifty years was gane.\n\n   He had a sister\u2019s son o\u2019s ain\n      Was large o\u2019 blood and bane\n   And afterwards when he came up,\n      Young Edward hecht his name.\n\n   One day he came before the king,\n      And kneeld low on his knee\n   A boon a boon my good uncle,\n      I crave to ask of thee\n\n   \u201cAt our lang wars i\u2019 fair Scotland\n      I lang hae lang\u2019d to be\n   If fifteen hunder wale wight men\n      You\u2019ll grant to ride wi\u2019 me.\u201d\n\n   \u201cThou sal hae thae thou sal hae mae\n      I say it sickerly;\n   And I mysel an auld grey man\n      Arrayd your host sal see.\u201d\u2014\n\n   King Edward rade King Edward ran\u2014\n      I wish him dool and pain!\n   Till he had fifteen hundred men\n      Assembled on the Tyne.\n   And twice as many at North Berwick\n      Was a\u2019 for battle bound\n\n   They lighted on the banks of Tweed\n      And blew their coals sae het\n   And fired the Merce and Tevidale\n      All in an evening late\n\n   As they far\u2019d up o\u2019er Lammermor\n      They burn\u2019d baith tower and town\n   Until they came to a derksome house,\n      Some call it Leaders Town\n\n   Whae hauds this house young Edward crys,\n      Or whae gae\u2019st ower to me\n   A grey haired knight set up his head\n      And cracked right crousely\n\n   Of Scotlands King I haud my house\n      He pays me meat and fee\n   And I will keep my goud auld house\n      While my house will keep me\n\n   They laid their sowies to the wall\n      Wi\u2019 mony heavy peal\n   But he threw ower to them again\n      Baith piech and tar barille\n\n   With springs: wall stanes, and good of ern,\n      Among them fast he threw\n   Till mony of the Englishmen\n      About the wall he slew.\n\n   Full fifteen days that braid host lay\n      Sieging old Maitlen keen\n   Then they hae left him safe and hale\n      Within his strength o\u2019 stane\n\n   Then fifteen barks, all gaily good,\n      Met themen on a day,\n   Which they did lade with as much spoil\n      As they could bear away.\n\n   \u201cEngland\u2019s our ain by heritage;\n      And whae can us gainstand,\n   When we hae conquerd fair Scotland\n      Wi\u2019 bow, buckler, and brande\u201d\u2014\n\n   Then they are on to th\u2019 land o\u2019 france,\n      Where auld King Edward lay,\n   Burning each town and castle strong\n      That ance cam in his way.\n\n   Untill he cam unto that town\n      Which some call Billop-Grace\n   There were old Maitlen\u2019s sons a\u2019 three\n      Learning at School alas\n\n   The eldest to the others said,\n      O see ye what I see\n   If a\u2019 be true yon standard says,\n      We\u2019re fatherless a\u2019 three\n\n   For Scotland\u2019s conquerd up and down\n      Landsmen we\u2019ll never be:\n   Now will you go my brethren two,\n      And try some jeopardy\n\n   Then they hae saddled two black horse,\n      Two black horse and a grey\n   And they are on to Edwardes host\n      Before the dawn of day\n\n   When they arriv\u2019d before the host\n      They hover\u2019d on the ley\n   Will you lend me our King\u2019s standard\n      To carry a little way\n\n   Where was thou bred where was thou born\n      Wherein in what country\u2014\n   In the north of England I was born\n      What needed him to lie.\n\n   A knight me got a lady bare\n      I\u2019m a squire of high renown\n   I well may bear\u2019t to any king,\n      That ever yet wore crown.\n\n   He ne\u2019er came of an Englishman\n      Had sic an ee or bree\n   But thou art likest auld Maitlen\n      That ever I did see\n\n   But sic a gloom inon ae browhead\n      Grant\u2019s ne\u2019er see again\n   For many of our men he slew\n      And many put to pain\n\n   When Maitlan heard his father\u2019s name,\n      An angry man was he\n   Then lifting up a gilt dager\n      Hung low down by his kee\n\n   He stab\u2019d the knight the standard bore,\n      He stabb\u2019d him cruelly;\n   Then caught the standard by the neuk,\n      And fast away rade he.\n\n   Now is\u2019t na time brothers he cry\u2019d\n      Now, is\u2019t na time to flee\n   Ay by my soothe they baith reply\u2019d,\n      We\u2019ll bear you company\n\n   The youngest turn\u2019d him in a path\n      And drew a burnish\u2019d brand\n   And fifteen o\u2019 the foremost slew\n      Till back the lave did stand\n\n   He spurr\u2019d the grey unto the path\n      Till baith her sides they bled\n   Grey! thou maun carry me away\n      Or my life lies in wed\n\n   The captain lookit owr the wa\u2019\n      Before the break o day\n   There he beheld the three Scots lads\n      Pursued alongst the way\n\n   Pull up portculzies down draw briggs\n      My nephews are at hame\n   And they shall lodge wi\u2019 me to-night,\n      In spite of all England\n\n   Whene\u2019er they came within the gate\n      They thrust their horse them frae\n   And took three lang spears in their hands,\n      Saying, here sal come nae mae\n\n   And they shott out and they shott in,\n      Till it was fairly day\n   When many of the Englishmen\n      About the draw brigg lay.\n\n   Then they hae yoked carts and wains\n      To ca\u2019 their dead away\n   And shot auld dykes aboon the lave\n      In gutters where they lay\n\n   The king in his pavilion door\n      Was heard aloud to say\n   Last night three o\u2019 the lads o\u2019 France\n      My standard stole away\n\n   Wi\u2019 a fause tale disguis\u2019d they came\n      And wi\u2019 a fauser train\n   And to regain my gaye standard\n      These men were a\u2019 down slaine\n\n   It ill befits the youngest said\n      A crowned king to lie\n   But or that I taste meat and drink,\n      Reproved shall he be.\n\n   He went before King Edward straight\n      And kneel\u2019d low on his knee\n   I wad hae leave my liege he said,\n      To speak a word wi\u2019 thee\n\n   The king he turn\u2019d him round about\n      And wistna what to say\n   Quo\u2019 he, Man, thou\u2019s hae leave to speak\n      Though thou should speak a day.\n\n   You said that three young lads o\u2019 France,\n      Your standard stole away\n   Wi\u2019 a fause tale and fauser train,\n      And mony men did slay\n\n   But we are nane the lads o\u2019 France\n      Nor e\u2019er pretend to be\n   We are three lads o\u2019 fair Scotland,\n      Auld Maitlen\u2019s sons a\u2019 three\n\n   Nor is there men in a your host,\n      Dare fight us three to three\n   Now by my sooth young Edward cry\u2019d,\n      Weel fitted sall ye be!\n\n   Piercy sall with the eldest fight\n      And Ethert Lunn wi\u2019 thee\n   William of Lancastar the third\n      And bring your fourth to me\n\n   He clanked Piercy owr the head\n      A deep wound and a sair\n   Till the best blood o\u2019 his body\n      Came rinnen owr his hair.\n\n   Now I\u2019ve slain one slay ye the two;\n      And that\u2019s good company\n   And if the two should slay ye baith,\n      Ye\u2019se get na help frae me\n\n   But Ethert Lunn a baited bear\n      Had many battles seen\n   He set the youngest wonder sair,\n      Till the eldest he grew keen\n\n   I am nae king nor nae sic thing\n      My word it sanna stand\n   For Ethert shall a buffet bide,\n      Come he aneath my brand.\n\n   He clanked Ethert owr the head,\n      A deep wound and a sair\n   Till a\u2019 the blood of his body\n      Came rinnen owr his hair\n\n   Now I\u2019ve slayne two slay ye the one;\n      Isna that gude company\n   And tho\u2019 the one should slay ye both\n      Ye\u2019se get nae help o\u2019 me.\n\n   The twasome they hae slayn the one\n      They maul\u2019d them cruelly\n   Then hang them owr the drawbridge,\n      That a\u2019 the host might see\n\n   They rade their horse they ran their horse,\n      Then hover\u2019d on the ley\n   We be three lads o\u2019 fair Scotland,\n      We fain wad fighting see\n\n   This boasting when young Edward heard,\n      To\u2019s uncle thus said he,\n   I\u2019ll take yon lad I\u2019ll bind yon lad,\n      And bring him bound to thee\n\n   But God forbid King Edward said\n      That ever thou should try\n   Three worthy leaders we hae lost,\n      And you the fourth shall be.\n\n   If thou wert hung owr yon drawbrigg\n      Blythe wad I never be\n   But wi\u2019 the pole-axe in his hand,\n      Outower the bridge sprang he\n\n   The first stroke that young Edward gae\n      He struck wi might and main\n   He clove the Maitlen\u2019s helmet stout,\n      And near had pierced his brain.\n\n   When Matlen saw his ain blood fa,\n      An angry man was he\n   He let his weapon frae him fa\u2019\n      And at his neck did flee\n\n   And thrice about he did him swing,\n      Till on the ground he light\n   Where he has halden young Edward\n      Tho\u2019 he was great in might\n\n   Now let him up, King Edward cry\u2019d,\n      And let him come to me\n   And for the deed that ye hae done\n      Ye shal hae earldoms three\n\n   It\u2019s ne\u2019er be said in France nor Ire\n      In Scotland when I\u2019m hame\n   That Edward once was under me,\n      And yet wan up again\n\n   He stabb\u2019d him thro and thro the hear\n      He maul\u2019d him cruelly\n   Then hung him ower the drawbridge\n      Beside the other three\n\n   Now take from me that feather bed\n      Make me a bed o\u2019 strae\n   I wish I neer had seen this day\n      To mak my heart fu\u2019 wae\n\n   If I were once at London Tower,\n      Where I was wont to be\n   I never mair should gang frae hame,\n      Till borne on a bier-tree\n\nAt the end of his copy Hogg writes (probably of stanza vii.)\u2014\u201cYou may\ninsert the two following lines anywhere you think it needs them, or\nsubstitute two better\u2014\n\n    And marching south with curst Dunbar\n       A ready welcome found.\u201d\n\n\n\nII\n_WHAT IS AULD MAITLAND_?\n\n\nIs _Auld Maitland_ a sheer forgery by Hogg, or is it in any sense, and if\nso, in what sense, antique and traditional?  That Hogg made the whole of\nit is to me incredible.  He had told Laidlaw on 20th July 1801, that he\nwould make no ballads on traditions without Scott\u2019s permission, written\nin Scott\u2019s hand.  Moreover, how could he have any traditions about \u201cAuld\nMaitland, his noble Sonnis three,\u201d personages of the thirteenth and\nfourteenth centuries?  Scott had read about them in poems of about 1580,\nbut these poems then lay in crabbed manuscripts.  Again, Hogg wrote in\nwords (\u201csprings, wall-stanes\u201d) of whose meaning he had no idea; he took\nit as he heard it in recitation.  Finally, the style is not that of Hogg\nwhen he attempts the ballad.  Scott observed that \u201cthis ballad,\nnotwithstanding its present appearance, has a claim to very high\nantiquity.\u201d  The language, except for a few technical terms, is modern,\nbut what else could it be if handed down orally?  The language of\nundoubted ballads is often more modern than that which was spoken in my\nboyhood in Ettrick Forest.  As Sir Walter Scott remarked, a poem of\n1570\u20131580, which he quotes from the Maitland MSS., \u201cwould run as\nsmoothly, and appear as modern, as any verse in the ballad (with a few\nexceptions) if divested of its antique spelling.\u201d\n\nWe now turn to the historical characters in the ballad.\n\nSir Richard Maitland of Lauder, or Thirlestane, says Scott, was already\nin his lands, and making donations to the Church in 1249.  If, in 1296,\nforty-seven years later, he held his castle against Edward I., as in the\nballad, he must have been a man of, say, seventy-five.  By about 1574 his\ndescendant, Sir Richard Maitland, was consoled for his family misfortunes\n(his famous son, Lethington, having died after the long siege of\nEdinburgh Castle, which he and Kirkcaldy of Grange held for Queen Mary),\nby a poet who reminded him that his ancestor, in the thirteenth century,\nlost all his sons\u2014\u201cpeerless pearls\u201d\u2014save one, \u201cBurdallane.\u201d  The Sir\nRichard of 1575 has also one son left (John, the minister of James VI.).\n{41a}\n\nFrom this evidence, in 1802 in MS. unpublished, and from other Maitland\nMSS., we learn that, in the sixteenth century, the Auld Maitland of the\nballad was an eminent character in the legends of that period, and in the\nballads of the people. {41b}  His\n\n       Nobill sonnis three,\n    Ar sung in monie far countrie,\n    _Albeit in rural rhyme_.\n\nPinkerton published, in 1786, none of the pieces to which Scott refers in\nhis extracts from the Maitland MSS.  How, then, did Hogg, if Hogg forged\nthe ballad, know of Maitland and his \u201cthree noble sons\u201d?  Except Colonel\nElliot, to whose explanation we return, I am not aware that any critic\nhas tried to answer this question.\n\nIt seems to me that if the _Ballad of Otterburne_, extant in 1550 in\nEngland, survived in Scottish memory till Herd\u2019s fragment appeared in\n1776, a tradition of Maitland, who was popular in the ballads of 1575,\nand known to Gawain Douglas seventy years earlier, may also have\npersisted.  There is no impossibility.\n\nLooking next at Scott\u2019s _Auld Maitland_ the story is that King Edward I.\nreigned for fifty years.  He had a nephew Edward (an apocryphal person:\nsuch figures are common in ballads), who wished to take part in the\ninvasion of Scotland.  The English are repulsed by old Maitland from his\n\u201cdarksome house\u201d on the Leader.  The English, however, (stanza xv.)\nconquer Scotland, and join Edward I. in France.  They besiege that town,\n\n    Which some call Billop-Grace (xviii.).\n\nHere Maitland\u2019s three sons are learning at school, as Scots often were\neducated in France.  They see that Edward\u2019s standard quarters the arms of\nFrance, and infer that he has conquered their country.  They \u201cwill try\nsome jeopardy.\u201d  Persuading the English that they are themselves\nEnglishmen, they ask leave to carry the royal flag.  The eldest is told\nthat he is singularly like Auld Maitland.  In anger he stabs the\nstandard-bearer, seizes the flag, and, with his brothers, spurs to\nBillop-Grace, where the French captain receives them.  There is fighting\nat the gate.  The King says that three disguised lads of France have\nstolen his flag.  The Maitlands apparently heard of this; the youngest\ngoes to Edward, and explains that they are Maitland\u2019s sons, and Scots;\nthey challenge any three Englishmen; a thing in the manner of the period.\nThe three Scots are victorious.  Young Edward then challenges one of the\ndauntless three, who slays him.  Edward wishes himself home at London\nTower.\n\nSuch is the story.  It is out of the regular line of ballad narrative,\nbut it does not follow that, in the sixteenth century, some such tale was\nnot told \u201cin rural rhyme\u201d about Maitland\u2019s \u201cthree noble sons.\u201d  That it\nis not historically true is nothing, of course, and that it is not in the\nScots of the thirteenth century is nothing.\n\nColonel Elliot asks, What in the ballad raised suspicion of forgery (in\n1802\u201303)?  The historical inaccuracies are common to all historical\nballads.  (In an English ballad known to me of 1578, Henry Darnley is\n\u201changed on a tree\u201d!)\n\nNext, \u201cthere are occasional lines, and even stanzas, which jar in style\nto such a degree that they must have been written by two separate hands.\u201d\n\nBut this, also, is a common feature.  In \u201cProfessor Child and the\nBallad,\u201d Mr. W. M. Hart gives a list of Professor Child\u2019s notes on the\nmultiplicity of hands, which he, and every critic, detect in some ballads\nwith a genuinely antique substratum. {44a}\n\nColonel Elliot quotes, as in his opinion the best, stanzas viii., ix.,\nx., xi., while he thinks xv., xviii. the worst.  I give these stanzas\u2014\n\n                                    VIII.\n\n   They lighted on the banks o\u2019 Tweed,\n      And blew their coals sae het,\n   And fired the Merse and Teviotdale,\n      All in an evening late.\n\n                                     IX.\n\n   As they fared up o\u2019er Lammermoor,\n      They burned baith up and doun,\n   Until they came to a darksome house,\n      Some call it Leader Town.\n\n                                     X.\n\n   \u201cWha hauds this house?\u201d young Edward cried,\n      \u201cOr wha gi\u2019est ower to me?\u201d\n   A grey-hair\u2019d knight set up his head,\n      And crackit right crousely:\n\n                                     XI.\n\n   \u201cOf Scotland\u2019s king I haud my house,\n      He pays me meat and fee;\n   And I will keep my guid auld house,\n      While my house will keep me.\u201d\n\n\nI cannot, I admit, find any fault with these stanzas: cannot see any\nreason why they should not be traditional.\n\nThen Colonel Elliot cites, as the worst\u2014\n\n\n                                     XV.\n\n   Then fifteen barks, all gaily good,\n      Met them upon a day,\n   Which they did lade with as much spoil\n      As they could take away.\n\n                                   XVIII.\n\n   Until we came unto that town\n      Which some call Billop-Grace;\n   There were Auld Maitland\u2019s sons, a\u2019 three,\n      Learning at school, alas!\n\nNow, if I venture to differ from Colonel Elliot here, I may plead that I\nam practised in the art of ballad-faking, and can produce high\ntestimonials of skill!  To me stanzas xv., xviii. seem to differ much\nfrom viii.\u2013xi., but not in such a way as Hogg would have differed, had he\nmade them.  Hogg\u2019s error would have lain, as Scott\u2019s did, in being, as\nScott said of Mrs. Hemans, _too poetical_.\n\nNeither Hogg nor Scott, I think, was crafty enough to imitate the prosaic\ndrawl of the printed broadside ballad, or the feeble interpolations with\nwhich the \u201cgangrel scrape-gut,\u201d or _b\u00e4nkels\u00e4nger_, supplied gaps in his\nmemory.  The modern complete ballad-faker _would_ introduce such abject\nverses, but Scott and Hogg desired to decorate, not to debase, ballads\nwith which they intermeddled, and we track them by their modern romantic\ntouch when they interpolate.  I take it, for this reason, that Hogg did\nnot write stanzas xv., xviii.  It was hardly in nature for Hogg, if he\nknew Ville de Grace in Normandy (a thing not very probable), to invent\n\u201cBillop-Grace\u201d as a popular corruption of the name\u2014and a popular\ncorruption it is, I think.  Probably the original maker of this stanza\nwrote, in line 4, \u201calace,\u201d an old spelling\u2014not \u201calas\u201d\u2014to rhyme with\n\u201cgrace.\u201d\n\nColonel Elliot then assigns xv., xviii. as most likely of all to be by\nHogg.  On that I have given my opinion, with my reasons.\n\nThese verses, with xviii., lead us to France, and whereas Scott here\nsuspects that some verses have been lost (see his note to stanza xviii.),\nColonel Elliot suspects that the stanzas relating to France have been\ninterpolated.  But the French scenes occupy the whole poem from xvi. to\nlxv., the end.\n\nWhat, if Hogg were the forger, were his sources?  He _may_ have known\nDouglas\u2019s _Palice of Honour_, which, of course, existed in print, with\nits mention of Maitland\u2019s grey beard.  But how did he know Maitland\u2019s\n\u201cthree noble sons,\u201d in 1801\u20131802, lying unsunned in the Maitland MSS.?\n\nThis is a point which critics of _Auld Maitland_ studiously ignore, yet\nit is the essential point.  How did the Shepherd know about the three\nyoung Maitlands, whose existence, in legend, is only revealed to us\nthrough a manuscript unpublished in 1802?  Colonel Elliot does not evade\nthe point.  \u201cWe may be sure,\u201d he says, that Leyden, before 1802, knew\nHogg, and Hogg might have obtained from him sufficient information to\nenable him to compose the ballad. {47a}  But it was from Laidlaw, not\nfrom Leyden, that Scott, after receiving his first copy at Blackhouse, in\nspring 1802, obtained Hogg\u2019s address. {47b}  There is no hint that before\nspring 1802 Leyden ever saw Hogg.  Had he known him, and his ballad-lore,\nhe would have brought him and Scott together.  In 1801\u201302, Leyden was\nvery busy in Edinburgh helping Scott to edit _Sir Tristram_, copying\n_Arthour_, seeking for an East India appointment, and going into society.\nScott\u2019s letters prove all this. {47c}\n\nThat Hogg, in 1802, was very capable of writing a ballad, I admit; also\nthat, through Blind Harry\u2019s _Wallace_, he may have known all about\n\u201csowies,\u201d and \u201cportculize,\u201d and _springwalls_, or _springald\u2019s_, or\n_springalls_, medi\u00e6val _balistas_ for throwing heavy stones and darts.\nBut Hogg did not know or guess what a _springwall_ was.  In his stanza\nxiii. (in the MS. given to Laidlaw), Hogg wrote\u2014\n\n    With springs; wall stanes, and good o\u2019ern\n       Among them fast he threw.\n\nScott saw the real meaning of this nonsense, and read\u2014\n\n    With springalds, stones, and gads o\u2019 airn.\n\nIn his preface he says that many words in the ballad, \u201cwhich the reciters\nhave retained without understanding them, still preserve traces of their\nantiquity.\u201d  For instance, _springalls_, corruptedly pronounced\n_springwalls_.  Hogg, hearing the pronunciation, and not understanding,\nwrote, \u201cwith springs: wall stanes.\u201d  A leader would not throw \u201cwall\nstanes\u201d till he had exhausted his ammunition.  Hogg heard \u201cwith\nspringwalls stones, he threw,\u201d and wrote it, \u201cwith springs: wall stones\nhe threw.\u201d\n\nHogg could not know of Auld Maitland \u201cand his three noble sons\u201d except\nthrough an informant familiar with the Maitland MSS. in Edinburgh\nUniversity Library.  On the theory of a conspiracy to forge, Scott taught\nhim, but that theory is crushed.\n\nHogg says, in _Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott_, that when his\nmother met Scott she told him that her brother and she learned the ballad\nfrom auld Andrew Muir, and he from \u201cauld Babby Mettlin,\u201d housekeeper of\nthe first (\u201cAnderson\u201d) laird of Tushielaw.  This first Anderson, laird of\nTushielaw, reigned from 1688 to 1721 (?) or 1724. {48a}  Hogg\u2019s mother\nwas born in 1730, and was only one remove\u2014filled up by Andrew Muir\u2014from\nBabby, who was \u201cither than a gude yin,\u201d and knew many songs.  Does any\none think Hogg crafty enough to have invented Babby Maitland as the\nsource of a song about the Maitlands, and to have introduced her into his\nnarrative in 1834?  