P. 4 a. James Hogg, writing to Scott, June 30, [1802?] says: “I am
surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely
from my mother’s.... ‘Jamie Telfer’ differs in many particulars.”
(Letters, I, No. 44.) Scott’s remarks should have been cited from the
edition of 1802, I, 91.
5. Mr Andrew Lang has obligingly called my attention to difficulties
which attend the assumption that the Dodhead of the ballad is the place
of that name in Selkirkshire. Jamie Telfer, st. 7, runs ten miles
between Dodhead and Stobs, and this is far enough if help is to be
timely; but he would have to run thirty if his Dodhead were in
Selkirkshire. With succor not nearer than that, Telfer would soon have
been harried out of existence. The distances are too great both for the
English and the Scots. But there is a Dod south of the Teviot, not far
from Skelfhill, which is some seven miles only from Stobs. (Dodhead is
not entered here on the Ordnance map, “but Dodburn is just under Dodrig,
and where there is a Dodburn there is ‘tied’ to be a Dodhead in this
country.”) Turning from Stobs to Teviot, Telfer would come in due order
to Coltherdscleugh, Branxholm, and Borthwick Water, without the loss of
time which he would, on the other supposition, incur in passing and
returning. (See a note, by Mr Lang, in Mrs G. R. Tomson’s Ballads of the
North Countrie, 1888, p. 435.)
Several other matters are not quite clear. Catslockhill, for instance,
seems to be misplaced. Mr Lang, a native of Ettrick valley, knows of no
Catslack but that in Yarrow. Of this, Mr T. Craig-Brown (Selkirkshire,
I, 21), who accepts Scott’s Dodhead, says, “A long ride, if Catslack is
in Yarrow.”