I conjecture that this Maitland woman knew a Maitland\nsong, modernised in time, and perhaps copied out and emended by one of\nthe Maitland family, possibly one of the descendants of Lethington.  We\nknow that, under James I., about 1620, Lethington\u2019s impoverished son,\nJames, had several children; and that Lauderdale was still supporting\nthem (or _their_ children) during the Restoration.  Only a century\nbefore, ballads on the Maitlands had certainly been popular, and there is\nnothing impossible in the suggestion that one such ballad survived in the\nLauderdale or Lethington family, and came through Babby Maitland to\nAndrew Muir, then to Hogg\u2019s mother, to Hogg, and to Scott.\n\nIf a manuscript copy ever existed, and was Babby\u2019s ultimate source, it\nwould be of the late seventeenth century.  That is the ascertained date\nof the oldest known MS. of _The Outlaw Murray_, as is proved from an\nallusion in a note appended to a copy, referring to a Judge of Session,\nLord Philiphaugh, as then alive.  The copy was of 1689\u20131702. {49a}\n\nGranting a MS. of _Auld Maitland_ existing in any branch of the Maitland\nfamily in 1680\u20131700, Babby Mettlin\u2019s knowledge of the ballad, and its few\nmodernisms, are explained.\n\nAs Lockhart truly says, Hogg \u201cwas the most extraordinary man that ever\nwore the maud of a shepherd.\u201d  He had none of Burns\u2019 education.  In 1802\nhe was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of research\nin the crabbed MSS. of the sixteenth century.  Yet he gets at legendary\npersons known to us only through these MSS.  He makes a ballad named\n_Auld Maitland_ about them.  Through him a farm-lass at Blackhouse\nacquires some stanzas which Laidlaw copies.  In a fortnight Hogg sends\nLaidlaw the whole ballad, with the pedigree\u2014his uncle, his mother, their\nfather, and old Andrew Muir, servant to the famous Rev. Mr. Boston of\nEttrick.  The copy takes in Scott and Leyden.  Later, Ritson makes no\nobjection.  Mrs. Hogg recites it to Scott, and, according to Hogg, gives\na casual \u201cauld Babby Maitland\u201d as the original source.\n\nIs the whole fraud conceivable?  Hogg, we must believe, puts in two\nstanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or\n\u201cgangrel scrape-gut\u201d style, and the same with intent to deceive.  He\nintroduces \u201cBillop-Grace\u201d as a deceptive popular corruption of _Ville de\nGrace_.  This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most\nartful modern \u201cfakers.\u201d  One stanza (xlix.)\u2014\n\n    But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear,\n    Had many battles seen\u2014\n\nseems to me very recent, whoever made it.  Scott, in lxii., gives a\nvariant of \u201csome reciters,\u201d for \u201cThat Edward once lay under me,\u201d they\nread \u201cThat Englishman lay under me.\u201d  This, if a false story, was an\nexample of an art more delicate than Scott elsewhere exhibits.\n\nOne does not know what Professor Child would have said to my arguments.\nHe never gave a criticism in detail of the ballad and of the\ncircumstances in which Scott acquired it.  A man most reasonable, most\nopen to conviction, he would, I think, have confessed his perplexity.\n\nScott did not interpolate a single stanza, even where, as Hogg wrote, he\nsuspected a lacuna in the text.  He neither cut out nor improved the\ncryingly modern stanzas.  He kept them, as he kept several stanzas in\n_Tamlane_, which, so he told Laidlaw, were obviously recent, but were in\na copy which he procured through Lady Dalkeith. {51a}\n\nBy neither adding to nor subtracting from his MS. copy of _Auld\nMaitland_, Scott proved, I think, his respect for a poem which, in its\nprimal form, he believed to be very ancient.  We know, at all events,\nthat ballads on the Maitland heroes were current about 1580.  So, late in\nthe sixteenth century, were the ballads quoted by Hume of Godscroft, on\nthe murder of the Knight of Liddesdale (1354), the murder of the young\nEarl of Douglas in Edinburgh Castle (1440), and the battle of Otterburn.\nOf these three, only _Otterburne_ was recovered by Herd, published in\n1776.  The other two are lost; and there is no _prima facie_ reason why a\nMaitland ballad, of the sort current in 1580, should not, in favourable\ncircumstances, have survived till 1802.\n\nAs regards the Shepherd\u2019s ideas of honesty in ballad-collecting at this\nearly period, I have quoted his letter to Laidlaw of 20th July 1802.\n\nAgain, in the case of his text from recitation of the _Ballad of\nOtterburne_ (published by Scott in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1806), he gave the\nSheriff a full account of his mode of handling his materials, and Scott\ncould get more minute details by questioning him.\n\nTo this text of _Otterburne_, freely attacked by Colonel Elliot, in\napparent ignorance, as before, of the published facts of the case, and of\nthe manuscript, we next turn our attention.  In the meantime, Scott no\nmore conspired to forge _Auld Maitland_ than he conspired to forge the\nPentateuch.  That Hogg did not forge _Auld Maitland_ I think I have made\nas nearly certain as anything in this region can be.  I think that the\nresults are a lesson to professors of the Higher Criticism of Homer.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BALLAD OF OTTERBURNE\n\n\nSCOTT\u2019S version of the _Ballad of Otterburne_, as given first in _The\nMinstrelsy_ of 1806, comes under Colonel Elliot\u2019s most severe censure.\nHe concludes in favour of \u201cthe view that it consists partly of stanzas\nfrom Percy\u2019s _Reliques_, which have undergone emendations calculated to\ndisguise the source from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern\nfabrication, and partly of a very few stanzas and lines from Herd\u2019s\nversion\u201d (1776). {53a}\n\nAs a matter of fact we know, though Colonel Elliot does not, the whole\nprocess of construction of the _Otterburne_ in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1806.\nProfessor Child published all the texts with a letter. {53b}  It is a\npity that Colonel Elliot overlooks facts in favour of conjecture.\nConcerning historical facts he is not more thorough in research.  The\nstory, in Percy\u2019s _Reliques_, of the slaying of Douglas by Percy, \u201cis, so\nfar as I know, supported neither by history nor by tradition.\u201d {53c}  If\nunfamiliar with the English chroniclers (in Latin) of the end of the\nfourteenth century, Colonel Elliot could find them cited by Professor\nChild.  Knyghton, Walsingham, and the continuator of Higden (Malverne),\nall assert that Percy killed Douglas with his own hand. {54a}  The\nEnglish ballad of _Otterburne_ (in MS. of about 1550) gives this version\nof Douglas\u2019s death.  It is erroneous.  Froissart, a contemporary, had\naccounts of the battle from combatants, both English and Scottish.\nDouglas, fighting in the front of the van, on a moonlight night, was\nslain by three lance-wounds received in the mellay.  The English knew not\nwhom they had slain.\n\nThe interesting point is that, while the Scottish ballads give either the\nEnglish version of Percy\u2019s death (in _Minstrelsy_, 1806) or another\naccount mentioned by Hume of Godscroft (_circ._ 1610), that he was slain\nby one of his own men, the Scottish versions are _all_ deeply affected in\nan important point by Froissart\u2019s contemporary narrative, which has not\naffected the English versions. {54b}  The point is that the death of\nDouglas was by his order concealed from both parties.\n\nWhen both the English version in Percy\u2019s _Reliques_ (from a MS. of about\n1550), and Scott\u2019s version of 1806, mention a \u201cchallenge to battle\u201d\nbetween Percy and Douglas, Colonel Elliot calls this incident \u201cprobably\npurely fanciful and imaginary,\u201d and suspects Scott\u2019s version of being\nmade up and altered from the English text.  But the challenge which\nresulted in the battle of Otterburn is not fanciful and imaginary!\n\nIt is mentioned by Froissart.  Douglas, he says, took Percy\u2019s pennon in\nan encounter under Newcastle.  Percy vowed that Douglas would never carry\nthe pennon out of Northumberland; Douglas challenged him to come and take\nit from his tent door that night; but Percy was constrained not to accept\nthe challenge.  The Scots then marched homewards, but Douglas insisted on\nbesieging Otterburn Castle; here he passed some days on purpose to give\nPercy a chance of a fight; Percy\u2019s force surprised the Scots; they were\nwarned, as in the ballads, suddenly, by a man who galloped up; the fight\nbegan; and so on.\n\nNow Herd\u2019s version says nothing of Douglas at Newcastle; the whole scene\nis at Otterburn.  On the other hand, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe\u2019s MS.\ntext _did_ bring Douglas to Newcastle.  Of this Colonel Elliot says\nnothing.  The English version says _nothing of Percy\u2019s loss of his pennon\nto Douglas_ (nor does Sharpe\u2019s), and gives the challenge and tryst.\nScott\u2019s version says nothing of Percy\u2019s pennon, but Douglas takes Percy\u2019s\n_sword_ and vows to carry it home.  Percy\u2019s challenge, in the English\nversion, is accompanied by a gross absurdity.  He bids Douglas wait at\nOtterburn, where, _pour tout potage_ to an army absurdly stated at 40,000\nmen, Percy suggests venison and pheasants!  In the Scottish version Percy\noffers tryst at Otterburn.  Douglas answers that, though Otterburn has no\nsupplies\u2014nothing but deer and wild birds\u2014he will there tarry for Percy.\nThis is chivalrous, and, in Scott\u2019s version, Douglas understands war.  In\nthe English version Percy does not.  (To these facts I return, giving\nmore details.)  Colonel Elliot supposes some one (Scott, I daresay) to\nhave taken Percy\u2019s,\u2014the English version,\u2014altered it to taste, concealed\nthe alterations, as in this part of the challenge, by inverting the\nspeeches and writing new stanzas of the fight at Otterburn, used a very\nlittle of Herd (which is true), and inserted modern stanzas.\n\nNow, first, as regards pilfering from the English version, that version,\nand Herd\u2019s undisputed version, have undeniably a common source.  Neither,\nas it stands, is \u201coriginal\u201d; of an _original_ contemporary Otterburn\nballad we have no trace.  By 1550, when such ballads were certainly\ncurrent both in England and Scotland, they were late, confused by\ntradition, and, of what we possess, say Herd\u2019s, and the English MS. of\n1550, all were interblended.\n\nThe Scots ballad version, known to Hume of Godscroft (1610), may have\nbeen taken from the English, and altered, as Child thought, or the\nEnglish, as Motherwell maintained, may have been borrowed from the Scots,\nand altered.  One or the other process undeniably occurred; the second\npoet, who made the changes, introduced the events most favourable to his\ncountry, and left out the less favourable.  By Scott\u2019s time, or Herd\u2019s,\nthe versions were much degraded through decay of memory, bad penny\nbroadsides (lost), and uneducated reciters.  Herd\u2019s version has forgotten\nthe historic affair of the capture of Percy\u2019s pennon (and of the whole\nmovement on Newcastle, preserved in Sharpe\u2019s and Scott\u2019s); Scott\u2019s\nremembers the encounter at Newcastle, forgets the pennon, and substitutes\nthe capture by Douglas of Percy\u2019s sword.  The Englishman deliberately\nomits the capture of the pennon.  The Scots version (here altered by Sir\nWalter) makes Percy wound Douglas at Otterburn\u2014\n\n    Till backward he did flee.\n\nNow Colonel Elliot has no right, I conceive, to argue that this Scots\nversion, with the Newcastle incident, the captured sword, the challenge,\nthe \u201cbackward flight\u201d of Douglas, were introduced by a modern (Scott?)\nwho was deliberately \u201cfaking\u201d the English version.  There is no reason\nwhy tradition should _not_ have retained historical incidents in the\nScottish form; it is a mere assumption that a modern borrowed and\ntravestied these incidents from Percy\u2019s _Reliques_.  We possess Hogg\u2019s\n_unedited_ original of Scott\u2019s version of 1806 (an original MS. never\nhinted at by Colonel Elliot), and it retains clear traces of being\ncontaminated with a version of _The Huntiss of Chevet_, popular in 1459,\nas we read in _The Complaynte of Scotland_ of that date.  There is also\nan old English version of _The Hunting of the Cheviot_ (1550 or later,\nBodleian Library).  The _unedited_ text of Scott\u2019s _Otterburne_ then\ncontained traces of _The Huntiss of Chevet_; the two were mixed in\npopular memory.  In short, Scott\u2019s text, manipulated slightly by him in a\nway which I shall describe, was _a thing surviving in popular memory_:\nhow confusedly will be explained.\n\nThe differences between the English version of 1550 and the Scots\n(collected for Scott by Hogg), are of old standing.  I am not sure that\nthere was not, before 1550, a Scottish ballad, which the English\nballad-monger of that date annexed and altered.  The English version of\n1550 is not \u201cpopular\u201d; it is the work of a humble literary man.\n\nThe English is a very long ballad, in seventy quatrains; it greatly\nexaggerates the number of the Scots engaged (40,000), and it is the work\nof a professional author who uses the stereotyped prosaic stopgaps of the\ncheap hack\u2014\n\n    I tell you withouten dread,\n\nis his favourite phrase, and he cites historical authority\u2014\n\n    The cronykle wyll not layne (lie).\n\nScottish ballads do not appeal to chroniclers!  A patriotic and imbecile\neffort is made by the Englishman to represent Percy as captured, indeed,\nbut released without ransom\u2014\n\n    There was then a Scottysh prisoner tayne,\n    Sir Hew Mongomery was his name;\n    For sooth as I yow saye,\n    He borrowed the Persey home agayne.\n\nThis is obscure, and in any case false.  Percy _was_ taken, and towards\nhis ransom Richard II. paid \u00a33000. {59a}\n\nIt may be well to quote the openings of each ballad, English and Scots.\n\n                                ENGLISH (1550)\n\n                                      I.\n\n    It fell about the Lammas tyde,\n       When husbands win their hay,\n    The doughty Douglas bound him to ride,\n       In England to take a prey.\n\n                                     II.\n\n    The Earl of Fife, withouten strife,\n       He bound him over Solway;\n    The great would ever together ride\n       That race they may rue for aye.\n\n                                     III.\n\n    Over Hoppertop hill they came in,\n       And so down by Rodcliff crag,\n    Upon Green Linton they lighted down,\n       Stirring many a stag.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n    And boldly brent Northumberland,\n       And harried many a town,\n    They did our Englishmen great wrong,\n       To battle that were not boune.\n\n                                      V.\n\n    Then spake a berne upon the bent . . .\n\n                            SCOTTISH, HERD (1776)\n\n                                      I.\n\n    It fell and about the Lammas time,\n       When hushandmen do win their hay;\n    Earl Douglas is to the English woods,\n       And a\u2019 with him to fetch a prey.\n\n                                     II.\n\n    He has chosen the Lindsays light,\n       With them the gallant Gordons gay;\n    And the Earl of Fyfe, withouten strife,\n       And Hugh Montgomery upon a grey.\n\n(_The last line is obviously a reciter\u2019s stopgap_.)\n\n                                     III.\n\n    They have taken Northumberland,\n       And sae hae they _the north shire_,\n    And the Otterdale they hae burned hale,\n       And set it a\u2019 into fire.\n\n                                     IV.\n\n    Out then spak a bonny boy;\n\nManifestly these copies, so far, are not independent.  But now Herd\u2019s\ncopy begins to vary much from the English.\n\nIn both ballads a boy or \u201cberne\u201d speaks up.  In the English he recommends\nto the Scots an attack on Newcastle; in the Scots he announces the\napproach of an English host.  Douglas promises to reward the boy if his\ntale be true, to hang him if it be false.  _The scene is Otterburn_.  The\nboy stabs Douglas, in a stanza which is a common ballad formula of\nfrequent occurrence\u2014\n\n    The boy\u2019s taen out his little pen knife,\n       That hanget low down by his gare,\n    And he gaed Earl Douglas a deadly wound,\n       Alack! a deep wound and a sare.\n\nDouglas then says to Sir Hugh Montgomery\u2014\n\n       Take _thou_ the vanguard of the three,\n    And bury me at yon bracken bush,\n       That stands upon yon lilly lea.  (Herd, 4\u20138.)\n\nHume of Godscroft (about 1610), author of the _History of the Douglases_,\nwas fond of quoting ballads.  He gives a form of the first verse in\n_Otterburn_ which is common to Herd and the English copy.  He says that,\naccording to some, Douglas was treacherously slain by one of his own men\nwhom he had offended.  \u201cBut this narration is not so probable,\u201d and the\nfact is fairly meaningless in Herd\u2019s fragment (the boy has no motive for\nstabbing Douglas, for if his report is true, he will be rewarded).  The\ndeed is probably based on the tradition which Godscroft thought \u201cless\nprobable,\u201d\u2014the treacherous murder of the Earl.\n\nIn the English ballad, Douglas marches on Newcastle, where Percy, without\nfighting, makes a tryst to meet and combat him at Otterburn, on his way\nhome from Newcastle to Scotland.  Thither Douglas goes, and is warned by\na Scottish knight of Percy\u2019s approach: as in Herd, he is sceptical, but\nis convinced by facts.  (This warning of Douglas by a scout who gallops\nup is narrated by Froissart, from witnesses engaged in the battle.)\nAfter various incidents, Percy and Douglas encounter each other, and\nDouglas is slain.  After a desperate fight, Sir Hugh Montgomery, a\nprisoner of the English,\n\n    Borrowed the Percy home again.\n\nThis is absurd.  The Scots fought on, took Percy, and won the day.\nWalsingham, the contemporary English chronicler (in Latin), says that\nPercy slew Douglas, so do Knyghton and the continuator of Higden.\n\nMeanwhile we observe that the English ballad says nothing of Douglas\u2019s\nchivalrous fortitude, and soldier-like desire to have his death\nconcealed.  Here every Scottish version follows Froissart.  In Herd\u2019s\nfragment, Montgomery now attacks Percy, and bids him \u201cyield thee to yon\nbracken bush,\u201d where the dead Douglas\u2019s body lies concealed.  Percy does\nyield\u2014to Sir Hugh Montgomery.  The fragment has but fourteen stanzas.\n\nIn 1802, Scott, correcting by another MS., published Herd\u2019s copy.  In\n1806 he gave another version, for \u201cfortunately two copies have since been\nobtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of\nEttrick Forest.\u201d {62a}\n\nColonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of\nrecitations, so styled, {62b} and gives his suggestions about the copy\nbeing made up from the _Reliques_.  When Scott\u2019s copy of 1806 agrees with\nthe English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person,\nfamiliar with the English, has written the coincident verses in _with\ndifferences_.  Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each\nsaying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the\nactual words.  When Scott\u2019s version touches on an incident known in\nhistory, but not given in the English version, the encounter between\nDouglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot\nsuspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish\nand modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or\n_remaniements_ which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).\n\nSo Colonel Elliot says, \u201cWe are not told, either in _The Minstrelsy_ or\nin any of Scott\u2019s works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the\ntranscribers were.\u201d {63a}  We very seldom are told by Scott who the\nreciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic\u2019s information is\nhere mournfully limited\u2014by his own lack of study.  Colonel Elliot goes on\nto criticise a very curious feature in Scott\u2019s version of 1806, and finds\ncertain lines \u201cbeautiful\u201d but \u201cwithout a note of antiquity,\u201d that he can\ndetect, while the sentiment \u201cis hardly of the kind met with in old\nballads.\u201d\n\nTo understand the position we must remember that, _in the English_, Percy\nand Douglas fight each other thus (1.)\u2014\n\n    The Percy and the Douglas met,\n       That either of other was fain,\n    They swapped together while that they sweat,\n       With swords of fine Collayne.  (Cologne steel.)\n\nDouglas bids Percy yield, but Percy slays Douglas (as in Walsingham\u2019s and\nother contemporary chronicles, stanzas li.\u2013lvi.).  The Scottish losses\nare then enumerated (only eighteen Scots were left alive!), and stanza\nlix. runs\u2014\n\n    This fray began at Otterburn\n       Between the night and the day.\n    There the Douglas lost his life,\n       And the Percy was led away.\n\nHerd ends\u2014\n\n    This deed was done at Otterburn,\n       About the breaking of the day,\n    Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush,\n       And Percy led captive away.\n\nManifestly, either the maker of Herd\u2019s version knew the English, and\naltered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered\nat pleasure.  The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably.  But\nwhen Scott\u2019s original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in\na part of the ballad missing in Herd\u2019s brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes\nthat _now_ the exchanges are by a modern ballad-forger, shall we say Sir\nWalter?  By Sir Walter they certainly are _not_!  One tiny hint of Scots\noriginality is dubious.  In the English, and in all Scots versions, men\n\u201cwin their hay\u201d at Lammastide.  In Scotland the hay harvest is often much\nlater.  But if the English ballad be _Northumbrian_, little can be made\nout of that proof of Scottish origin.  If the English version be a\nsouthern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide\nfor hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.\n\nThe Scots version (Herd\u2019s) insists on Douglas\u2019s burial \u201cby the bracken\nbush,\u201d to which Montgomery bids Percy surrender.  This is obviously done\nto hide his body and keep his death secret from both parties, _as in\nFroissart he bids his friends do_.  The verse of the English (l.) on the\nfight between Douglas and Percy, is borrowed by, or is borrowed from, the\nScottish stanza (ix.) in Herd, where Sir Hugh Montgomery fights Percy.\n\n    Then Percy and Montgomery met,\n       And weel a wot they warna fain;\n    They swaped swords, and they twa swat,\n       And ay the blood ran down between.\n\n       The Persses and the Mongomry met,\n\nas quoted, is already familiar in _The Complaynte of Scotland_ (about\n1549), and this line is not in the English ballad.  So far it seems as if\nthe English balladist borrowed the scene from a Scots version, and\nperverted it into a description of a fight, between Percy, who wins, and\nDouglas\u2014in place of the Scots version, the victory over Percy of Sir Hugh\nMontgomery.\n\nThis transference of incidents in the English and Scottish ballads is a\nphenomenon which we are to meet again in the ballad of _Jamie Telfer of\nthe Fair Dodhead_.  One \u201cmaker\u201d or the other has, in old times, pirated\nand perverted the ballad of another \u201cmaker.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nSCOTT\u2019S TRADITIONAL COPY AND HOW HE EDITED IT\n\n\nAS early as December 1802\u2013January 1803, Scott was \u201cso anxious to have a\ncomplete Scottish _Otterburn_ that I will omit the ballad entirely in the\nfirst volume (of 1803), hoping to recover it in time for insertion in the\nthird.\u201d {67a}\n\nThe letter is undated, but is determined by Scott\u2019s expressed interest\n\u201cabout the Tushielaw lines, which, from what you mention, must be worth\nrecovering.\u201d  In a letter (Abbotsford MSS.) from Hogg to Scott (marked in\ncopy, \u201cJanuary 7, 1803\u201d) Hogg encloses \u201cthe Tushielaw lines,\u201d which were\npopular in Ettrick, but were verses of the eighteenth century.  They were\norally repeated, but literary in origin.\n\nScott, who wanted \u201ca complete Scottish Otterburn\u201d in winter 1802, did not\nsit down and make one.  He waited till he got a text from Hogg, in 1805,\nand published an edited version in 1806.\n\n_Scott\u2019s published_ stanza i. is Herd\u2019s stanza i., with slight verbal\nchanges taken from the Hogg MS. text of 1805. (?)  Hogg\u2019s MS. and Scott,\nin stanza ii., give Herd\u2019s lines on the Lindsays and Gordons, adding the\nGrahams, and, in place of Herd\u2019s\n\n          The Earl of Fife,\n    And Sir Hugh Montgomery upon a grey,\n\nthey end thus\u2014\n\n    But the Jardines wald not wi\u2019 him ride,\n       And they rue it to this day.\n\nThis is from Hogg\u2019s copy; it is a natural Border variant.  No Earl of\nFife is named, but a reproach to a Border clan is conveyed.\n\nFor Herd\u2019s iii. (they take Northumberland, and burn \u201cthe North shire,\u201d\nand the Otter dale), Hogg\u2019s reciters gave\u2014\n\n    And he has burned the dales o\u2019 Tyne,\n       And part o\u2019 _Almonshire_,\n    And three good towers in Roxburgh fells,\n       He left them all on fire.\n\nHogg, in his letter accompanying his copy, says that \u201cAlmonshire\u201d may\nstand for the \u201cBamborowshire\u201d of the English vi., but that he leaves in\n\u201cAlmonshire,\u201d as both reciters insist on it.  Scott printed\n\u201cBambroughshire,\u201d as in the English version (vi.).\n\nNow here is proof that Hogg had a copy, from reciters\u2014a copy which he\ncould not understand.  \u201cAlmonshire\u201d is \u201cAlneshire,\u201d or \u201cAlnwickshire,\u201d\nwhere is the Percy\u2019s Alnwick Castle.  In Froissart the Scots burn and\nwaste the region of Alneshire, all round Alnwick, but the Earl of\nNorthumberland holds out in the castle, unattacked, and sends his sons,\nHenry and Ralph Percy, to Newcastle to gather forces, and take the\nretreating Scots between two fires, Newcastle and Alnwick.  But the Scots\nwere not such poor strategists as to return by the way they had come.  In\na skirmish or joust at Newcastle, says Froissart, Douglas captured\nPercy\u2019s lance and pennon, with his blazon of arms, and vowed that he\nwould set it up over his castle of Dalkeith.  Percy replied that he would\nnever carry it out of England.  To give Percy a chivalrous chance of\nrecovering his pennon and making good his word, Douglas insists on\nwaiting at Otterburn to besiege the castle there; and he is taken by\nsurprise (as in the ballads) when a mounted man brings news of Percy\u2019s\napproach.  No tryst is made by Percy and Douglas _at Otterburn_ in\nFroissart; Douglas merely tarried there by the courtesy of Scotland.\n\nIn Hogg\u2019s version we have a reason why Douglas should tarry at Otterburn;\nin the English ballad we have none very definite.  No captured pennon of\nPercy\u2019s is mentioned, no encounter of the heroes \u201cat the barriers\u201d of\nNewcastle.  Percy, from the castle wall, merely threatens Douglas\nvaguely; Douglas says, \u201cWhere will you meet me?\u201d and Percy appoints\nOtterburn as we said.  He makes the absurd remark that, by way of\nsupplies (for 40,000 men), Douglas will find abundance of pheasants and\nred deer. {69a}\n\nWe see that the English balladist is an unwarlike literary hack.  The\nauthor of the Ettrick version knew better the nature of war, as we shall\nsee, and his Douglas objects to Otterburn as a place destitute of\nsupplies; nothing is there but wild beasts and birds.  If the original\npoem is the sensible poem, the Scott version is the original which the\nEnglish hath perverted.\n\nIn Hogg, Douglas jousts with Percy at Newcastle, and gives him a fall.\nThen come two verses (viii.\u2013ix.).  The second is especially modern and\nmawkish\u2014\n\n    But O how pale his lady look\u2019d,\n       Frae off the castle wa\u2019,\n    When down before the Scottish spear\n       She saw brave Percy fa\u2019!\n    How pale and wan his lady look\u2019d,\n       Frae off the castle hieght,\n    When she beheld her Percy yield\n       To doughty Douglas\u2019 might.\n\nColonel Elliot asks, \u201cCan any one believe that these stanzas are really\nancient and have come down orally through many generations?\u201d {70a}\n\nCertainly not!  But Colonel Elliot does not allow for the fact, insisted\non by Professor Child, that traditional ballads, from the sixteenth to\nthe eighteenth centuries, were often printed on broad-sheets as edited by\nthe cheapest broadside-vendors\u2019 hacks; that the hacks interpolated and\nmessed their originals; and that, after the broadside was worn out, lost,\nor burned, oral memory kept it alive in tradition.  For examples of this\nprocess we have only to look at _William\u2019s Ghost_ in Herd\u2019s copy of 1776.\nThis is a traditional ballad; it is included in Scott\u2019s _Clerk Saunders_,\nbut, as Hogg told him, is a quite distinct song.  In Herd\u2019s copy it ends\nthus\u2014\n\n    \u201cOh, stay, my only true love, stay,\u201d\n       The constant Marg\u2019ret cry\u2019d;\n    Wan grew her cheeks, she closed her eyes,\n       Stretched her soft limbs, and dy\u2019d.\n\nLet _this_ get into tradition, and be taken down from recitation, and the\nballad will be denounced as modern.  But it is essentially ancient.\n\nThese two modern stanzas, in Hogg\u2019s copy, are rather too bad for Hogg\u2019s\nmaking; and I do not know whether they are his (he practically says they\nare not, we shall see), or whether they are remembered by reciters from a\nstall-copy of the period of Lady Wardlaw\u2019s _Hardyknute_.\n\nAfter that, Hogg\u2019s copy becomes more natural.  Douglas says to the\ndiscomfited Percy (x.)\u2014\n\n    Had we twa been upon the green,\n       And never an eye to see,\n    I should hae had ye flesh and fell,\n       But your sword shall gae wi\u2019 me.\n\nThat rings true!  Moreover, had either Hogg or Scott tampered here (Scott\nexcised), either would have made Douglas carry off\u2014not Percy\u2019s _sword_,\nbut the historic captured _pennon_ of Percy.  Scott really could not have\nresisted the temptation had he been interpolating _\u00e0 son d\u00e9vis_.\n\n    But your _pennon_ shall gae wi\u2019 me!\n\nIt was easy to write in that!\n\nPercy had challenged Douglas thus\u2014\n\n    But gae ye up to Otterburn,\n       And there wait days three (xi.),\n\nas in the English (xiii.).  In the English, Percy, we saw, promises game\nenough there; in Hogg, Douglas demurs (xii., xiii., xiv.).  There are no\nsupplies at Otterburn, he says\u2014\n\n       To feed my men and me.\n\n    The deer rins wild frae dale to dale,\n       The birds fly wild frae tree to tree,\n    And there is neither bread nor kale,\n       To fend my men and me.\n\nThese seem to me sound true ballad lines, like\u2014\n\n    My hounds may a\u2019 rin masterless\n       My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,\n\nin Child\u2019s variant of _Young Beichan_.  The speakers, we see, are\n\u201cinverted.\u201d  Percy, in the English, promises Douglas\u2019s men\npheasants\u2014absurd provision for the army of 40,000 men of the English\nballad.  In the Ettrick text Douglas says that there are no supplies,\nmerely _fer\u00e6 natur\u00e6_, but he will wait at Otterburn to give Percy his\nchance.\n\nColonel Elliot takes the inversion of parts as a proof of modern\npilfering and deliberate change to hide the theft; at least he mentions\nthem, and the \u201cprettier verses,\u201d with a note of exclamation (!). {73a}\nBut there are, we repeat, similar inversions in the English and in Herd\u2019s\nold copy, and nobody says that Scott or Hogg or any modern faker made the\ninversions in Herd\u2019s text.  The differences and inversions in the English\nand in Herd are very ancient; by 1550 \u201cthe Percy and the Montgomery met,\u201d\nin the line quoted in _The Complaynte of Scotland_.  At about the same\nperiod (1550) it was the Percy and the Douglas who met, in the English\nversion.  Manifestly there pre-existed, by 1550, an old ballad, which\neither a Scot then perverted from the English text, or an Englishman from\nthe Scots.  Thus the inversions in the Ettrick and English version need\nnot be due (they are not due) to a _modern_ \u201cfaker.\u201d\n\nIn the Hogg MS. (xxiii.), Percy wounds Douglas \u201ctill backwards he did\nflee.\u201d  Hogg was too good a Scot to interpolate the flight of Douglas;\nand Scott was so good a Scot that\u2014what do you suppose he did?\u2014he excised\n\u201ctill backwards he did flee\u201d from Hogg\u2019s text, and inserted \u201cthat he fell\nto the ground\u201d _from the English text_!\n\nIn the Hogg MS. (xviii., xix.), in Scott xvii., xviii., Douglas, at\nOtterburn, is roused from sleep by his page with news of Percy\u2019s\napproach.  Douglas says that the page lies (compare Herd, where Douglas\ndoubts the page)\u2014\n\n    For Percy hadna\u2019 men yestreen\n    To dight my men and me.\n\nThere is nothing in this to surprise any one who knows the innumerable\nvariants in traditional ballads.  But now comes in a very curious\nvariation (Hogg MS. xx., Scott, xix.).  Douglas says (Hogg MS. xx.)\u2014\n\n    But I have seen a dreary dream\n       Beyond the Isle o\u2019 Skye,\n    I saw a dead man won the fight,\n       And I think that man was I.\n\nHere is something not in Herd, and as remote from the manner of the\nEnglish poet, with his\n\n    The Chronicle will not lie,\n\nas Heine is remote from, say,\u2014Milman.  The verse is magical, it has\nhaunted my memory since I was ten years old.  Godscroft, who does not\napprove of the story of Douglas\u2019s murder by one of his men, writes that\nthe dying leader said:\u2014\n\n\u201cFirst do yee keep my death both from our own folke and from the enemy\u201d\n(Froissart, \u201cLet neither friend nor foe know of my estate\u201d); \u201cthen that\nye suffer not my standard to be lost or cast downe\u201d (Froissart, \u201cUp with\nmy standard and call _Douglas_!\u201d;) \u201cand last, that ye avenge my death\u201d\n(also in Froissart).  \u201cBury me at Melrose Abbey with my father.  If I\ncould hope for these things I should die with the greater contentment;\nfor long since I _heard a prophesie that a dead man should winne a\nfield_, _and I hope in God it shall be I_.\u201d {75a}\n\n    I saw a dead man won the fight,\n       And I think that man was I!\n\nGodscroft, up to the mention of Melrose and the prophecy, took his tale\ndirect from Froissart, or, if he took it from George Buchanan\u2019s Latin\nHistory, Buchanan\u2019s source was Froissart, but Froissart\u2019s was evidence\nfrom Scots who were in the battle.\n\nBut who changed the prophecy to a dream of Douglas, and who versified\nGodscroft\u2019s \u201ca dead man shall winne a field, and I hope in God it shall\nbe I\u201d?  Did Godscroft take that from the ballad current in his time and\nquoted by him?  Or did a _remanieur_ of Godscroft turn _his_ words into\n\n    I saw a dead man win the fight,\n       And I think that man was I?\n\nScott did not make these two noble lines out of Godscroft, he found them\nin Hogg\u2019s copy from recitation, only altering \u201cI saw\u201d into \u201cI dreamed,\u201d\nand the ungrammatic \u201cwon\u201d into \u201cwin\u201d; and \u201c_the_ fight\u201d into \u201c_a_ fight.\u201d\n\nThe whole dream stanza occurs in a part of the ballad where Hogg\nconfesses to no alteration or interpolation, and I doubt if the Shepherd\nof Ettrick had read a rare old book like Godscroft.  If he had not, this\nstanza is purely traditional; if he had, he showed great genius in his\nuse of Godscroft.\n\nIn Hogg\u2019s Ettrick copy, Douglas, after telling his dream, rushes into\nbattle, is wounded by Percy, and \u201cbackward flees.\u201d  Scott (xx.),\nfollowing a historical version (Wyntoun\u2019s _Cronykil_), makes\n\n    Douglas forget the helmit good\n       That should have kept his brain.\n\nBeing wounded, in Hogg\u2019s version, and \u201cbackward fleeing,\u201d Douglas sends\nhis page to bring Montgomery (Hogg), and from stanza xxiv. to xxxiv., in\nHogg, all is made up by himself, he says,\u2014from facts given \u201cin plain\nprose\u201d by his reciters, with here and there a line or two given in verse.\nScott omitted some verses here, amended others slightly, by help of\nHerd\u2019s version, _left out a broken last stanza_ (xl.) and put in Herd\u2019s\nconcluding lines (stanza lxviii. in the English text).\n\n    This deed was done at the Otterburn. (Herd.)\n\n    The fraye began at Otterburn. (English.)\n\nNow what was the broken Ettrick stanza that Scott omitted in his\npublished _Otterburne_ (1806)?  It referred to Sir Hugh Montgomery, who,\nin Herd, captured Percy after a fight; in the English version is a\nprisoner apparently exchanged for Percy.  In the Ettrick MS. the omitted\nverse is\n\n    He left not an Englishman on the field\n    . . .\n    That he hadna either killed or taen\n       Ere his heart\u2019s blood was cauld.\n\nScott ended with Herd\u2019s last stanza; in the English version the last but\ntwo.\n\nNow the death, at Otterburn, of Sir Hugh, is recorded in an English\nballad styled _The Hunting of the Cheviot_.  By 1540\u201350 it was among the\npopular songs north of Tweed.  _The Complaynte of Scotland_ (1549)\nmentions among \u201cThe Songis of Natural Music of the Antiquitie\u201d\n(_volkslieder_), _The Hunttis of Chevet_.  Our copy of the English\nversion is in the Bodleian (MS. Ashmole, 48).  It ends: \u201cExpliceth, quod\nRychard Sheale,\u201d a minstrel who recited ballads and tales at Tamworth\n(_circ._ 1559).  The text was part of his stock-in-trade.\n\nThe Cheviot ballad, in a Scots form popular in 1549, is later in many\nways than the English _Battle of Otterburne_.  It begins with a brag of\nPercy, a vow that, despite Douglas, he will hunt in the Cheviot hills.\nWhile Percy is hunting with a strong force, Douglas arrives with another.\nDouglas offers to decide the quarrel by single combat with Percy, who\naccepts.  Richard Witherington refuses to look on quietly, and a general\nengagement ensues.\n\n    At last the Duglas and the Perse met,\n    Lyk to Captayns of myght and of mayne,\n    They swapte together tylle they both swat\n    With swordes that wear of fyn myllan.\n\nWe are back in stanza I. of the English _Otterburne_, in stanza xxxv.\n(substituting Hugh Montgomery for Douglas) of the Hogg MS.  In _The\nHunting_, Douglas is slain by an English arrow (xxxvi.\u2013xxxviii.).\n\nSir Hugh Montgomery now charges and slays Percy (who, of course, was\nmerely taken prisoner).  An archer of Northumberland sends an arrow\nthrough good Sir Hugh Montgomery (xliii.\u2013xlvi.).  Stanza lxvi. has\n\n    At Otterburn begane this spurne,\n       Upon a Monnynday;\n    There was the doughte Douglas slean,\n       The Perse never went away.\n\nThis is a form of Herd\u2019s stanza xiv. of the English _Otterburn_\n(lxviii.), made soon after the battle.  We see that the _original_ ballad\nhas protean variants; in time all is mixed in tradition.\n\nNow the curious and interesting point is that Hogg, when he collected the\nballad from two reciters, himself noticed that the _Cheviot_ ballad had\nmerged, in some way, into the _Otterburn_ ballad, and pointed this out to\nScott.  I now publish Hogg\u2019s letter to Scott, in which, as usual, he does\nnot give the year-date: I think it was 1805.\n\n                                       ETTRICK HOUSE, _Sept._ 10, [?1805].\n\n    DEAR SIR,\u2014Though I have used all diligence in my power to recover the\n    old song about which you seemed anxious, I am afraid it will arrive\n    too late to be of any use.  I cannot at this time have Grame and\n    Bewick; the only person who hath it being absent at a harvest; and as\n    for the scraps of Otterburn which you have got, _they seem to have\n    been some confused jumble made by some person who had learned both\n    the songs you have_, {79a} _and in time had been straitened to make\n    one out of them both_.  But you shall have it as I had it, saving\n    that, as usual, I have sometimes helped the metre without altering\n    one original word.\n\nHogg here gives his version from recitation as far as stanza xxiv.\n\nHere Hogg stops and writes:\u2014\n\n    The ballad, which I have collected from two different people, a crazy\n    old man and a woman deranged in her mind, seems hitherto considerably\n    entire; but now, when it becomes most interesting, they have both\n    failed me, and I have been obliged to take much of it in plain prose.\n    However, as none of them seemed to know anything of the history save\n    what they had learned from the song, I took it the more kindly.  Any\n    few verses which follow are to me unintelligible.\n\n    He told Sir Hugh that he was dying, and ordered him to conceal his\n    body, and neither let his own men nor Piercy\u2019s know; which he did,\n    and the battle went on headed by Sir Hugh Montgomery, and at length\u2014\n\nHere follow stanzas up to xxxviii.\n\nHogg then goes on thus:\u2014\n\n    Piercy seems to have been fighting devilishly in the dark.  Indeed my\n    narrators added no more, but told me that Sir Hugh died on the field,\n    but that\n\n    He left not an Englishman on the field,\n    . . .\n    That he hadna either killed or ta\u2019en\n       Ere his heart\u2019s blood was cauld.\n\n    Almonshire (Stanza iii.) may probably be a corruption of\n    Bamburghshire, but as both my narrators called it so I thought proper\n    to preserve it.  The towers in Roxburgh fells (Stanza iii.) may not\n    be so improper as we were thinking, there may have been some\n    [English] strength on the very borders.\u2014I remain, Dear Sir, your most\n    faithful and affectionate servant, JAMES HOGG.\n\nHogg adds a postscript:\n\n    Not being able to get the letter away to the post, I have taken the\n    opportunity of again pumping my old friend\u2019s memory, and have\n    recovered some more lines and half lines of Otterburn, of which I am\n    becoming somewhat enamoured.  These I have been obliged to arrange\n    somewhat myself, as you will see below, but so mixed are they with\n    original lines and sentences that I think, if you pleased, they might\n    pass without any acknowledgment.  Sure no man will like an old song\n    the worse of being somewhat harmonious.  After stanza xxiv. you may\n    read stanzas xxv. to xxxiv.  Then after xxxviii. read xxxix.\n\nNow we know all that can be known about the copy of the ballad which, in\n1805, Scott received from Hogg.  Up to stanza xxiv. it is as given by the\ntwo old reciters.  The crazy man may be the daft man who recited to Hogg\nBurns\u2019s _Tam o\u2019 Shanter_, and inspired him with the ambition to be a\npoet.  The deranged woman, like mad Madge Wildfire, was rich in ballad\nscraps.  From stanza xxv. to xxxiv., Hogg confessedly \u201charmonises\u201d what\nhe got in plain prose intermixed with verse.  Stanza xxxix. is apparently\nHogg\u2019s.  The last broken stanza, as Hogg said, is a reminiscence of the\n_Hunting of the Cheviot_, in a Scots form, long lost.\n\nHogg was not a scientific collector: had he been, he would have taken\ndown \u201cthe plain prose\u201d and the broken lines and stanzas verbally.  But\nHogg has done his best.\n\nWe have next to ask, How did Scott treat the material thus placed before\nhim?  He dropped five stanzas sent by Hogg, mainly from the part made up\nfrom \u201cplain prose\u201d; he placed in a stanza and a line or two from Herd\u2019s\ntext; he remade a stanza and adopted a line from the English of 1550, and\ninserted an incident from Wyntoun\u2019s _Cronykil_ (about 1430).  He did\nthese things in the effort to construct what Lockhart calls \u201ca standard\ntext.\u201d\n\n1.  In stanza i., for Hogg\u2019s \u201cDouglas _went_,\u201d Scott put \u201cbound him to\nride.\u201d\n\n2.  (_H._)  \u201cWith the Lindsays.\u201d\n\n   (_S._)  \u201cWith _them_ the Lindesays.\u201d\n\n3.  (_H._)  \u201cAlmonshire.\u201d\n\n   (_S._)  \u201cBamboroughshire.\u201d\n\n   (_H._)  \u201cRoxburgh.\u201d\n\n   (_S._)  \u201cReidswire.\u201d\n\n6.  (_H._)  \u201cThe border again.\u201d\n\n   (_S._)  \u201cThe border fells.\u201d\n\n7.  (_H._)  \u201c_Most_ furiously.\u201d\n\n   (_S._)  \u201c_Right_ furiouslie.\u201d\n\n9.  (_H._) A modernised stanza.\n\n   (_S._) Scott deletes it.\n\n15.  (_H._) Scott rewrites the stanza thus,\n\n   (_H._)\n\n   But I will stay at Otterburn,\n      Where you shall welcome be;\n   And if ye come not at three days end,\n      A coward I\u2019ll call thee.\n\n   (_S._)\n\n   \u201cThither will I come,\u201d proud Percy said,\n      \u201cBy the might of Our Ladye.\u201d\n   \u201cThere will I bide thee,\u201d said the Douglas,\n      \u201cMy troth I\u2019ll plight to thee.\u201d\n\n19.  (_H._)  \u201cI have _seen_ a dreary dream.\u201d\n\n20.  (_S._)  \u201cI have _dreamed_ a dreary dream.\u201d\n\n21.  (_H._)\n\n   Where he met with the stout Percy\n      And a\u2019 his goodly train.\n\n21.  (_S._)\n\n    But he forgot the helmet good\n    That should have kept his brain.\n\n                                                           (From Wyntoun.)\n\n22.  (_H._) Line 2.  \u201cRight keen.\u201d\n\n   (_S._) Line 2.  \u201cFu\u2019 fain.\u201d\n\nLine 4.\n\n    The blood ran down like rain.\n\nLine 4.\n\n    The blood ran them between.\n\n23.  (_H._)\n\n    But Piercy wi\u2019 his good broadsword\n       Was made o\u2019 the metal free,\n    Has wounded Douglas on the brow\n       Till backward did he flee.\n\n24.  (_S._)\n\n    But Piercy wi\u2019 his broadsword good\n       That could so sharply wound,\n    Has wounded Douglas on the brow,\n       Till he fell to the ground.\n\n25.  (_H._) Here Hogg has mixed prose and verse, and does his best.\nScott deletes Hogg\u2019s 25.\n\n27.  (_H._) Douglas repeats the story of his dream.  Scott deletes the\nstanza.\n\n28.  In Hogg\u2019s second line,\n\n    Nae mair I\u2019ll fighting see.\n\nScott gives, from Herd,\n\n    Take thou the vanguard of the three.\n\n29.  Hogg\u2019s verse is\n\n    But tell na ane of my brave men\n       That I lie bleeding wan,\n    But let the name of Douglas still\n       Be shouted in the van.\n\nThis is precisely what Douglas does say, in Froissart, but Scott deletes\nthe stanza.  Probably Hogg got the fact from his reciters, \u201cin plain\nprose,\u201d with a phrase or two in verse.\n\n31.  (_H._) Line 4.\n\n    On yonder lily lee.\n\n27.  (_S._)\n\n    That his merrie men might not see.\n\n33.  (_H._) Scott deletes the stanza.\n\n35.  (_H._)\n\n    When stout Sir Hugh wi\u2019 Piercy met.\n\n30.  (_S._)\n\n    The Percy and Montgomery met. {83a}\n\n36.  (_H._)\n\n    \u201cO yield thee, Piercy,\u201d said Sir Hugh,\n       \u201cO yield, or ye shall die!\u201d\n    \u201cFain would I yield,\u201d proud Percy said,\n       \u201cBut ne\u2019er to loon like thee.\u201d\n\n31.  (_S._)\n\n    \u201cNow yield thee, yield thee, Percy,\u201d he said,\n       \u201cOr else I vow I\u2019ll lay thee low,\u201d\n    \u201cTo whom must I yield,\u201d quoth Earl Percy,\n       \u201cNow that I see it must be so?\u201d\n\nScott took this from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe\u2019s MS. copy. {84a}\n\n38.  (_H._)\n\n38.  (_S._) Scott makes a slight verbal alteration.\n\n39.  (_H._) Line 1.\n\n34.  (_S._) Line 1.\n\nScott substitutes Herd\u2019s\n\n    As soon as he knew it was Montgomery.\n\n40.  (_H._) Hogg\u2019s broken stanza on the death of Montgomery, derived from\na lost form of the _Huntiss of Chevets_, named in _The Complaynte of\nScotland_.\n\n35.  (_S._) Scott omits giving the formula common to the English of 1550\nand to Herd.  This was the whole of Scott\u2019s editorial alteration.  Any\none may discover the facts from Professor Kittredge\u2019s useful abbreviation\nof Child\u2019s collection into a single volume (Nutt.  London, 1905).\nColonel Elliot quotes Professor Kittredge\u2019s book three or four times, but\nin place of looking at the facts he abounds in the Higher Criticism.\nColonel Elliot says that Scott does not tell us of a single line having\nbeen borrowed from Percy\u2019s version. {84b}  Scott has only \u201ca single line\u201d\nto tell of, the fourth line in his stanza xxii., \u201cTill he fell to the\nground.\u201d\n\nFor the rest, the old English version and Herd\u2019s have many\ninter-borrowings of stanzas, but we do not know whether a Scot borrowed\nfrom an Englishman, or _vice versa_.  Thus, in another and longer\ntraditional version\u2014Hogg\u2019s\u2014more correspondence must be expected than in\nHerd\u2019s fourteen stanzas.  It is, of course, open to scepticism to allege\nthat Hogg merely made his text, invented the two crazy old reciters, and\nthe whole story about them, and his second \u201cpumping of their memories,\u201d\ninvented \u201cAlmonshire,\u201d which he could not understand, and invented his\nlast broken stanza on the death of Montgomery, to give the idea that _The\nHuntiss of Chevets_ was mingled in the recollections of the reciters with\n_The Battle of Otterburn_.  He also gave the sword in place of the pennon\nof Percy as the trophy of Douglas, \u201cand the same with intent to deceive,\u201d\njust as he pretended, in _Auld Maitland_, not to know what \u201cspringwalls\u201d\nwere, and wrote \u201csprings: wall-stanes.\u201d  If this probable theory be\ncorrect, then Scott was the dupe of Truthful James.  At all events,\nthough for three years Scott was moving heaven and earth and Ettrick\nForest to find a copy of a Scottish ballad of Otterburn, he did not sit\ndown and make one, as, in Colonel Elliot\u2019s system, he easily could and\nprobably would have done.\n\nBefore studying his next ill deed, we must repeat that the Otterburn\nballads prove that in early times one nation certainly pirated a ballad\nof a rival nation, and very ingeniously altered it and inverted the parts\nof the heroes.\n\nWe have next to examine a case in a later generation, in which a maker\nwho was interested in one clan, pirated, perverted, and introverted the\n_r\u00f4les_ of the heroes in a ballad by a maker interested in another clan.\nEither an Elliotophile perverted a ballad by a Scottophile, or a\nScottophile perverted a ballad by an Elliotophile.\n\nThis might be done at the time when the ballad was made (say 1620\u201360).\nBut Colonel Elliot believes that the perversion was inflicted on an\nElliotophile ballad by a Scottophile impostor about 1800\u20131802.  The name\nof this desperate and unscrupulous character was Walter Scott, Sheriff of\nEttrick Forest, commonly called Selkirkshire.\n\nIn this instance I have no manuscript evidence.  The name of \u201cJamie of\nthe Fair Dodhead,\u201d the ballad, appears in a list of twenty-two ballads in\nSir Walter\u2019s hand, written in a commonplace book about 1800\u20131801.  Eleven\nare marked X.  \u201cJamie\u201d is one of that eleven.  _Kinmont Willie_ is among\nthe eleven not marked X.  We may conjecture that he had obtained the\nfirst eleven, and was hunting for the second eleven,\u2014some of which he\nnever got, or never published.\n\n\n\n\nTHE MYSTERY OF THE BALLAD OF JAMIE TELFER\n\n\nI\nA RIDING SONG\n\n\n_The Ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead_ has many charms for\nlovers of the Border.  The swift and simple stanzas carry us through a\ngreat tract of country, which remains not unlike what it was in the days\nwhen Scotts, Armstrongs, and Elliots rode the hills in jack and knapscap,\nwith sword and lance.  The song leads us first, with a foraging party of\nEnglish riders, from Bewcastle, an English hold, east of the Border\nstream of the Liddel; then through the Armstrong tribe, on the north\nbank; then through more Armstrongs north across Tarras water (\u201cTarras for\nthe good bull trout\u201d); then north up Ewes water, that springs from the\nfeet of the changeless green hills and the _pastorum loca vasta_, where\nnow only the shepherd or the angler wakens the cry of the curlews, but\nwhere then the Armstrongs were in force.  We ride on, as it were, and\nlook down into the dale of the stripling Teviot, _electro clarior_ (then\nheld by the Scotts); we descend and ford \u201cBorthwick\u2019s roaring strand,\u201d as\nLeyden sings, though the burn is usually a purling brook even where it\njoins Teviot, three miles above Hawick.\n\nNext we pass across the green waves of moorlands that rise to the heights\nover Ettrick (held by the Scotts), whence the foragers of the song gallop\ndown to \u201cThe Fair Dodhead,\u201d now a heap of grass-covered stones, but in\ntheir day a peel tower, occupied, _according to the ballad_, by one James\nTelfer.  The English rob the peel tower, they drive away ten cows, and\nurge them southwards over Borthwick water, then across Teviot at Coultart\nCleugh (say seven miles above Hawick), then up the Frostily burn, and so\ndown Ewes water as before; but the Scottish pursuers meet them before\nthey cross the Liddel again into English bounds.  The English are\ndefeated, their captain is shot through the head (which in no way affects\nhis power of making speeches); he is taken, twenty or thirty of his men\nare killed or wounded, his own cattle are seized, and his victim Telfer,\nreturns rejoicing to Dodhead in distant Ettrick.\n\n_C\u2019est magnifique_, _mais ce n\u2019est pas la guerre_!  These events never\noccurred, as we shall see later, yet the poet has the old reiving spirit,\nthe full sense of the fierce manly times, and possesses a traditional\nknowledge of the historical personages of the day, and knows the\ncountry,\u2014more or less.\n\nThe poem has raised as many difficulties as Nestor\u2019s long story about\nraided cattle in the eleventh book of the _Iliad_.  Historical Greece\nknew but dimly the places which were familiar to Nestor, the towns that\ntime had ruined, the hill where Athene \u201cturned the people again.\u201d  We,\ntoo, have to seek in documents of the end of the sixteenth century, or in\nan old map of 1654 (drawn about 1600), to find Dodhead, Catslack, or\nCatloch, or Catlock hill, and Preakinhaugh, places essential to our\ninquiry.\n\nI see the student who has ventured so far into my tract wax wan!  He does\nnot,\u2014she does not,\u2014wish to hear about dusty documents and ancient maps.\nFor him or for her the ballad is enough, and a very good ballad it is.  I\nwould shake the faith of no man in the accuracy of the ballad tale, if it\nwere not necessary for me to defend the character of Sir Walter Scott,\nwhich, on occasion of this and other ballads, is impugned by Colonel the\nHon. FitzWilliam Elliot.  He \u201chopes, though he cannot expect,\u201d that I\nwill give my reasons for not sharing his belief that Sir Walter did a\ncertain thing which I could not easily palliate. {89}\n\n\n\nII\nTHE BALLAD IMPOSSIBLE\n\n\nMy attempts to relieve Colonel Elliot from his painful convictions about\nSir Walter\u2019s unsportsmanlike behaviour must begin with proof that the\nballad, as it stands, cannot conceivably be other than \u201ca pack o\u2019 lees.\u201d\nHere Colonel Elliot, to a great extent and on an essential point, agrees\nwith me.  In sketching rapidly the story of the ballad,\u2014the raid from\nEngland into Ettrick, the return of the raiders, the pursuit,\u2014I omitted\nthe _clou_, the pivot, the central point of dramatic interest.  It is\nthis: in one version of the ballad,\u2014call it A for the present,\u2014the\nunfortunate Telfer runs to ask aid from the laird of Buccleuch, at\nBranksome Hall, some three and a half or four miles above Hawick, on the\nTeviot.  From the Dodhead it was a stiff run of eight miles, through\nnew-fallen snow.  The farmer of Dodhead, in the centre of the Scott\ncountry, naturally went for help to the nearest of his neighbours, the\ngreatest chief in the mid-Border.  In version A (which I shall call \u201cthe\nElliot version\u201d), \u201cauld Buccleuch\u201d (who was a man of about thirty in\nfact) was deaf to Telfer\u2019s prayer.\n\n    Gae seek your succour frae Martin Elliot,\n       For succour ye\u2019s get nane frae me,\n    Gae seek your succour where ye paid blackmail,\n       For, man, ye ne\u2019er paid money to me.\n\nThis is impossibly absurd!  As Colonel Elliot writes, \u201cI pointed out in\nmy book\u201d (_The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads_) \u201cthat the allegation\nthat Buccleuch had refused to strike a blow at a party of English\nraiders, who had insolently ridden some twenty-five miles into Scottish\nground and into the very middle of his own territory, was too absurd to\nbe believed . . . \u201d {91a}\n\nCertainly; and the story is the more ridiculous as Buccleuch (who has\ntaken Telfer\u2019s protection-money, or \u201cblackmail\u201d) pretends to believe that\nTelfer\u2014living in Ettrick, about nine miles from Selkirk\u2014pays\nprotection-money to Martin Elliot, residing at Preakinhaugh, high up the\nwater of Liddel.  Martin was too small a potentate, and far too remote to\nbe chosen as protector by a man living near the farm of Singlee on\nEttrick, and near the bold Buccleuch.\n\nAll this is nonsense.  Colonel Elliot sees that, and suggests that all\nthis is not by the original poet, but has been \u201cinserted at some later\nperiod.\u201d {91b}  But, if so, _what was the original ballad before the\ninsertion_?  As it stands, all hinges on this impossible refusal of\nBuccleuch to help his neighbour and retainer, James Telfer.  If Colonel\nElliot excises Buccleuch\u2019s refusal of aid as a later interpolation, and\nif he allows Telfer to reach Branksome and receive the aid which\nBuccleuch would rejoice to give, then the Elliot version of the ballad\ncannot take a further step.  It becomes a Scott ballad, Buccleuch sends\nout his Scotts to pursue the English raiders, and the Elliots, if they\ncome in at all, must only be subordinates.  But as the Elliot version\nstands, it is Buccleuch\u2019s refusal to do his duty that compels poor Jamie\nto run to his brother-in-law, \u201cauld Jock Grieve\u201d in Coultartcleugh, four\nmiles higher on Teviot than Branksome.  Jock gives him a mount, and he\nrides to \u201cMartin\u2019s Hab\u201d at \u201cCatlockhill,\u201d a place unknown to research\nthereabout.  Thence they both ride to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh, high\nup in Liddesdale, and the Elliots under Martin rescue Jamie\u2019s kye.\n\nNow the original ballad, if it did not contain Buccleuch\u2019s refusal of aid\nto Telfer (which refusal is a thing \u201ctoo absurd to be believed\u201d) must\nmerely have told about the rescue of Jamie\u2019s kye by the Scotts, Wat of\nHarden, and the rest.  If Buccleuch did not refuse help he gave it, and\nthere was no ride by Telfer to Martin Elliot.  Therefore, without a\npassage \u201ctoo absurd to be believed\u201d (Buccleuch\u2019s refusal), _there could\nbe no Elliots in the story_.  The alternative is, that Telfer in Ettrick\n_did_ pay blackmail to a man so remote as Elliot of Preakinhaugh, though\nBuccleuch was his chief and his neighbour.  This is absurd.  Yet Colonel\nElliot firmly maintains that the version, in which the Elliots have all\nthe glory and Buccleuch all the shame, is the original version, and is\ntrue on essential points.\n\nThat is only possible if we cut out the verses about Buccleuch and make\nan Ettrick man not appeal to him, but go direct to a Liddesdale man for\nsuccour.  He must run from Dodhead to Coultartcleugh, get a horse from\nJock Grieve (Buccleuch\u2019s man and tenant), and then ride into Liddesdale\nto Martin.  But an Ettrick man, in a country of Scotts, would inevitably\ngo to his chief and neighbour, Buccleuch: it is inconceivable that he\nshould choose the remote Martin Elliot as his protector, and go to _him_.\n\nThus, as a corollary from Colonel Elliot\u2019s own disbelief in the Buccleuch\nincident, the Elliot version of the ballad must be absolutely false and\nfoolish.\n\nIf Colonel Elliot leaves in the verses on Buccleuch\u2019s refusal, he leaves\nin what he calls \u201ctoo absurd to be believed.\u201d  If he cuts out these\nverses as an interpolation, then Buccleuch lent aid to Telfer, and there\nwas no occasion to approach Martin Elliot.  Or, by a third course, the\nElliot ballad originally made an Ettrick man, a neighbour of the great\nBuccleuch, never dream of appealing to _him_ for help, but run to\nCoultartcleugh, four miles above Buccleuch\u2019s house, and thence make his\nway over to distant Liddesdale to Martin Elliot!  Yet Colonel Elliot says\nthat in what I call \u201cthe Elliot version,\u201d \u201cthe story defies criticism.\u201d\n{93a}  Now, however you take it,\u2014I give you three choices,\u2014the story is\nabsolutely impossible.\n\nThis Elliot version was unknown to lovers of the ballads, till the late\nProfessor Child of Harvard, the greatest master of British ballad-lore\nthat ever lived, in his beautiful _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_,\nprinted it from a manuscript belonging to Mr. Macmath, which had\npreviously been the property of a friend of Scott, Charles Kirkpatrick\nSharpe.  This version is entitled \u201cJamie Telfer _in_ the Fair Dodhead,\u201d\nnot \u201c_of_\u201d: Jamie was a tenant (there was no Jamie Telfer tenant of\nDodhead in 1570\u20131609, but concerning that I have more to say).  Jamie was\nno laird.\n\nBefore Professor Child\u2019s publication of the Elliot version, we had only\nthat given by Scott in _The Border Minstrelsy_ of 1802.  Now Scott\u2019s\nversion is at least as absurdly incredible as the Elliot version.  In\nScott\u2019s version the unhappy Jamie runs, not to Branksome and Buccleuch,\nto meet a refusal; but to \u201cthe Stobs\u2019s Ha\u2019\u201d(on Slitterick above Hawick)\nand to \u201cauld Gibby Elliot,\u201d the laird.  Elliot bids him go to Branksome\nand the laird of Buccleuch,\n\n    For, man, ye never paid money to me!\n\nNaturally Telfer did not pay to Elliot: he paid to Buccleuch, if to any\none.  More, till after the Union of 1603, and the end of Border raids,\nGilbert Elliot, a cousin and friend of Buccleuch, _was not the owner of\nStobs_.  The Hon. George Elliot pointed out this fact in his _Border\nElliots and the Family of Minto_: Colonel Elliot rightly insists on this\npoint.\n\nThe Scott version is therefore as hopelessly false as the Elliot version.\nThe Elliot version, with the Buccleuch incident, is \u201ctoo absurd to be\nbelieved,\u201d and could not have been written (except in banter of\nBuccleuch), while men remembered the customs of the sixteenth century.\nThe Scott version, again, could not be composed before the tradition\narose that Gilbert Elliot _was_ laird of Stobs before the Union of the\nCrowns in 1603.  Now that tradition was in full force on the Border\nbefore 1688.  We know that (see chapter on _Kinmont Willie_, _infra_),\nfor, in 1688, a man born in 1613, Captain Walter Scott of Satchells, in\nhis _Metrical History of the Honourable Families of the Names of Scott\nand Elliot_, represents Gilbert Elliot of Stobs as riding with Buccleuch\nin the rescue of Kinmont Willie, in 1596. {95a}  Now Satchells\u2019s own\nfather rode in that fray, he says, {95b} and he gives a minute genealogy\nof the Elliots of Stobs. {95c}\n\nThus the belief that Gilbert Elliot was laird of Stobs by 1596 was\ncurrent in the traditions of a man born seventeen years after 1596.  _The\nScott version rests on that tradition_, and is not earlier than the rise\nof that erroneous belief.\n\nNeither the Scott nor Elliot version is other than historically false.\nBut the Scott version, if we cut out the reference to auld Gibby Elliot,\noffers a conceivable, though not an actual, course of events.  The Elliot\nversion, if we excise the Buccleuch incident, does not.  Cutting out the\nBuccleuch incident, Telfer goes all the way from Ettrick to Liddesdale,\nseeking help in that remote country, and never thinks of asking aid from\nBuccleuch, his neighbour and chief.  This is idiotic.  In the Scott\nversion, if we cut out the refusal of Gilbert Elliot of Stobs, Telfer\ngoes straight to his brother-in-law, auld Jock Grieve, within four miles\nof Buccleuch at Branksome; thence to another friend, William\u2019s Wat, at\nCatslockhill (now Branksome-braes), and so to Buccleuch at Branksome.\nThis is absurd enough.  Telfer would have gone straight to Branksome and\nBuccleuch, unless he were a poor shy small farmer, _who wanted sponsors_,\nknown to Buccleuch.  Jock Grieve and William\u2019s Wat, both of them\nretainers and near neighbours of Buccleuch, were such sponsors.  Granting\nthis, the Scott version runs smoothly, Telfer goes to his sponsors, and\nwith his sponsors to Buccleuch, and Buccleuch\u2019s men rescue his kye.\n\n\n\nIII\nCOLONEL ELLIOT\u2019S CHARGE AGAINST SIR WALTER SCOTT\n\n\nColonel Elliot believes generally in the historical character of the\nballad as given in the Elliot version, but \u201cis inclined to think that\u201d\nthe original poet \u201cnever wrote the stanza\u201d (the stanza with Buccleuch\u2019s\nrefusal) \u201cat all, and that it has been inserted at some later period.\u201d\n{97a}  In that case Colonel Elliot is \u201cinclined to think\u201d that an Ettrick\nfarmer, robbed by the English, never dreamed of going to his neighbour\nand potent chief, but went all the way to Martin Elliot, high up in\nLiddesdale, to seek redress!  Surely few can share the Colonel\u2019s\ninclination.  Why should a farmer in Ettrick \u201cchoose to lord\u201d a remote\nElliot, when he had the Cock of the Border, the heroic Buccleuch, within\neight miles of his home?\n\nHolding these opinions, Colonel Elliot, with deep regret\u2014\n\n    I wat the tear blinded his ee\u2014\n\naccuses Sir Walter Scott of having taken the Elliot version\u2014till then the\nonly version\u2014and of having altered stanzas vii.\u2013xi. (in which Jamie goes\nto Branksome, and is refused succour) into his own stanzas vii.\u2013xi., in\nwhich Jamie goes to Stobs and is refused succour.  This evil thing Scott\ndid, thinks Colonel Elliot.  Scott had no copy, he thinks, of the ballad\nexcept an Elliot copy, which he deliberately perverted.\n\nWe must look into the facts of the case.  I know no older published copy\nof the ballad than that of Scott, in _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. i. p. 91\n_et seqq._ (1802).  Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick\nshepherd to Scott of \u201cJune 30, 1802\u201d thus: \u201cI am surprised to find that\nthe songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother\u2019s; _Jamie\nTelfer_ differs in many particulars.\u201d {98a}  (This is an incomplete\nquotation.  I give the MS. version later.)\n\nScott himself, before Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to\nhis _Jamie Telfer_: \u201cThere is another ballad, under the same title as the\nfollowing, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little\ndifference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed\nto the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief there called Martin Elliot\nof the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simm, is said to have fallen in the\naction.  It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the\nElliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honour of\nthe victory.\u201d\n\nOld Mrs. Hogg\u2019s version, \u201cdiffering in many particulars\u201d from Scott\u2019s,\nmust have been the Elliot version, published by Professor Child, as \u201cA*,\u201d\n\u201cJamie Telfer _in_\u201d (not \u201c_of_\u201d) \u201cthe Fair Dodhead,\u201d \u201cfrom a MS. written\nabout the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now in the possession\nof Mr. William Macmath\u201d; it had previously belonged to Charles\nKirkpatrick Sharpe. {98b}\n\nThere is one great point of difference between the two forms.  In Sir\nWalter\u2019s variant, verse 26 summons the Scotts of Teviotdale, including\nWat of Harden.  In his 28 the Scotts ride with the slogan \u201cRise for\nBranksome readily.\u201d  Scott\u2019s verses 34, 36, and the two first lines of\n38, are, if there be such a thing as internal evidence, from his own pen.\nSuch lines as\n\n    The Dinlay snaw was ne\u2019er mair white\n    Nor the lyart locks o\u2019 Harden\u2019s hair\n\nare cryingly modern and \u201cScottesque.\u201d\n\nThat Sir Walter knew the other version, as in Mr. Macmath\u2019s MS. of the\nearly nineteenth century, is certain; he describes that version in his\npreface.  That he effected the whole transposition of Scotts for Elliots\nis Colonel Elliot\u2019s opinion. {99a}\n\nIf Scott did, I am not the man to defend his conduct; I regret and\ncondemn it; and shall try to prove that he found the matter in his copy.\nI shall first prove, beyond possibility of doubt, that the ballad is,\nfrom end to end, utterly unhistorical, though based on certain real\nincidents of 1596\u201397.  I shall next show that the Elliot version is\nprobably later than the Scott version.  Finally, I shall make it certain\n(or so it seems to me) that Scott worked on an old copy which was _not_\nthe copy that belonged to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, but contained points of\ndifference, _not_ those inserted by Sir Walter Scott about \u201cDinlay snaw,\u201d\nand so forth.\n\n\n\nIV\nWHO WAS THE FARMER IN THE DODHEAD IN 1580\u20131609?\n\n\nColonel Elliot has made no attempt to prove that one Telfer was tenant of\nthe Dodhead in 1580\u20131603, which must, we shall see, include the years in\nwhich the alleged incidents occur.  On this question\u2014was there a Telfer\nin the Dodhead in 1580\u20131603?\u2014I consulted my friend, Mr. T. Craig Brown,\nauthor of an excellent _History of Selkirkshire_.  In that work (vol. i.\np. 356) the author writes: \u201cDodhead or Scotsbank; Dodhead was one of the\nfour stedes of Redefurd in 1455.  In 1609 Robert Scot of Satchells\n(ancestor of the poet-captain) obtained a Crown charter of the lands of\nDodbank.\u201d  For the statement that Dodhead was one of the three stedes in\n1455, Mr. Craig Brown quotes \u201cThe Retoured Extent of 1628,\u201d \u201can\nunimpeachable authority.\u201d  For the Crown charter of 1609, we have only to\nlook up \u201cDodbank\u201d in the Register of the Great Seal of 1609.  The charter\nis of November 24, 1609, and gratifies \u201cRobert Scott of Satscheillis\u201d\n(father of the Captain Walter Scott who composed the _Metrical History_\nof the Scotts in 1688) with the lands, which have been occupied by him\nand his forefathers \u201cfrom a time past human memory.\u201d  Thus, writes Mr.\nCraig Brown to me, \u201cScott of Satchells was undoubtedly Scott of _Dodhead_\nalso in 1609.\u201d\n\nIn \u201cThe Retoured Extent of 1628,\u201d \u201c_Dodhead_ or Dodbank\u201d appears as\nHarden\u2019s property.  Thus in 1628 the place was \u201cDodhead or Dodbank,\u201d a\nfarm that had been tenanted by Scotts \u201cfrom beyond human memory.\u201d  But\nMr. Craig Brown proves from record that one Simpson farmed it in 1510.\n\nSo where does Jamie Telfer come in?\n\nThe farmers were Scotts, it was to their chief, Buccleuch, that they went\nwhen they needed aid. {101a}\n\nThus vanishes the hero of the ballad, _Jamie Telfer in the Fair Dodhead_,\nand thus the ballad is pure fiction from end to end.\n\n\n\nV\nMORE IMPOSSIBILITIES IN THE BALLAD\n\n\nThis is only one of the impossibilities in the ballad.  That the Captain\nof Bewcastle, an English hold, stated in a letter of the period to be\ndistant three miles from the frontier, the Liddel water, should seek \u201cto\ndrive a prey\u201d from the Ettrick, far through the bounds of his neighbours\nand foes, Grahams, Armstrongs, Scotts, and Elliots, is a ridiculously\nabsurd circumstance.\n\nColonel Elliot attempts to meet this difficulty by his theory of the\nroute taken by the Captain, which he illustrates by a map. {102a}  The\nballad gives no details except that the Captain found his first guide\n\u201chigh up in Hardhaughswire,\u201d which Colonel Elliot cannot identify.  The\nsecond guide was \u201claigh down in Borthwick water.\u201d  If this means on the\nlower course of the Borthwick, the Captain was perilously near Branksome\nHall and Harden, and his ride was foolhardy.  But \u201claigh down,\u201d I think,\nmeans merely \u201con lower ground than Hardhaughswire.\u201d\n\nThe Captain, as soon as he crossed the Ritterford after leaving\nBewcastle, was in hostile and very watchful Armstrong country.  This\ninitial difficulty Colonel Elliot meets by marking on his map, as\nArmstrong country, the north bank of the Liddel down to Kershope burn;\nand the Captain crosses Liddel below that burn at Ritterford.  Thence he\ngoes north by west, across Tarras water, up Ewes water, up Mickledale\nburn, by Merrylaw and Ramscleugh and so on to Howpasley, which is not on\nthe lower but the upper Borthwick.\n\nLooking at Colonel Elliot\u2019s chart of the Captain\u2019s route, all seems easy\nenough for the Captain.  He does not try to ride into Teviotdale, for\nwhich he is making, up the Liddel water, and thence by the Hermitage\ntributary on his left.  Colonel Elliot studs that region with names of\nArmstrong and Elliot strongholds.  He makes the Captain, crossing Liddel\nby the Ritterford, bear to his left, through a space empty of hostile\nhabitations, in his map.  This seems prudent, but the region thus left\nblank was full of the fiercest and most warlike of the Armstrong name.\nThat road was closed to the Captain!\n\nColonel Elliot has failed to observe this fact, which I go on to prove,\nfrom a memoir addressed in 1583 to Burleigh, by Thomas Musgrave, the\nactive son of the aged Captain of Bewcastle, Sir Simon Musgrave.  Thomas\ndescribes the topography of the Middle Marches.  He says that the\nArmstrongs hold both banks of Liddel as far south as \u201cKershope foot\u201d (the\njunction of the Kershope with the Liddel), and hold the north side of the\nLiddel as far as its junction with the Esk. {103a}  Thus on crossing\nLiddel by the Ritterford, the Captain had at once to pass through the\nhostile Armstrongs.  Thereby also were Grahams with whom the Musgraves of\nBewcastle were in deadly feud.  Farther down Esk, west of Esk, dwelt\nKinmont Willie, an Armstrong, \u201cat a place called Morton.\u201d  If he did pass\nso far through Armstrongs, the Captain met them again, farther north, on\nTarras side, where Runyen Armstrong lived at Thornythaite.  Near him was\nArmstrong of Hollhouse, Musgrave\u2019s great enemy.  North of Tarras the\nCaptain rode through Ewesdale; there he had to deal with three hundred\nArmstrong men of the spear. {104a}  When he reached Ramscleuch (which he\nnever could have done), the Colonel\u2019s map makes the Captain ride past\nRamscleuch, then farmed by the Grieves, retainers of Buccleuch, who would\nwarn Branksome.  When the Captain reached Howpasley on Borthwick water,\nhe would be observed by the men of Scott of Howpasley, the Grieves, who\ncould send a rider some six miles to warn Branksome.\n\nWe get the same information as to the perils of the Captain\u2019s path from\nthe places marked on Blaeu\u2019s map of 1600\u201354.  There are Hollhouse and\nThornythaite, Armstrong towers, and the active John Armstrong of Langholm\ncan come at a summons.\n\nIt seems to be a great error to suppose that the route chosen for the\nCaptain by Colonel Elliot could lead him into anything better than a\ndeath-trap.  I must insist that it would have been madness for a Captain\nof Bewcastle to ride far through Armstrong country, deep into Buccleuch\u2019s\ncountry, and return on another line through Scott, and near Elliot, and\nthrough Armstrong country\u2014and all for no purpose but to steal ten cows in\nremote Selkirkshire!\n\nHere I may save the reader trouble, by omitting a great mass of detail as\nto the deplorable condition of Bewcastle itself in 1580\u201396.  Sir Simon,\nthe Captain, declares himself old and weary.  The hold is \u201cutterly\ndecayed,\u201d the riders are only thirty-seven men fairly equipped.  Soldiers\nare asked for, sometimes fifty are sent from the garrison of Berwick,\nthen they are withdrawn.  Bewcastle is forayed almost daily; \u201cMarch\nBills\u201d minutely describe the cattle, horses, and personal property taken\nfrom the Captain and the people by the Armstrongs and Elliots.\n\nOnce, in 1582, Thomas Musgrave slew Arthur Graham, a near neighbour, and\ntook one hundred and sixty kye, but this only caused such a feud that the\nMusgraves could not stir safely from home.  From 1586 onwards, Thomas\nMusgrave, officially or unofficially, was acting Captain of Bewcastle.\nHe had no strength to justify him in raiding to remote Ettrick, through\nenemies who penned him in at Bewcastle.\n\nI look on Musgrave as the Captain whose existence is known to the\nballad-maker, and I find the origin of the tale of his defeat and capture\nin the ballad, in a distorted memory of his actual capture.\n\nOn 3rd July 1596, Thomas (having got Scrope\u2019s permission, without which\nhe dared not cross the Border on affairs of war) attempted a retaliatory\nraid on Armstrongs within seven miles of the Border, the Armstrongs of\nHollace, or Hollhouse.  \u201cHe found only empty houses;\u201d he \u201csought a prey\u201d\nin vain; he let his men straggle, and returning homeward, with some\nfifteen companions, he was ambushed by the Armstrongs near Bewcastle, was\nrefused shelter by a Graham, was taken prisoner, and was sent to\nBuccleuch at Branksome.  On 15th July he came home under a bond of \u00a3200\nfor ransom. {106a}  As every one did, in his circumstances, the Captain\nmade out his Bill for Damages.  It was indented on 28th April 1597.  We\nlearn that John (Armstrong) of Langholm, Will of Kinmont (not Liddesdale\nmen), and others, who took him, are in the Captain\u2019s debt for \u201c24 horses\nand mares, himself prisoner, and ransomed to \u00a3200, and 16 other\nprisoners, and slaughter.\u201d  The charges are admitted by the accused; the\nCaptain is to get \u00a3400. {106b}\n\nIn my opinion this capture of the Captain of Bewcastle and others,\npoetically handled, is, with other incidents, the basis of the ballad.\nColonel Elliot says that the incident \u201cis no proof that a Captain of\nBewcastle was not also taken or killed at some other place or at some\nother time.\u201d  But _what_ Captain, and when?  Sir Simon, in 1586, had been\nCaptain, he says, for thirty years.  Thenceforth till near the Union of\nthe Crowns, Thomas was Captain, or acting Captain.\n\nSo considerable an event as the taking of a Captain of Bewcastle, who, in\nthe ballad, was shot through the head and elsewhere, could not escape\nrecord in dispatches, and the periodical \u201cMarch Bills,\u201d or statements of\nwrongs to be redressed.  Colonel Elliot\u2019s reply takes the shape of the\nargument that the ballad may speak of some other Captain, at some other\ntime; and that, in one way or another, the sufferings and losses of\n_that_ Captain may have escaped mention in the English dispatches from\nthe Border.  These dispatches are full of minute details, down to the\ntheft of a single mare.  I am content to let historians familiar with the\ndispatches decide as to whether the Captain\u2019s mad ride into Ettrick, with\nhis dangerous wounds, loss of property, and loss of seventeen men killed\nand wounded (as in the ballad), could escape mention.\n\nThe capture of Thomas Musgrave, I think, and two other\nincidents,\u2014confused in course of tradition, and handled by the poet with\npoetic freedom,\u2014are the materials of _Jamie Telfer_.  One of the other\nincidents is of April 1597. {107a}  Here Buccleuch in person, on the\nSabbath, burned twenty houses in Tynedale, and \u201cslew fourteen men who had\nbeen in Scotland and brought away their booty.\u201d  Here we have Buccleuch\n\u201con the hot trod,\u201d pursuing English reivers, recovering the spoils\nprobably, and slaying as many of the raiders as the Captain lost, in the\nballad.  Again, not a _son_ of Elliot of Preakinhaugh (as I had\nerroneously said), but a _nephew_ named Martin, was slain in a Tynedale\nraid into Liddesdale. {108a}  Soldiers aided the English raiders.  A\nconfused memory of this death of Elliot\u2019s nephew in 1597 may be the\nsource of the story of the death of his son, Simmy, in the ballad.\n\nOur traditional ballads all arise out of some germs of history, all\nhandle the facts romantically, and all appear to have been composed, in\ntheir extant shapes, at a considerable time after the events.  I may cite\n_Mary Hamilton_; _The Laird of Logie_ is another case in point; there are\nmany others.\n\nColonel Elliot does not agree with me.  So be it.\n\nColonel Elliot writes that,\u2014in place of my saying that _Jamie Telfer_ \u201cis\na mere mythical perversion of carefully recorded facts,\u201d\u2014\u201cit would surely\nbe more correct to say that it is a fairly true, though jumbled, account\nof actual incidents, separated from each other by only short periods of\ntime . . . \u201d {108b}  If he means, or thinks that I mean, that the actual\nfacts were the capture of Musgrave near Bewcastle in 1596 by the\nArmstrongs, with Buccleuch\u2019s hot-trod, and Martin Elliot\u2019s slaying in\n1597, I entirely agree with him that the facts are \u201cjumbled.\u201d  But as to\nthe opinion that the ballad is \u201cfairly true\u201d about the raid to Ettrick\n(the Captain could not ride a mile beyond the Border without the Warden\u2019s\npermission), about the non-existent Jamie Telfer, about the shooting,\ntaking, and plundering of the Captain, about his loss of seventeen men\nwounded and slain (he lost about as many prisoners),\u2014I have given reasons\nfor my disbelief.\n\n\n\nVI\nIS THE SCOTT VERSION, WITH ELLIOTS AND SCOTTS TRANSPOSED, THE LATER\nVERSION?\n\n\nWe now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the ballad\n(apart from Sir Walter\u2019s decorative stanzas) necessarily _later_ than the\nElliot version in Sharpe\u2019s copy?  The chief argument for the lateness of\nthe Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of Stobs at a date\nwhen this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have already treated.\nIf the ballad is no earlier than the date when Elliot was believed (as by\nSatchells) to have obtained Stobs before 1596, the argument falls to the\nground.\n\nStarting from that point, and granting that a minstrel fond of the Scotts\nwants to banter the Elliots, he may make Telfer ask aid at Stobs.  After\nthat, which version is better in its topography?  Bidden by Stobs to seek\nBuccleuch, Telfer runs to Teviot, to Coultartcleugh, some four miles\nabove Branksome.  Branksome was nearer, but Telfer was shy, let us say,\nand did not know Buccleuch; while at Coultartcleugh, Jock Grieve was his\nbrother-in-law.  Jock gives him a mount, and takes him to \u201cCatslockhill.\u201d\n\nNow, no Catslockhill is known anywhere, to me or to Colonel Elliot.  Mr.\nHenderson, in a note to the ballad, {110a} speaks of \u201cCatslack in\nBranxholm,\u201d and cites the _Register of the Privy Seal_ for 4th June 1554,\nand the _Register of the Privy Council_ for 14th October 1592.  The\nrecords are full of _that_ Catslack, but it is not in Branksome.  Blaeu\u2019s\nmap (1600\u201354) gives it, with its appurtenances, on the north side of St.\nMary\u2019s Loch.  There is a Catslack on the north side of Yarrow, near\nLadhope, on the southern side.  Neither Catslack is the Catslockhill of\nthe Scott ballad.  But on evidence, \u201cand it is good evidence,\u201d says\nColonel Elliot, {110b} I prove that, in 1802, a place called \u201cCatlochill\u201d\nexisted between Coultartcleugh and Branksome.  The place (Mrs. Grieve,\nBranksome Park, informs me) is now called Branksome-braes.  On his copy\nof _The Minstrelsy_ of 1802, Mr. Grieve, then tenant of Branksome Park,\nmade a marginal note.  Catlochill was still known to him; it was in a\ncommanding site, and had been strengthened by the art of man.  His note I\nhave seen and read.\n\nThus, on good evidence, there was a Catlochill, or Catlockhill, between\nCoultartcleugh and Branksome.  The Scott version is right in its\ntopography.\n\nThis fact was unknown to Colonel Elliot.  Not knowing a Catslackhill or\nCatslockhill in Teviot, he made Scott\u2019s Telfer go to an apocryphal\nCatlockhill in Liddesdale.  Professor Veitch had said that the\nCatslockhill of the ballad \u201c_is to be sought_\u201d in some locality between\nCoultartcleugh and Branxholm.  Colonel Elliot calls this \u201ca really\npreposterously cool suggestion.\u201d {111a}  Why \u201creally preposterously\ncool\u201d?  Being sought, the place is found where it had always been.  Jamie\nTelfer found it, and in it his friend \u201cWilliam\u2019s Wat,\u201d who took him to\nthe laird of Buccleuch at Branksome.\n\nIn the Elliot version, when refused aid by Buccleuch, Jamie ran to\nCoultartcleugh,\u2014as in Scott\u2019s,\u2014on his way to Martin Elliot at\nPreakinhaugh on the Liddel.  Jamie next \u201ctakes the fray\u201d to \u201cthe\nCatlockhill,\u201d and is there remounted by \u201cMartin\u2019s Hab,\u201d an Elliot (not by\nWilliam\u2019s Wat), and _they_ \u201ctake the fray\u201d to Martin Elliot at\nPreakinhaugh in Liddesdale.  This is very well, but where _is_ this\n\u201cCatlockhill\u201d in Liddesdale?  Is it even a real place?\n\nColonel Elliot has found no such place; nor can I find it in the\n_Registrum Magni Sigilli_, nor in Blaeu\u2019s map of 1600\u201354.\n\nColonel Elliot\u2019s argument has been that the Elliot version, the version\nof the Sharpe MS., is the earlier, for, among other reasons, its\ntopography is correct. {112a}  It makes Telfer run from Dodhead to\nBranksome for aid, because that was the comparatively near residence of\nthe powerful Buccleuch.  Told by Buccleuch to seek aid from Martin Elliot\nin Liddesdale, Telfer does so.  He runs up Teviot four miles to his\nbrother-in-law, Jock Grieve, who mounts him.  He then rides off at a\nright angle, from Teviot to Catlockhill, says the Elliot ballad, where he\nis rehorsed by Martin\u2019s Hab.  The pair then take the fray to Martin\nElliot at Preakinhaugh on Liddel water, and Martin summons and leads the\npursuers of the Captain.\n\nThis, to Colonel Elliot\u2019s mind, is all plain sailing, all is feasible and\nnatural.  And so it _is_ feasible and natural, if Colonel Elliot can find\na Catlockhill anywhere between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh.  On that\nline, in Mr. Veitch\u2019s words, Catlockhill \u201cis to be sought.\u201d  But just as\nMr. Veitch could find no Catslockhill between Coultartcleugh and\nBranksome, so Colonel Elliot can find no Catlockhill between\nCoultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh.  He tells us {112b} indeed of\n\u201cCatlockhill on Hermitage water.\u201d  But there is no such place known!\nColonel Elliot\u2019s method is to take a place which, he says, is given as\n\u201cCatlie\u201d Hill, \u201cbetween Dinlay burn and Hermitage water, on Blaeu\u2019s map\nof 1654.\u201d  We may murmur that Catlie Hill is one thing and Catlock\nanother, but Colonel Elliot points out that \u201clock\u201d means \u201cthe meeting of\nwaters,\u201d and that Catlie Hill is near the meeting of Dinlay burn and the\nHermitage water.  But then why does Blaeu call it, not Catlockhill, nor\nCatlie hill, nor \u201cCatlie\u201d even, but \u201c_Gatlie_,\u201d for so it is distinctly\nprinted on my copy of the map?  Really we cannot take a place called\n\u201cGatlie Hill\u201d and pronounce that we have found \u201cCatlockhill\u201d!  Would\nColonel Elliot have permitted Mr. Veitch\u2014if Mr. Veitch had found \u201cGatlie\nHill\u201d near Branksome, in Blaeu\u2014to aver that he had found Catslockhill\nnear Branksome?\n\nThus, till Colonel Elliot produces on good evidence a Catlockhill between\nCoultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh, the topography of the Elliot ballad, of\nthe Sharpe copy of the ballad, is nowhere, for neither Catliehill nor\nGatliehill is Catlockhill.  That does not look as if the Elliot were\nolder than the Scott version.  (There was a Sim _Armstrong_ of the\n_Cathill_, slain by a Ridley of Hartswell in 1597. {113a})\n\nWe now take the Scott version where Telfer has arrived at Branksome.\nScott\u2019s stanza xxv. is Sharpe\u2019s xxiv.  In Scott, Buccleuch; in Sharpe,\nMartin Elliot bids his men \u201cwarn the waterside\u201d (Sharpe), \u201cwarn the water\nbraid and wide\u201d (Scott).  Scott\u2019s stanza xxvi. is probably his own, or\nmay be, for he bids them warn Wat o\u2019 Harden, Borthwick water, and the\nTeviot Scotts, and Gilmanscleuch\u2014which is remote.  Then, in xxvii.,\nBuccleuch says\u2014\n\n    Ride by the gate of Priesthaughswire,\n       And warn the Currors o\u2019 the Lee,\n    As ye come down the Hermitage slack\n       Warn doughty Wiliie o\u2019 Gorrinberry.\n\nAll this is plain sailing, by the pass of Priesthaughswire the Scotts\nwill ride from Teviot into Hermitage water, and, near the Slack, they\nwill pass Gorrinberry, will call Will, and gallop down Hermitage water to\nthe Liddel, where they will nick the returning Captain at the Ritterford.\n\nThe Sharpe version makes Martin order the warning of the waterside\n(xxiv.), and then Martin says (xxv.)\u2014\n\n    When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack,\n    Warn doughty Will o\u2019 Gorranherry.\n\nColonel Elliot {114a} supposes Martin (if I follow his meaning) to send\nSimmy with his command, _back over all the course that Telfer and\nMartin\u2019s Hab have already ridden_: back past Shaws, near Braidley (a\nhouse of Martin\u2019s), past \u201cCatlockhill,\u201d to Gorranberry, to \u201cwarn the\nwaterside.\u201d  But surely Telfer, who passed Gorranberry gates, and with\nHab passed the other places, had \u201ctaken the fray,\u201d and warned the water\nquite sufficiently already.  If this be granted, the Sharpe version is\ntaking from the Scott version the stanza, so natural there, about the\nHermitage Slack and Gorranberry.  But Colonel Elliot infers, from stanzas\nxxvi., xxx., xxxi., that Simmy has warned the water as far as Gorranberry\n(_again_), has come in touch with the Captain, \u201cbetween the Frostily and\nthe Ritterford,\u201d and that this is \u201cconsistent only with his having moved\nup the Hermitage water.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile Martin, he thinks, rode with his men down Liddel water.  But\nhere we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the\nhypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the\nEnglish to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they\nwere met by Martin\u2019s men on the Hermitage line of advance.  I cannot find\nthis elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me\nhypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back up\nHermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy\u2019s path.\nColonel Elliot himself writes: \u201cIt is certain that after the news of the\nraid reached Catlockhill\u201d (_and_ Gorranberry, Telfer passed it), \u201cit must\nhave spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most unlikely for\nthe men of this district to have delayed taking action until they\nreceived instructions from their chief.\u201d {115}\n\nThat is exactly what I say; but Martin says, \u201cWhen ye come in at the\nHermitage Slack, warn doughty Will o\u2019 Gorranberry.\u201d  Why go to warn him,\nwhen, as Colonel Elliot says, the news is running through Hermitage\nwater, and the men are most probably acting on it,\u2014as they certainly\nwould do?\n\nMartin\u2019s orders, in Sharpe xxv., are taken, I think, from Buccleuch\u2019s, in\nScott\u2019s xxvii.\n\nThe point is that Martin had no need to warn men so far away as\nGorranberry,\u2014they were roused already.  Yet he orders them to be warned,\nand about a combined movement of Martin and Simmy on different lines the\nballad says not a word.  All this is inference merely, inference not from\nhistorical facts, but from what may be guessed to have been in the mind\nof the poet.\n\nThus the Elliot or Sharpe version has topography that will not hold\nwater, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song\nseems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a\nform of the Scott version.  This being the case, the original version on\nwhich Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version.  In the Scott\nversion the rescuers must come down the Hermitage Slack: in the Elliot\nthey have no reason for riding _back_ to that place.\n\n\n\nVII\nSCOTT HAD A COPY OF THE BALLAD WHICH WAS NOT THE SHARPE COPY\n\n\nDid Scott know no other version than that of the Sharpe MS.?  In Scott\u2019s\nversion, stanza xlix., the last, is absent from the Elliot version, which\nconcludes triumphantly, thus\u2014\n\n    Now on they came to the fair Dodhead,\n       They were a welcome sight to see,\n    And instead of his ain ten milk-kye\n       Jamie Telfer\u2019s gotten thirty and three.\n\nScott too gives this, but ends with a verse not in Sharpe\u2014\n\n    And he has paid the rescue shot\n       Baith wi\u2019 goud and white money,\n    And at the burial o\u2019 Willie Scott\n       I wat was mony a weeping ee.\n\nDid Scott add this?  Proof is impossible; but the verse is so prosaic,\nand so injurious to the triumphant preceding verse, that I think Scott\nfound it in his copy: in which case he had another copy than Sharpe\u2019s.\n\nScott (stanza xviii.) reads \u201cCatslockhill\u201d where the Sharpe MS. reads\n\u201cCatlockhill.\u201d  In Scott\u2019s time it was a mound, but the name was then\nknown to Mr. Grieve, the tenant of Branksome Park.  To-day I cannot find\nthe mound; is it likely that Scott, before making the change, sought\ndiligently for the mound and its name?  If so, he found \u201c_Catlochill_,\u201d\nfor so Mr. Grieve writes it, not Catslockhill.\n\nMeanwhile Colonel Elliot, we know, has no Catlockhill where he wants it;\nhe has only Gatliehill, unless his Blaeu varies from my copy, and\nGatliehill is not Catlockhill.\n\nScott gives (xlviii.) the speech of the Captain after he is shot through\nthe head and in another dangerous part of his frame\u2014\n\n    \u201cHae back thy kye!\u201d the Captain said,\n       \u201cDear kye, I trow, to some they be,\n    For gin I suld live a hundred years,\n       There will ne\u2019er fair lady smile on me.\u201d\n\nThis is not in Sharpe\u2019s MS., and I attribute this redundant stanza to\nScott\u2019s copy.  The Captain, remember, has a shot \u201cthrough his head,\u201d and\nanother which must have caused excruciating torture.  In these\ncircumstances would a poet like Scott put in his mouth a speech which\nmerely reiterates the previous verse?  No!  But the verse was in Scott\u2019s\ncopy.\n\nColonel Elliot has himself noted a more important point than these: he\nquotes Scott\u2019s stanza xii., which is absent from the Sharpe MS.\u2014\n\n    My hounds may a\u2019 rin masterless,\n       My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,\n    My lord may grip my vassal lands,\n       For there again maun I never be!\n\n\u201cThey are, doubtless, beautiful lines, but their very beauty jars like a\nfalse note.  One feels they were written by another hand, by an artist of\na higher stamp than a Border \u2018ballad-maker.\u2019  And not only is it their\nbeauty that jars, but so also does their inapplicability to Jamie Telfer\nand to the circumstances in which he found himself\u2014so much so, indeed,\nthat it may well occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other\nballad, and has accidentally been pitchforked into this one.  It would\nnot have been out of place in the ballad of _The Battle of Otterbourne_,\nand, indeed, it bears some resemblance to a stanza in that ballad.\u201d  Here\nthe Colonel says that the lines \u201cone feels were written by another hand,\nby an artist of a higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker.\u201d  But \u201cit may\nalso occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has\n_accidentally_\u201d (my italics) \u201cbeen pitchforked into this\u201d: a very sound\ninference.\n\nNow if Scott had only the Sharpe version, he was the last man to\n\u201cpitchfork\u201d into it, \u201caccidentally,\u201d a stanza from \u201csome other ballad,\u201d\nthat stanza being as Colonel Elliot says \u201cinapplicable\u201d to Telfer and his\ncircumstances.  Poor Jamie, a small tenant-farmer, with ten cows, and, as\nfar as we learn, not one horse, had no hawks and hounds; no \u201cvassal\nlands,\u201d and no reason to say that at the Dodhead he \u201cmaun never be\nagain.\u201d  He could return from his long run!  Scott certainly did not\ncompose these lines; and he could not have pitchforked them into _Jamie\nTelfer_, either by accident or design.\n\nProfessor Child remarked on all this: \u201cStanza xii. is not only found\nelsewhere (compare _Young Beichan_, E vi.), but could not be more\ninappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not responsible\nfor that.\u201d {120a}\n\n    The hawk that flies from tree to tree\n\nis a formula; it comes in the Kinloch MS. copy of the ballad of _Jamie\nDouglas_, date about 1690.\n\nI know no proof that Scott was acquainted with variant E of _Young\nBeichan_. {120b}  If he had been, he could not have introduced into\n_Jamie Telfer_ lines so utterly out of keeping with Telfer\u2019s\ncircumstances, as Colonel Elliot himself says that stanza xii. is.  It\nmay be argued, \u201cif Scott _did_ find stanza xii. in his copy, it was in\nhis power to cut it out; he treated his copies as he pleased.\u201d  This is\ntrue, but my position is that, of the two, Scott is more likely to have\nlet the stanza abide where he found it (as he did with his MS. of\n_Tamlane_, retaining its absurdities) in his copy, than to \u201cpitchfork it\nin,\u201d from an obscure variant of _Young Beichan_, which we cannot prove\nthat he had ever heard or read.  But as we can never tell that Scott did\n_not_ know any rhyme, we ask, why did he \u201cpitchfork in\u201d the stanza, where\nit was quite out of place?  Child absolves him from this absurdity.\n\nThus Scott had before him another than the Sharpe copy; had a copy\ncontaining stanza xii.  That copy presented the perversion\u2014the\ntransposition of Scott\u2019s and Elliot\u2019s\u2014and into that copy Scott wrote the\nstanzas which bear his modern romantic mark.  Colonel Elliot, we saw, is\nuncertain whether to attribute stanza xii. to \u201canother hand, an artist of\nhigher stamp than a Border ballad-maker,\u201d or to regard it as belonging\n\u201cto some other ballad,\u201d and as having been \u201caccidentally pitchforked into\nthis one.\u201d  The stanza is, in fact, an old floating ballad stanza,\nattracted into the _cantefable of Susie Pye_, and the ballad of _Young\nBeichan_ (E), and partly into _Jamie Douglas_.  Thus Scott did not _make_\nthe stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the stanza in any\nform, he either \u201caccidentally pitchforked\u201d or wilfully inserted into\n_Jamie Telfer_ anything so absurdly inappropriate.  The inference is that\nScott worked on another copy, not the Sharpe copy.\n\nIf Scott had not a copy other than Sharpe\u2019s, why should he alter Sharpe\u2019s\n(vii.)\n\n    The moon was up and the sun was down,\n\ninto\n\n    The sun wasna up but the moon was down?\n\nWhat did he gain by that?  _Why did he make Jamie_ \u201c_of_\u201d _not_ \u201c_in_\u201d\n_the Dodhead_, _if he found_ \u201c_in_\u201d _in his copy_?  \u201cIn\u201d means \u201ctenant\nin,\u201d \u201cof\u201d means \u201claird of,\u201d as nobody knew better than Scott.  Jamie is\nevidently no laird, but \u201cof\u201d was in Scott\u2019s copy.\n\nIf the question were about two Greek texts, the learned would admit that\nthese points in A (Scott) are not derived from B (Sharpe).  Scott\u2019s\nadditions have an obvious motive, they add picturesqueness to his clan.\nBut the differences which I have noticed do nothing of that kind.  When\nthey affect the poetry they spoil the poetry, when they do not affect the\npoetry they are quite motiveless, whence I conclude that Scott followed\nhis copy in these cases, and that his copy was not the Sharpe MS.\n\nIf I have satisfied the reader on that point I need not touch on Colonel\nElliot\u2019s long and intricate argument to prove, or suggest, that Scott had\nbefore him no copy of the ballad except one supposed by the Colonel to\nhave been taken by James Hogg from his mother\u2019s recitation, while that\ncopy, again, is supposed to be the Sharpe MS.\u2014all sheer conjecture.\n{122a}  Not that I fear to encounter Colonel Elliot on this ground, but\nargufying on it is dull, and apt to be inconclusive.\n\nIn the letter of Hogg to Scott (June 30, 1803) as given by Mr. Douglas in\n_Familiar Letters_, Hogg says, \u201cI am surprised to find that the songs in\nyour collection differ so widely from my mother\u2019s . . . _Jamie Telfer_\ndiffers in many particulars.\u201d {123a}  The marks of omission were all\nfilled up in Hogg\u2019s MS. letter thus: \u201cIs Mr. Herd\u2019s MS. genuine?  I\nsuspect it.\u201d  Then it runs on, \u201c_Jamie Telfer_ differs in many\nparticulars.\u201d\n\nI owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Macmath.  What does Hogg\nmean?  Does \u201cIs Mr. Herd\u2019s MS. genuine?\u201d mean all Herd\u2019s MS. copies used\nby Scott?  Or does it refer to _Jamie Telfer_ in especial?\n\nMr. Macmath, who possesses C. K. Sharpe\u2019s MS. copy of the Elliot version,\nbelieves that it is Herd\u2019s hand as affected by age.  Mr. Macmath and I\nindependently reached the conclusion that by \u201cMr. Herd\u2019s MS.\u201d Hogg meant\nall Herd\u2019s MSS., which Scott quoted in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1803.  Their\nreadings varied from Mrs. Hogg\u2019s; therefore Hogg misdoubted them.  He\nadds that _Jamie Telfer_ differs from his mother\u2019s version, without\nmeaning that, for _Jamie_, Scott used a Herd MS.\n\n\n\nCONCLUSION\n\n\nI have now proved, I hope, that the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_ is entirely\nmythical except for a few suggestions derived from historical events of\n1596\u201397.  I have shown, and Colonel Elliot agrees, that refusal of aid by\nBuccleuch (or by Elliot of Stobs) is impossible, and that the ballad, if\nit existed without this incident, must have been a Scott, and could not\nbe an Elliot ballad.  No farmer in Ettrick would pay protection-money to\nan Elliot on Liddel, while he had a Scott at Branksome.  I have also\ndisproved the existence of a _Jamie Telfer_ as farmer at \u201cDodhead or\nDodbank\u201d in the late sixteenth century.\n\nAs to the character of Sir Walter Scott, I have proved, I hope, that he\nworked on a copy of the ballad which was not the Elliot version, or the\nSharpe copy; so that this copy may have represented the Scotts as taking\nthe leading part; while for the reasons given, it is apparently earlier\nthan the Elliot version\u2014cannot, at least, be proved to be later\u2014and is\ntopographically the more correct of the two.  I have given antique\nexamples of the same sort of perversions in _Otterburn_.  If I am right,\nColonel Elliot\u2019s charge against Scott lacks its base\u2014that Scott knew none\nbut the Sharpe copy, whence it is inferred that he not only decorated the\nsong (as is undeniable), but perverted it in a way far from\nsportsmanlike.\n\nI may have shaken Colonel Elliot\u2019s belief in the historicity of the\nballad.  His suspicions of Scott I cannot hope to remove, and they are\nvery natural suspicions, due to Scott\u2019s method of editing ballads and\nhabit of \u201cgiving them a cocked hat and a sword,\u201d as he did to stories\nwhich he heard; and repeated, much improved.\n\nAbsolute proof that Scott did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a\nfalse Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new\ndocuments bearing on the matter are discovered.\n\nBut, I repeat, as may be read in the chapter on _The Ballad of\nOtterburne_, such inversions and perversions of ballads occurred freely\nin the sixteenth century, and, in the seventeenth, the process may have\nbeen applied to _Jamie Telfer_. {125a}\n\n\n\n\nKINMONT WILLIE\n\n\nIF there be, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, a ballad which is still popular,\nor, at least, is still not forgotten, it is _Kinmont Willie_.  This hero\nwas an Armstrong, and one of the most active of that unbridled clan.  He\nwas taken prisoner, contrary to Border law, on a day of \u201cWarden\u2019s Truce,\u201d\nby Salkeld of Corby on the Eden, deputy of Lord Scrope, the English\nWarden; and, despite the written remonstrances of Buccleuch, he was shut\nup in Carlisle Castle.  Diplomacy failing, Buccleuch resorted to force,\nand, by a sudden and daring march, he surprised Carlisle Castle, rescued\nWillie, and returned to Branksome.  The date of the rescue is 13th April\n1596.  The dispatches of the period are full of this event, and of the\nsubsequent negotiations, with which we are not concerned.\n\nThe ballad is worthy of the cool yet romantic gallantry of the\nachievement.  Kinmont Willie was a ruffian, but he had been unlawfully\nseized.  This was one of many studied insults passed by Elizabeth\u2019s\nofficials on Scotland at that time, when the English Government, leagued\nwith the furious pulpiteers of the Kirk, and with Francis Stewart, the\nwild Earl of Bothwell, was persecuting and personally affronting James\nVI.\n\nIn Buccleuch, the Warden of the March, England insulted the man who was\nleast likely to pocket a wrong.  Without causing the loss of an English\nlife, Buccleuch repaid the affront, recovered the prisoner, broke the\nstrong Castle of Carlisle, made Scrope ridiculous and Elizabeth frantic.\n\nIn addition to _Kinmont Willie_ there survive two other ballads on\nrescues of prisoners in similar circumstances.  One is _Jock o\u2019 the\nSide_, of which there is an English version in the Percy MSS., _John a\nSide_.  Scott\u2019s version, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, is from Caw\u2019s\n_Museum_, published at Hawick in 1784.  Scott leaves out Caw\u2019s last\nstanza about a punch-bowl.  There are other variations.  Four Armstrongs\nbreak into Newcastle Tower.  Jock, heavily ironed, is carried downstairs\non the back of one of them; they ride a river in spait, where the English\ndare not follow.\n\n_Archie o\u2019 Cafield_, another rescue, Scott printed in 1802 from a MS. of\nMr. Riddell of Glenriddell, a great collector, the friend of Burns.  He\nomitted six stanzas, and \u201cmade many editorial improvements, besides\nScotticising the spelling.\u201d  In the edition published after his death\n(1833) he \u201chas been enabled to add several stanzas from recitation.\u201d\nLeyden appears to have collected the copy whence the additional stanzas\ncame; the MS., at Abbotsford, is in his hand.  In this ballad the Halls,\nnoted freebooters, rescue Archie o\u2019 Cafield from prison in Dumfries.  As\nin _Jock o\u2019 the Side_ and _Kinmont Willie_, they speak to their friend,\nasking how he sleeps; they carry him downstairs, irons and all, and, as\nin the two other ballads, they are pursued, cross a flooded river, banter\nthe English, and then, in a version in the Percy MSS., \u201ccommunicated to\nPercy by Miss Fisher, 1780,\u201d the English lieutenant says\u2014\n\n    I think some witch has bore thee, Dicky,\n       Or some devil in hell been thy daddy.\n    I would not swam that wan water, double-horsed,\n       For a\u2019 the gold in Christenty.\n\nManifestly here was a form of Lord Scrope\u2019s reply to Buccleuch, in the\nlast stanza of _Kinmont Willie_\u2014\n\n    He is either himself a devil frae hell,\n       Or else his mother a witch may be,\n    I wadna hae ridden that wan water\n       For a\u2019 the gowd in Christentie.\n\nScott writes, in a preface to _Archie o\u2019 Cafield_ and _Jock o\u2019 the Side_,\nthat there are, with _Kinmont Willie_, three ballads of rescues, \u201cthe\nincidents in which nearly resemble each other; though the poetical\ndescription is so different, that the editor did not feel himself at\nliberty to reject any one of them, as borrowed from the others.  As,\nhowever, there are several verses, which, in recitation, are common to\nall these three songs, the editor, to prevent unnecessary and\ndisagreeable repetition, has used the freedom of appropriating them to\nthat in which they have the best poetical effect.\u201d {129a}\n\nConsequently the verse quoted from the Percy MS. of _Archie o\u2019 Cafield_\nmay be improved and placed in the lips of Lord Scrope, in _Kinmont\nWillie_.  But there is no evidence that Scott ever saw or even heard of\nthis Percy MS., and probably he got the verse from recitation.\n\nNow the affair of the rescue of Kinmont Willie was much more important\nand resonant than the two other rescues, and was certain to give rise to\na ballad, which would contain much the same formul\u00e6 as the other two.\nThe ballad-maker, like Homer, always uses a formula if he can find one.\nBut _Kinmont Willie_ is so much superior to the two others, so epic in\nits speed and concentration of incidents, that the question rises, had\nScott even fragments of an original ballad of the Kinmont, \u201cmuch mangled\nby reciters,\u201d as he admits, or did he compose the whole?  No MS. copies\nexist at Abbotsford.  There is only one hint.  In a list of twenty-two\nballads, pasted into a commonplace book, eleven are marked X (as if he\nhad obtained them), and eleven others are unmarked, as if they were still\nto seek.  Unmarked is _Kinmount Willie_.\n\nDid he find it, or did he make it all?\n\nIn 1888, in a note to _Kinmont Willie_, I wrote: \u201cThere is a prose\naccount very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells\u2019 _History of the Name\nof Scott_\u201d (1688).  Satchells\u2019 long-winded story is partly in unrhymed\nand unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres.  The man, born\nin 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not\nwrite, possibly could not read.\n\nColonel Elliot \u201cbelieves that Sir Walter wrote the whole from beginning\nto end, and that it is, in fact, a clever and extremely beautiful\nparaphrase of Satchells\u2019 rhymes.\u201d {130a}\n\nThis thorough scepticism is not a novelty, as Colonel Elliot quotes me I\nhad written years ago, \u201cIn _Kinmont Willie_, Scott has been suspected of\nmaking the whole ballad.\u201d  I did not, as the Colonel says, \u201cmention the\nnames of the sceptics or the grounds of their suspicions.\u201d  \u201cThe\nsceptics,\u201d or one of them, was myself: I had \u201csuspected\u201d on much the same\ngrounds as Colonel Elliot\u2019s own, and I shall give my reasons for adopting\na more conservative opinion.  One reason is merely subjective.  As a man,\nby long familiarity with ancient works of art, Greek gems, for example,\nacquires a sense of their authenticity, or the reverse, so he does in the\ncase of ballads\u2014or thinks he does\u2014but of course this result of experience\nis no ground of argument: experts are often gulled.  The ballad varies in\nmany points from Satchells\u2019, which Colonel Elliot explains thus: \u201cI think\nthat the cause for the narrative at times diverging from that recorded by\nthe rhymes (of Satchells), is due, partly to artistic considerations,\npartly to the author having wished to bring it more or less into\nconformity with history.\u201d {131a}\n\nColonel Elliot quotes Scott\u2019s preface to the ballad: \u201cIn many things\nSatchells agrees with the ballads current in his time\u201d (1643\u201388), \u201cfrom\nwhich in all probability he derived most of his information as to past\nevents, and from which he occasionally pirates whole verses, as we\nnoticed in the annotations upon the _Raid of the Reidswire_.  In the\npresent instance he mentions the prisoner\u2019s large spurs (alluding to\nfetters), and some other little incidents noticed in the ballad, which\ntherefore was probably well known in his day.\u201d\n\nAs Satchells was born in 1613, while the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ by\nBuccleuch, out of Carlisle Castle, was in 1596, and as Satchells\u2019 father\nwas in that adventure (or so Satchells says) he probably knew much about\nthe affair from fresh tradition.  Colonel Elliot notices this, and says:\n\u201cThe probability of Satchells having obtained information from a\nhypothetical ballad is really quite an inadmissible argument.\u201d\n\nThis comes near to begging the question.  As contemporary incidents much\nless striking and famous than the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ were\ncertainly recorded in ballads, the opinion that there was a ballad of\n_Kinmont Willie_ is a legitimate hypothesis, which must be tested on its\nmerits.  For example, we shall ask, Does Satchells\u2019 version yield any\ntraces of ballad sources?\n\nMy own opinion has been anticipated by Mr. Frank Miller in his _The Poets\nof Dumfriesshire_ (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well\nequipped.  He says: \u201cThe balance of probability seems to be in favour of\nthe originality of _Kinmont Willie_,\u201d rather than of Satchells (he means,\nnot of our _Kinmont Willie_ as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning\nthe Kinmont).  \u201cCaptain Walter Scott\u2019s\u201d (of Satchells) \u201c_True History_\nwas certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as\nout of formal histories, and his account of the assault on the Castle\nreads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay.\u201d\n\nDoes Satchells\u2019 version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay?\nUndoubtedly it does.\n\nSatchells\u2019 prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad\nlines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie\u2014\n\n    It fell about the Martinmas\n    When kine was in the prime\n\nthat Willie \u201cbrought a prey out of Northumberland.\u201d  The old ballad,\ndisregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula.  Lord\nScrope vowed vengence:\u2014\n\n    Took Kinmont the self-same night.\n\n    If he had had but ten men more,\n       That had been as stout as he,\n    Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta\u2019en\n       With all his company.\n\nScott\u2019s ballad (stanza i.) says that \u201cfause Sakelde\u201d and Scrope took\nWillie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby _did_), and\n\n    Had Willie had but twenty men,\n       But twenty men as stout as he,\n    Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta\u2019en,\n       Wi\u2019 eight score in his cumpanie.\n\nManifestly either Satchells is here \u201cpirating\u201d a verse of a ballad (as\nScott holds) or Scott, if he had _no_ ballad fragments before him, is\n\u201cpirating\u201d a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.\n\nIn my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like\n_Jamie Telfer_, \u201cIt fell about the Martinmas tyde,\u201d or, like _Otterburn_,\n\u201cIt fell about the Lammas tide,\u201d and he opened with this formula, broke\naway from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, \u201cIf he had had\nbut ten men more,\u201d which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott\u2019s\nballad.  That this is so, and that, later, Satchells is again reminiscent\nof a ballad, is no improbable opinion.\n\nIn the ballad (iii.\u2013viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner\nacross Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and\nthe arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table.\nSatchells also gives the altercation.  In both versions Willie promises\nto \u201ctake his leave\u201d of Scrope before he quits the Castle.\n\nIn Scott\u2019s ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).\n\n    Before ye cross my castle yate,\n    I trow ye shall take fareweel o\u2019 me.\n\nWillie replies\u2014\n\n    I never yet lodged in a hostelrie,\n    But I paid my lawing before I gaed.\n\nIn Satchells, Lord Scrope says\u2014\n\n    \u201cBefore thou goest away thou must\n       Even take thy leave of me?\u201d\n    \u201cBy the cross of my sword,\u201d says Willie then,\n       \u201cI\u2019ll take my leave of thee.\u201d\n\nNow, had Scott been pirating Satchells, I think he would have kept \u201cBy\nthe cross of my sword,\u201d which is picturesque and probable, Willie being\nno good Presbyterian.  In _Otterburne_, Scott, _altering Hogg\u2019s copy_,\nmakes Douglas swear \u201cBy the might of Our Ladye.\u201d\n\nIt is a question of opinion; but I do think that if Scott were merely\nparaphrasing and pirating Satchells, he could not have helped putting\ninto his version the Catholic, \u201c\u2018By the cross of my sword,\u2019 then Willy\nsaid,\u201d as given by Satchells.  To do this was safe, as Scott had said\nthat Satchells does pirate ballads.  On the other hand, Satchells,\ncomposing in black 1688, when Catholicism had been stamped out on the\n_Scottish Border_, was not apt to invent \u201cBy the cross of my sword.\u201d  It\n_looks_ like Scott\u2019s work, for he, of course, knew how Catholicism\nlingered among the spears of Bothwell, himself a Catholic, in 1596.  But\nit is _not_ Scott\u2019s work, it is in Satchells.  In both Satchells and the\nballad, news comes to Buccleuch.  Here Satchells again balladises\u2014\n\n    \u201cIt is that way?\u201d Buckcleugh did say;\n       \u201cLord Scrope must understand\n    That he has not only done me wrong\n       But my Sovereign, James of Scotland.\n\n    \u201cMy Sovereign Lord, King of Scotland,\n       Thinks not his cousin Queen,\n    Will offer to invade his land\n       Without leave asked and gi\u2019en.\u201d\n\nI do not see how Satchells could either invent or glean from tradition\nthe gist of Buccleuch\u2019s diplomatic remonstrances, first with Salkeld, for\nScrope was absent at the time of Willie\u2019s capture, then with Scrope.\nBuccleuch, in fact, wrote that the taking of Willie was \u201cto the touch of\nthe King,\u201d a stain on his honour, says a contemporary manuscript. {135a}\n\nIn a _contemporary_ ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would\nbe known and reported.  But at this point (at Buccleuch\u2019s reception of\nthe news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity,\nand, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.\n\n    O is my basnet a widow\u2019s curch?\n    Or my lance a wand o\u2019 the willow tree?\n\nand so on.  Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is\nonly sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other\ngrounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza\nxiii.\n\n    O were there war between the lands,\n       As well I wot that there is none,\n    I would slight Carlisle castle high,\n       Tho\u2019 it were built o\u2019 marble stone!\n\nThence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made \u201charmonious,\u201d as\nHogg put it) ran into stanza xxxi., where Scott probably introduced the\nElliot tune (if it be ancient)\u2014\n\n    O wha dare meddle wi\u2019 me?\n\nSatchells next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch\u2019s\ncorrespondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all\ntheir names and estates, with remarks on their relationships.  He thinks\nhimself a historian and a genealogist.  The stuff is partly in prose\nlines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths.  There are two or\nthree more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too\nbad for any author but Satchells.\n\nScott\u2019s ballad \u201ccuts\u201d all that, omits even what Satchells gives\u2014mentions\nof Harden, and goes on (xv.)\u2014\n\n    He has called him forty marchmen bauld,\n       I trow they were of his own name.\n    Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called\n       The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.\n\nNow I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that\n\u201cstall-copy\u201d stanza!  Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the\nballad-faker should avoid being too poetical.  The ballad-faker _should_\nshun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott\ndid not know this, nor did Hogg.  We can always track them by their too\ndecorative, too literary interpolations.  On this I lay much stress.\n\nThe ballad next gives (xvi.\u2013xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the\nBorder\u2014\n\n    There were five and five before them a\u2019,\n       Wi\u2019 hunting horns and bugles bright;\n    And five and five came wi\u2019 Buccleuch,\n       Like Warden\u2019s men arrayed for fight.\n\n    And five and five like a mason gang,\n       That carried the ladders lang and hie;\n    And five and five like broken men,\n       And so they reached the Woodhouselee.\n\n\u2014a house in Scotland, within \u201ca lang mile\u201d of Netherby, in England, the\nseat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the\nScottish cause.  They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain\nof Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.\n\nNow in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to\nSalkeld by each gang, till Dicky o\u2019 Dryhope (a real person) replies with\na spear-thrust\u2014\n\n    \u201cFor never a word o\u2019 lear had he,\u201d\n\nare not an invention of Scott\u2019s (who knew that Salkeld was not met and\nslain), but a fantasy of the original ballad.  Here I have only\nfamiliarity with the romantic perversion of facts that marks all ballads\non historical themes to guide me.\n\nSalkeld is met\u2014\n\n    \u201cAs we crossed the Batable land,\n    When to the English side we held.\u201d\n\nThe ballad does not specify the crossing of Esk, nor say that Salkeld was\non the English side; nor is there any blunder in the reply of the \u201cmason\ngang\u201d\u2014\n\n    \u201cWe gang to harry a corbie\u2019s nest,\n    That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.\u201d\n\nWhether on English or Scottish soil the masons say not, and their\npretence is derisive, bitterly ironical.\n\nColonel Elliot makes much of the absence of mention of the Esk, and says\n\u201cit is _after_ they are in England that the false reports are spread.\u201d\n{139a}  But the ballad does not say so\u2014read it!  All passes with\njudicious vagueness.\n\n    \u201cAs we crossed the Batable land,\n    When to the English side we held.\u201d\n\nSatchells knows that the ladders were made at Woodhouselee; it took till\nnightfall to finish them.  The ballad, swift and poetical, takes the\nladders for granted\u2014as a matter of fact, chronicled in the dispatches,\nthe Grahams of Netherby harboured Buccleuch: Netherby was his base.\n\n\u201cI could nought have done that matter without great friendship of the\nGrames of Eske,\u201d wrote Buccleuch, in a letter which Scrope intercepted.\n{139b}\n\nIn Satchells, Buccleuch leaves half his men at the \u201cStonish bank\u201d\n(Staneshaw bank) \u201c_for fear they had made noise or din_.\u201d  An old soldier\nshould have known better, and the ballad (his probable half-remembered\nsource here) _does_ know better\u2014\n\n    \u201cAnd there the laird garr\u2019d leave our _steeds_,\n       For fear that they should stamp and nie,\u201d\n\nand alarm the castle garrison.  Each man of the post on the ford would\nhold two horses, and also keep the ford open for the retreat of the\nadvanced party.  The ballad gives the probable version; Satchells, when\noffering as a reason for leaving half the force, lest they should make\n\u201cnoise or din,\u201d is maundering.  Colonel Elliot does not seem to perceive\nthis obvious fact, though he does perceive Buccleuch\u2019s motive for\ndividing his force, \u201cpresumably with the object of protecting his line of\nretreat,\u201d and also to keep the horses out of earshot, as the ballad says.\n{140a}\n\nIn Satchells the river is \u201cin no great rage.\u201d  In the ballad it is \u201cgreat\nand meikle o\u2019 spait.\u201d  And it really was so.  The MS. already cited,\nwhich Scott had not seen when he published the song, says that Buccleuch\narrived at the \u201cStoniebank beneath Carleile brig, the water being at the\ntyme, through raines that had fallen, weill thick.\u201d\n\nIn Scott\u2019s _original_ this river, he says, was the Esk, in Satchells it\nis the Eden, and Scott says he made this necessary correction in the\nballad.  In Satchells the storming party\n\n    Broke a sheet of leid on the castle top.\n\nIn the ballad they\n\n    Cut a hole through a sheet o\u2019 lead.\n\nBoth stories are erroneous; the ladders were too short; the rescuers\nbroke into a postern door.  Scrope told this to his Government on the day\nafter the deed, 14th April. {140b}\n\nIn xxxi. the ballad makes Buccleuch sound trumpets when the castle-roof\nwas scaled; in fact it was not scaled.  The ladders were too short, and\nthe Scots broke in a postern door.  The Warden\u2019s trumpet blew \u201cO wha dare\nmeddle wi\u2019 me,\u201d and here, as has been said, I think Scott is the author.\nHere Colonel Elliot enters into learning about \u201cWha dare meddle wi\u2019 me?\u201d\na \u201cLiddesdale tune,\u201d and in the poem an adaptation, by Scott, of\nSatchells\u2019 \u201cthe trumpets sounded \u2018Come if ye dare.\u2019\u201d\n\nSatchells makes the trumpets sound when the rescuers bring Kinmont Willie\nto the castle-top on the ladder (which they did not), and again when the\nrescuers reach the ground by the ladder.  They made no use at all of the\nladders, which were too short, and Willie, says the ballad, lay \u201cin the\n_lower_ prison.\u201d  They came in and went out by a door; but the trumpets\nare not apocryphal.  They, and the shortness of the ladders, are\nmentioned in a MS. quoted by Scott, and in Birrell\u2019s contemporary\n_Diary_, i. p. 57.  In the MS. Buccleuch causes the trumpets to be\nsounded from below, by a detachment \u201cin the plain field,\u201d securing the\nretreat.  His motive is to encourage his party, \u201cand to terrify both\ncastle and town by imagination of a greater force.\u201d  Buccleuch again\n\u201csounds up his trumpet before taking the river,\u201d in the MS. Colonel\nElliot may claim stanza xxxi. for Scott, and also the tune \u201cWha dare\nmeddle wi\u2019 me?\u201d he may even claim here a suggestion from Satchells\u2019 \u201cCome\nif ye dare.\u201d  Colonel Elliot says that no tune of this title ever\nexisted, a thing not easy to prove. {142a}\n\nIn the conclusion, with differences, there are resemblances in the ballad\nand Satchells.  Colonel Elliot goes into them very minutely.  For\nexample, he says that Kinmont is \u201cmade to ride off; not on horseback, but\non Red Rowan\u2019s back!\u201d\n\nThe ballad says not a word to that effect.  Kinmont\u2019s speech about Red\nRowan as \u201ca rough beast\u201d to ride, is made immediately after the stanza,\n\n    \u201cThen shoulder high, with shout and cry,\n       We bore him down the ladder lang;\n    At every stride Red Rowan made,\n       I wot the Kinmont\u2019s airns played clang.\u201d {142b}\n\nAfter this verse Kinmont makes his speech (xl.\u2013xli.).  But if he _did_\nride on Red Rowan\u2019s back to Staneshaw bank, it was the best thing that a\nheavily ironed man could do.  In the ballad (xxvii.) no horses of the\nparty were waiting at the castle, _all_ horses were left behind at\nStaneshaw bank (Satchells brings horses, or at least a horse for Willie,\nto the castle).  On what could Willie \u201cride off,\u201d except on Red Rowan?\n{142c}\n\nStanzas xxxv., xxxvi. and xliv. are related, we have seen, to passages in\n_Jock o\u2019 the Side_ and _Archie o\u2019 Cafield_, but ballads, like Homer,\nemploy the same formul\u00e6 to describe the same circumstances: a note of\narchaism, as in Gaelic poetic passages in _M\u00e4rchen_.\n\nI do not pretend always to know how far Scott kept and emended old\nstanzas mangled by reciters: there are places in which I am quite at a\nloss to tell whether he is \u201cmaking\u201d or copying.\n\nI incline to hold that Satchells was occasionally reminiscent of a ballad\nfor the reasons and traces given, and I think that Scott when his and\nSatchells\u2019 versions coincide, did not borrow direct from Satchells, but\nthat both men had a ballad source.\n\nThat ballad was later than the popular belief, held by Satchells, that\nGilbert Elliot was at the time (1596) laird of Stobs, which he did not\nacquire till after the Union (1603), and that he (the only man not a\nScot, says Satchells, wrongly) rode with Buccleuch.  Elliot is not\naccused of doing so in Scrope\u2019s dispatches, but he may have come as far\nas Staneshaw bank, where half the company were left behind, says\nSatchells, with the horses, which were also left, says the ballad.  In\nthat case Elliot would not be observed in or near the Castle.  Yet it may\nhave been known in Scotland that he was of the party.\n\nHe was, as Satchells says, a cousin, he was also a friend of Buccleuch\u2019s,\nand he may conceivably have taken a part in this glorious adventure,\nthough he could not, _at the moment_, be called laird of Stobs.  Were I\nan Elliot, this opinion would be welcome to me!  Really, Salkeld was in a\ngood position to know whether Elliot rode with Buccleuch or not.\n\nThe whole question is not one on which I can speak dogmatically.  A\nperson who suspects Scott intensely may believe that there were no ballad\nfragments of Kinmont in his possession.  The person who, like myself,\nthinks Satchells, with his \u201cIt fell about the Martinmas,\u201d knew a ballad\nvaguely, believes that Satchells _had_ some ballad sources bemuddled in\nhis old memory.\n\nA person who cannot conceive that Scott wrote\n\n    Except Sir Gilbert Elliot, called\n       The laird of Stobs, I mean the same,\n\nwill hold that Scott knew some ballad fragments, _disjecta membra_.  But\nI quite agree with Colonel Elliot, that the ballad, _as it stands_ (with\nthe exception, to my mind, of some thirty stanzas, themselves emended),\n\u201cbelongs to the early nineteenth century, not to the early seventeenth.\u201d\nThe time for supposing the poem, _as it stands_, to be \u201csaturated with\nthe folk-spirit\u201d all through is past; the poem is far too much\ncontaminated by the genius of Scott itself; like Burns\u2019 transfiguration\nof \u201cthe folk-spirit\u201d at its best.\n\nNear the beginning of this paper I said, in answer to a question of\nColonel Elliot\u2019s, that I myself was the person who had suspected Scott of\ncomposing the whole of _Kinmont Willie_, and I have given my reasons for\nnot remaining constant to my suspicions.  But in a work which Colonel\nElliot quotes, the abridged edition of Child\u2019s great book by Mrs.\nChild-Sargent and Professor Kittredge (1905), the learned professor\nwrites, \u201c_Kinmont Willie_ is under vehement suspicion of being the work\nof Sir Walter Scott.\u201d  Mr. Kittredge\u2019s entire passage on the matter is\nworth quoting.  He first says\u2014\u201cThe traditional ballad appears to be\ninimitable by any person of literary cultivation,\u201d \u201cthe efforts of poets\nand poetasters\u201d end in \u201cinvariable failure.\u201d\n\nI do not think that they need end in failure except for one reason.  The\npoet or poetaster cannot, now, except by flat lying and laborious forgery\nof old papers, produce any documentary evidence to prove the\n_authenticity_ of his attempt at imitation.  Without documentary evidence\nof antiquity, no critic can approach the imitation except in a spirit of\ndetermined scepticism.  He knows, certainly, that the ballad is modern,\nand, knowing that, he easily finds proofs of modernism even where they do\nnot really exist.  I am convinced that to imitate a ballad that would,\nexcept for the lack of documentary evidence, beguile the expert, is\nperfectly feasible.  I even venture to offer examples of my own\nmanufacture at the close of this volume.  I can find nothing suspicious\nin them, except the deliberate insertion of formul\u00e6 which occur in\ngenuine ballads.  Such _wiederholungen_ are not reasons for rejection, in\nmy opinion; but they are _suspect_ with people who do not understand that\nthey are a natural and necessary feature of archaic poetry, and this fact\nMr. Kittredge does understand.\n\nMr. Kittredge speaks of Sir Walter\u2019s unique success with _Kinmont\nWillie_; but is Sir Walter successful?  Some of his stanzas I, for one,\ncan hardly accept, even as emended traditional verses.\n\nMr. Kittredge writes\u2014\u201cSir Walter\u2019s success, however, in a special kind of\nballadry for which he was better adapted by nature and habit of mind than\nfor any other, would only emphasise the universal failure.  And it must\nnot be forgotten that _Kinmont Willie_, if it be Scott\u2019s work, is not\nmade out of whole cloth; it is a working over of one of the best\ntraditional ballads known (_Jock o\u2019 the Side_), with the intention of\nfitting it to an historical exploit of Buccleuch.  Further, the subject\nitself was of such a nature that it might well have been celebrated in a\nballad,\u2014indeed, one is tempted to say, it must have been so celebrated.\u201d\n\nNot a doubt of _that_!\n\n\u201cAnd, finally, Sir Walter Scott felt towards \u2018the Kinmont\u2019 and \u2018the bold\nBuccleuch\u2019 precisely as the moss-trooping author of such a ballad would\nhave felt.  For once, then, the miraculous happened. . . . \u201d {146a}  Or\ndid not happen, for the exception is \u201csolitary though doubtful,\u201d and\n\u201cunder vehement suspicion.\u201d  But Mr. Kittredge must remember that no\nknown Scottish ballad \u201cis made out of whole cloth.\u201d  All have, in various\ndegrees, the successive modifications wrought by centuries of oral\ntradition, itself, in some cases, modifying a much modified printed\n\u201cstall-copy\u201d or \u201cbroadside.\u201d\n\nTake _Jock o\u2019 the Side_.  The oldest version is in the Percy MS. {147a}\nAs Mr. Henderson says, \u201cit contains many evident corruptions,\u201d\n\n    \u201cJock on his lively bay, Wat\u2019s on his white horse behind.\u201d\n\nThere is an example of what the original author could not have written!\n\nWe do not know how good _Jock_ was when he left his poet\u2019s hands; and\nScott has not touched him up.  We cannot estimate the original excellence\nof any traditional poem by the state in which we find it,\n\n    Corrupt by every beggar-man,\n    And soiled by all ignoble use.\n\n\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\n\n\nWE have now examined critically the four essentially _Border_ ballads\nwhich Sir Walter is suspected of having \u201cedited\u201d in an unrighteous\nmanner.  Now he helps to forge, and issues _Auld Maitland_.  Now he, or\nsomebody, makes up _Otterburne_, \u201cpartly of stanzas from Percy\u2019s\n_Reliques_, which have undergone emendations calculated to disguise the\nsource from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern fabrication, and\npartly of a few stanzas and lines from Herd\u2019s version.\u201d {148a}  Thirdly,\nScott, it is suggested, knew only what I call \u201cthe Elliot version\u201d of\n_Jamie Telfer_, perverted that by transposing the _r\u00f4les_ of Buccleuch\nand Stobs, and added picturesque stanzas in glorification of his\nancestor, Wat of Harden.  Fourthly, he is suspected of \u201cwriting the whole\nballad\u201d of _Kinmont Willie_, \u201cfrom beginning to end.\u201d\n\nOf these four charges the first, and most disastrous, we have absolutely\ndisproved.  Scott did not write one verse of the _Auld Maitland_; he\nedited it with unusual scrupulosity, for he had but one copy, and an\nalmost identical recitation.  He could not \u201ceke and alter\u201d by adding\nverses from other texts, as he did in _Otterburne_.\n\nSecondly, Scott did not make up _Otterburne_ in the way suggested by his\ncritic.  He took Hogg\u2019s MS., and I have shown minutely what that MS. was,\nand he edited it in accordance with his professed principles.  He made \u201ca\nstandard text.\u201d  It is only to be regretted that Hogg did not take down\n_verbatim_ the words of his two reciters and narrators, and that Scott\ndid not publish Hogg\u2019s version, with his letter, in his notes; but that\nwas not his method, nor the method of his contemporaries.\n\nThirdly, as to _Jamie Telfer_, long ago I wrote, opposite\n\n    \u201cThe lyart locks of Harden\u2019s hair,\u201d\n\n_aut Jacobus aut Diabolus_, meaning that either James Hogg or the devil\ncomposed that stanza.  I was wrong.  Hogg had nothing to do with it; on\ninternal evidence Scott was the maker.  But that he transposed the Scott\nand Elliot _r\u00f4les_ is incapable of proof; and I have shown that such\nperversions were made in very early times, where national, not clan\nprejudices were concerned.  I have also shown that Scott\u2019s version\ncontains matter not in the Elliot version, matter injurious to the poem,\nas in one stanza, certainly not composed by himself, the stanza being an\ninappropriate stray formula from other ballads.  But, in the absence of\nmanuscript materials I can only produce presumptions, not proofs.\n\nLastly, _Kinmont Willie_, and Scott\u2019s share in it, is matter of\npresumption, not of proof.  He had been in quest of the ballad, as we\nknow from his list of _desiderata_; he says that what he got was\n\u201cmangled\u201d by reciters, and that, in what he got, one river was mentioned\nwhere topography requires another.  He also admits that, in the three\nballads of rescues, he placed passages where they had most poetical\nappropriateness.  My arguments to show that Satchells had memory of a\nKinmont ballad will doubtless appeal with more or less success, or with\nnone, to different students.  That an indefinite quantity of the ballad,\nand improvements on the rest, are Scott\u2019s, I cannot doubt, from evidence\nof style.\n\n\u201cSir Walter Scott it is impossible to assail, however much the scholarly\nconscience may disapprove,\u201d says Mr. Kittredge. {150a}  Not much is to be\ntaken by assailing him!  \u201cBusiness first, pleasure afterwards,\u201d as,\naccording to Sam Weller, Richard III. said, when he killed Henry VI.\nbefore smothering the princes in the Tower.  I proceed to pleasure in the\nway of presenting imitations of \u201cthe traditional ballad\u201d which \u201cappears\nto be inimitable by any person of literary cultivation,\u201d according to Mr.\nKittredge.\n\n\n\nIMITATIONS OF BALLADS\n\n\nThe three following ballads are exhibited in connection with Mr.\nKittredge\u2019s opinion that neither poet nor poetaster can imitate, to-day,\nthe traditional ballad.  Of course, not one of my three could now take in\nan expert, for he would ask for documentary evidence of their antiquity.\nBut I doubt if Mr. Kittredge can find any points in my three imitations\nwhich infallibly betray their modernity.\n\nThe first, _Simmy o\u2019 Whythaugh_, is based on facts in the Border\ndespatches.  Historically the attempt to escape from York Castle failed;\nafter the prisoners had got out they were recaptured.\n\nThe second ballad, _The Young Ruthven_, gives the traditional view of the\nslaying of the Ruthvens in their own house in Perth, on 5th August 1600.\n\nThe third, _The Dead Man\u2019s Dance_, combines the horror of the ballads of\n_Lizzy Wan_ and _The Bonny Hind_, with that of the Romaic ballad, in\nEnglish, _The Suffolk Miracle_ (Child, No. 272).\n\n\nI\u2014SIMMY O\u2019 WHYTHAUGH\n\n\n   O, will ye hear o\u2019 the Bishop o\u2019 York,\n      O, will ye hear o\u2019 the Armstrongs true,\n   How they hae broken the Bishop\u2019s castle,\n      And carried himsel\u2019 to the bauld Buccleuch?\n\n   They were but four o\u2019 the Lariston kin,\n      They were but four o\u2019 the Armstrong name,\n   Wi\u2019 stout Sim Armstrong to lead the band,\n      The Laird o\u2019 Whythaugh, I mean the same.\n\n   They had done nae man an injury,\n      They had na robbed, they had na slain,\n   In pledge were they laid for the Border peace,\n      In the Bishop\u2019s castle to dree their pain.\n\n   The Bishop he was a crafty carle,\n      He has ta\u2019en their red and their white monie,\n   But the muddy water was a\u2019 their drink,\n      And dry was the bread their meat maun be.\n\n   \u201cWi\u2019 a ged o\u2019 airn,\u201d did Simmy say,\n      \u201cAnd ilka man wi\u2019 a horse to ride,\n   We aucht wad break the Bishop\u2019s castle,\n      And carry himsel\u2019 to the Liddel side.\n\n   \u201cThe banks o\u2019 Whythaugh I sall na see,\n      I never sall look upon wife and bairn;\n   I wad pawn my saul for my gude mear, Jean,\n      I wad pawn my saul for a ged o\u2019 airn.\u201d\n\n   There was ane that brocht them their water and bread;\n      His gude sire, he was a kindly Scot,\n   Says \u201cYour errand I\u2019ll rin to the Laird o\u2019 Cessford,\n      If ye\u2019ll swear to pay me the rescue shot.\u201d\n\n   Then Simmy has gi\u2019en him his seal and ring,\n      To the Laird o\u2019 Cessford has ridden he\u2014\n   I trow when Sir Robert had heard his word\n      The tear it stood in Sir Robert\u2019s e\u2019e.\n\n   \u201cAnd sall they starve him, Simmy o\u2019 Whythaugh,\n      And sall his bed be the rotten strae?\n   I trow I\u2019ll spare neither life nor gear,\n      Or ever I live to see that day!\n\n   \u201cGar bring up my horses,\u201d Sir Robert he said,\n      \u201cI bid ye bring them by three and three,\n   And ane by ane at St. George\u2019s close,\n      At York gate gather your companie.\u201d\n\n   Oh, some rade like corn-cadger men,\n      And some like merchants o\u2019 linen and hose;\n   They slept by day and they rade by nicht,\n      Till they a\u2019 convened at St. George\u2019s close.\n\n   Ilka mounted man led a bridded mear,\n      I trow they had won on the English way;\n   Ilka belted man had a brace o\u2019 swords,\n      To help their friends to fend the fray.\n\n   Then Simmy he heard a hoolet cry\n      In the chamber strang wi\u2019 never a licht;\n   \u201cThat\u2019s a hoolet, I ken,\u201d did Simmy say,\n      \u201cAnd I trow that Teviotdale\u2019s here the nicht!\u201d\n\n   They hae grippit a bench was clamped wi\u2019 steel,\n      Wi\u2019 micht and main hae they wrought, they four,\n   They hae burst it free, and rammed wi\u2019 the bench,\n      Till they brake a hole in the chamber door.\n\n   \u201cLift strae frae the beds,\u201d did Simmy say;\n      To the gallery window Simmy sped,\n   He has set his strength to a window bar,\n      And bursten it out o\u2019 the binding lead.\n\n   He has bursten the bolts o\u2019 the Elliot men,\n      Out ower the window the strae cast he,\n   For they bid to loup frae the window high,\n      And licht on the strae their fa\u2019 would be.\n\n   To the Bishop\u2019s chamber Simmy ran;\n      \u201cOh, sleep ye saft, my Lord!\u201d says he;\n   \u201cFu\u2019 weary am I o\u2019 your bread and water,\n      Ye\u2019se hae wine and meat when ye dine wi\u2019 me.\u201d\n\n   He has lifted the loon across his shoulder;\n      \u201cWe maun leave the hoose by the readiest way!\u201d\n   He has cast him doon frae the window high,\n      And a\u2019 to hansel the new fa\u2019n strae!\n\n   Then twa by twa the Elliots louped,\n      The Armstrongs louped by twa and twa.\n   \u201cI trow, if we licht on the auld fat Bishop,\n      That nane the harder will be the fa\u2019!\u201d\n\n   They rade by nicht and they slept by day;\n      I wot they rade by an unkenned track;\n   \u201cThe Bishop was licht as a flea,\u201d said Sim,\n      \u201cOr ever we cam\u2019 to the Liddel rack.\u201d\n\n   Then \u201cWelcome, my Lord,\u201d did Simmy say,\n      \u201cWe\u2019ll win to Whythaugh afore we dine,\n   We hae drunk o\u2019 your cauld and ate o\u2019 your dry,\n      But ye\u2019ll taste o\u2019 our Liddesdale beef and wine.\u201d\n\n\nII\u2014THE YOUNG RUTHVEN\n\n\n   The King has gi\u2019en the Queen a gift,\n      For her May-day\u2019s propine,\n   He\u2019s gi\u2019en her a band o\u2019 the diamond-stane,\n      Set in the siller fine.\n\n   The Queen she walked in Falkland yaird,\n      Beside the hollans green,\n   And there she saw the bonniest man\n      That ever her eyes had seen.\n\n   His coat was the Ruthven white and red,\n      Sae sound asleep was he\n   The Queen she cried on May Beatrix,\n      That bonny lad to see.\n\n   \u201cOh! wha sleeps here, May Beatnix,\n      Without the leave o\u2019 me?\u201d\n   \u201cOh! wha suld it be but my young brother\n      Frae Padua ower the sea!\n\n   \u201cMy father was the Earl Gowrie,\n      An Earl o\u2019 high degree,\n   But they hae slain him by fause treason,\n      And gar\u2019d my brothers flee.\n\n   \u201cAt Padua hae they learned their leir\n      In the fields o\u2019 Italie;\n   And they hae crossed the saut sea-faem.\n      And a\u2019 for love o\u2019 me!\u201d\n\n                                   * * * *\n\n   The Queen has cuist her siller band\n      About his craig o\u2019 snaw;\n   But still he slept and naething kenned,\n      Aneth the hollans shaw.\n\n   The King was walking thro\u2019 the yaird,\n      He saw the siller shine;\n   \u201cAnd wha,\u201d quo\u2019 he, \u201cis this galliard\n      That wears yon gift o\u2019 mine?\u201d\n\n   The King has gane till the Queen\u2019s ain bower,\n      An angry man that day;\n   But bye there cam\u2019 May Beatrix\n      And stole the band away.\n\n   And she\u2019s run in by the little black yett,\n      Straight till the Queen ran she:\n   \u201cOh! tak ye back your siller band,\n      On it gar my brother dee!\u201d\n\n   The Queen has linked her siller band\n      About her middle sma\u2019;\n   And then she heard her ain gudeman\n      Come sounding through the ha\u2019.\n\n   \u201cOh! whare,\u201d he cried, \u201cis the siller band\n      I gied ye late yestreen?\n   The knops was a\u2019 o\u2019 the diamond-stane,\n      Set in the siller sheen.\u201d\n\n   \u201cYe hae camped birling at the wine,\n      A\u2019 nicht till the day did daw;\n   Or ye wad ken your siller band\n      About my middle sma\u2019!\u201d\n\n   The King he stude, the King he glowered,\n      Sae hard as a man micht stare:\n   \u201cDeil hae me!  Like is a richt ill mark,\u2014\n      Or I saw it itherwhere!\n\n   \u201cI saw it round young Ruthven\u2019s neck\n      As he lay sleeping still;\n   And, faith, but the wine was wondrous guid,\n      Or my wife is wondrous ill!\u201d\n\n   There was na gane a week, a week,\n      A week but barely three;\n   The King has hounded John Ramsay out,\n      To gar young Ruthven dee!\n\n   They took him in his brother\u2019s house,\n      Nae sword was in his hand,\n   And they hae slain him, young Ruthven,\n      The bonniest in the land!\n\n   And they hae slain his fair brother,\n      And laid him on the green,\n   And a\u2019 for a band o\u2019 the siller fine\n      And a blink o\u2019 the eye o\u2019 the Queen!\n\n   Oh! had they set him man to man,\n      Or even ae man to three,\n   There was na a knight o\u2019 the Ramsay bluid\n      Had gar\u2019d Earl Gowrie dee!\n\n\nIII\u2014THE DEAD MAN\u2019S DANCE\n\n\n   \u201cThe dance is in the castle ha\u2019,\n      And wha will dance wi\u2019 me?\u201d\n   \u201cThere\u2019s never a man o\u2019 living men,\n      Will dance the nicht wi\u2019 thee!\u201d\n\n   Then Margaret\u2019s gane within her bower,\n      Put ashes on her hair,\n   And ashes on her bonny breast\n      And on hen shoulders bare.\n\n   There cam\u2019 a knock to her bower-door,\n      And blythe she let him in;\n   It was her brother frae the wars,\n      She lo\u2019ed abune her kin.\n\n   \u201cOh, Willie, is the battle won?\n      Or are you fled?\u201d said she,\n   \u201cThis nicht the field was won and lost,\n      A\u2019 in a far countrie.\n\n   \u201cThis nicht the field was lost and won,\n      A\u2019 in a far countrie,\n   And here am I within your bower,\n      For nane will dance with thee.\u201d\n\n   \u201cPut gold upon your head, Margaret,\n      Put gold upon your hair,\n   And gold upon your girdle-band,\n      And on your breast so fair!\u201d\n\n   \u201cNay, nae gold for my breast, Willie,\n      Nay, nae gold for my hair,\n   It\u2019s ashes o\u2019 oak and dust o\u2019 earth,\n      That you and I maun wear!\n\n   \u201cI canna dance, I mauna dance,\n      I daurna dance with thee.\n   To dance atween the quick and the deid,\n      Is nae good companie.\u201d\n\n                                    * * *\n\n   The fire it took upon her cheek,\n      It took upon her chin,\n   Nae Mass was sung, nor bells was rung,\n      For they twa died in deidly sin.\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES\n\n\n{0a}  Child, part vi. p. 513.\n\n{0b}  Child, part x. p. 294.\n\n{1a}  Hogg to Scott, 30th June 1802, given later in full.\n\n{2a}  See _De Origine_, _Moribus_, _et Rebus Gestis Scotorum_, p. 60\n(1578).\n\n{4a}  Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 60 (1839).\n\n{8a}  Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 130\u2013135 (1839).\n\n{10a}  _Minstrelsy_, iii. 186\u2013198.\n\n{15a}  Child, part ix., 187.\n\n{17a}  _Further Essays_, p. 184.\n\n{18a}  Child, vol. i. p. xxx.\n\n{19a}  _Minstrelsy_, 2nd edition, vol iii. (1803).\n\n{19b}  _Further Essays_, pp. 247, 248.\n\n{21a}  Carruthers, \u201cAbbotsford Notanda,\u201d in R. Chambers\u2019s _Life of\nScott_, pp. 115\u2013117 (1891).\n\n{21b}  _Ibid._, _p._ 118.\n\n{23a}  Carruthers, \u201cAbbotsford Notanda,\u201d in R. Chambers\u2019s _Life of\nScott_, pp. 115\u2013117 (1891).\n\n{23b}  Lockhart, vol. ii. p. 99.\n\n{24a}  Lockhart, _Life of Sir Walter Scott_, _Bart._, vol. ii. pp. 99,\n100 (1829).\n\n{25}  Ritson of 10th April 1802, in his _Letters of Joseph Ritson_,\n_Esq._, vol. ii. p. 218.  Letter of 10th June 1802, _Ibid._, p. 207.\nRitson returned the original manuscript of _Auld Maitland_ on 28th\nFebruary 1803, _Ibid._, p. 230.\n\n{26a}  Carruthers, pp. 128, 131.\n\n{30a}  _Sweet William\u2019s Ghost_.\n\n{31a}  _Further Essays_, pp. 225, 226.\n\n{32a}  _Further Essays_, pp. 227\u2013234.\n\n{41a}  _Minstrelsy_, vol. iii. pp. 307\u2013310 (1833).\n\n{41b}  _Ibid._, vol. iii. p. 314.\n\n{44a}  _Publications of the Modern Language Association of America_, xxi.\n4, pp. 804\u2013806.\n\n{47a}  _Further Essays_, p. 237.\n\n{47b}  Carruthers, p. 128.\n\n{47c}  Lockhart, vol. ii. pp. 67, 70, 71, 72, 74, 75, 79.\n\n{48a}  Craig Brown, _History of Selkirkshire_.\n\n{49a}  Child, part ix. p. 185.\n\n{51a}  Scott to Laidlaw, 21st January 1803; Carruthers, pp. 121, 122.\n\n{53a}  _Further Essays_, p. 45.\n\n{53b}  Child, part viii. pp. 499\u2013502.\n\n{53c}  _Further Essays_, p. 10, where only two references to sources are\ngiven.\n\n{54a}  Child, part vi. p. 292.\n\n{54b}  _Ibid._, part ix. p. 243.  Herd, 1776; also C. K. Sharpe\u2019s MS.\n\n{59a}  Bain, _Calendar_, vol. iv. pp. 87\u201393.\n\n{62a}  This is scarcely accurate.  Hogg, in fact, made up one copy, in\ntwo parts, from the recitation of two old persons, as we shall see.\n\n{62b}  _Further Essays_, pp. 12\u201327.\n\n{63a}  _Further Essays_, p. 37.\n\n{67a}  Scott to Laidlaw, Carruthers, p. 129.\n\n{69a}  English version, xi.\u2013xv.\n\n{70a}  _Further Essays_, p. 58.\n\n{73a}  _Further Essays_, p. 31.\n\n{75a}  Godscroft, ed. 1644, p. 100; Child, part vi. p. 295.\n\n{79a}  _The Hunting of the Cheviot_, and Herd\u2019s _Otterburn_.\n\n{83a}  Herd, and _Complaynte of Scotland_, 1549.\n\n{84a}  Child, part ix. p. 244, stanza xiii.\n\n{84b}  _Further Essays_, p. 27.\n\n{89}  _Further Essays on Border Ballads_, p. 184.  Andrew Elliot, 1910.\nTo be quoted as _F. E. B. B._  The other work on the subject is Colonel\nElliot\u2019s _The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_.  Blackwoods, 1906.\n\n{91a}  _F. E. B. B._, _p._ 199.\n\n{91b}  _F. E. B. B._, _p._ 200.\n\n{93a}  _Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_, p. vi.\n\n{95a}  Satchells, pp. 13, 14.  Edition of 1892.\n\n{95b}  _Ibid._, p. 14.\n\n{95c}  _Ibid._, part ii. pp. 35, 36.\n\n{97a}  _F. E. B. B._, p. 200.\n\n{98a}  Child, _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, part viii. p. 518.\nHe refers to \u201cLetters I.  No. 44\u201d in MS.\n\n{98b}  See Sargent and Kittredge\u2019s reduced edition of Child, p. 467,\n1905.  They publish this Elliot version only.  The version has modern\nspelling.  On this version and its minor variations from Scott\u2019s, I say\nmore later; Colonel Elliot gives no critical examination of the\nvariations which seem to me essential.\n\n{99a}  _F. E. B. B._, p. 184.\n\n{101a}  Robert Scott (the poet Satchells\u2019s father) \u201chad Southinrigg for\nhis service\u201d to Buccleuch, says Sir William Fraser, in his _Memoirs of\nthe House of Buccleuch_.  (See Satchells, 1892, pp. vii., viii.)  But the\n\u201cfathers\u201d of Satchells \u201chaving dilapidate and engaged their Estate by\nCautionary,\u201d poor Satchells was brought up as a cowherd, till he went to\nthe wars, and never learned to write, or even, it seems, to read; as he\nsays in the Dedication of his book to Lord Yester.\n\n{102a}  _The Trustworthiness of the Border Ballads_, opp. p. 36.\n\n{103a}  _Border Papers_, vol. i. pp. 120\u2013127.\n\n{104a}  _Border Papers_, vol. i. p. 106.\n\n{106a}  Scrope, in _Border Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 148\u2013152.\n\n{106b}  _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 307, No. 606.\n\n{107a}  _Border Papers_, vol. ii. pp. 299\u2013303\n\n{108a}  _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 356.\n\n{108b}  _F. E. B. B._, p. 161.\n\n{110a}  See his _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. ii. p. 15.\n\n{110b}  _F. E. B. B._, p. 156.\n\n{111a}  _T. B. B._, p. 14.\n\n{112a}  _T. B. B._, p. 12.\n\n{112b}  _T. B. B._, p. 12.\n\n{113a}  _Memoirs of Robert Carey_, p. 98, 1808.\n\n{114a}  _T. B. B._, pp. 19, 20.\n\n{115}  _T. B. B._, p. 20.\n\n{120a}  Child, part vii. p. 5.\n\n{120b}  Variant E is a patched-up thing from five or six MS. sources and\na printed \u201cstall copy.\u201d  Jamieson published it in 1817.  Motherwell had\nheard a _cantefable_, or version in alternate prose and verse, which\ncontained the stanza.  It is not identical with stanza xxxii. in Scott\u2019s\n_Jamie Telfer_, but runs thus\u2014\n\n    My hounds they all go masterless,\n    My hawks they fly from tree to tree,\n    My younger brother will heir my lands,\n    Fair England again I\u2019ll never see.\n\nChild, part ii. p. 454 _et seqq._  The speaker is young Beichan, a\nprisoner in the dungeon of a professor of the Moslem faith.\n\n{122a}  _F. E. B. B._, pp. 179\u2013185.\n\n{123a}  Child, part viii. p. 518.\n\n{125a}  Aytoun, in _The Ballads of Scotland_ (vol. i. p. 211), says that\nhis copy of _Jamie Telfer_ \u201cis almost _verbatim_ the same as that given\nin the _Border Minstrelsy_.\u201d  He does not tell us where he got his copy;\nor why the Captain\u2019s bride\u2019s speech (Sharpe, stanza xxxvi.) differs from\nthe version in Scott and Sharpe.  He gives the stanza which comes last in\nScott\u2019s copy, and is too bad and enfeebling to be attributed to Scott\u2019s\npen.  He omits the stanza which has strayed in from other ballads,\n\n    \u201cMy hounds may a\u2019 rin masterless.\u201d\n\nBut as Aytoun confessedly rejected such inappropriate stanzas, he may\nhave found it in his copy and excised it.\n\n{129a}  _Minstrelsy_, vol. iii. p. 76, 1803.\n\n{130a}  _Further Essays_, p. 112.\n\n{131a}  _Further Essays_, p. 112.\n\n{135a}  In _Minstrelsy_, vol. ii. p. 35 (1833).\n\n{139a}  _Further Essays_, p. 124.\n\n{139b}  _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 367.\n\n{140a}  _Further Essays_, pp. 123, 124.\n\n{140b}  _Border Papers_, vol. ii. p. 121.\n\n{142a}  _Further Essays_, p. 125.\n\n{142b}  Birrell\u2019s _Diary_ vouches for the irons.\n\n{142c}  _Further Essays_, p. 128.\n\n{146a}  Sargent and Kittredge, pp. xxix., xxx.\n\n{147a}  Hales and Furnivall, ii. pp. 205\u2013207.\n\n{148a}  _Further Essays_, p. 45.\n\n{150a}  _Ballads_, p. xxix.","title":"Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":37046}