Transcribed from the 1910 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
SIR WALTER SCOTT
AND THE
BORDER MINSTRELSY
BY
ANDREW LANG
* * * * *
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1910
PREFACE
PERSONS not much interested in, or cognisant of, “antiquarian old
womanries,” as Sir Walter called them, may ask “what all the pother is
about,” in this little tractate. On my side it is “about” the veracity
of Sir Walter Scott. He has been suspected of helping to compose, and of
issuing as a genuine antique, a ballad, _Auld Maitland_. He also wrote
about the ballad, as a thing obtained from recitation, to two friends and
fellow-antiquaries. If to Scott’s knowledge it was a modern imitation,
Sir Walter deliberately lied.
He did not: he did obtain the whole ballad from Hogg, who got it from
recitation—as I believe, and try to prove, and as Scott certainly
believed. The facts in the case exist in published works, and in
manuscript letters of Ritson to Scott, and Hogg to Scott, and in the
original MS. of the song, with a note by Hogg to Laidlaw. If we are
interested in the truth about the matter, we ought at least to read the
very accessible material before bringing charges against the Sheriff and
the Shepherd of Ettrick.
Whether _Auld Maitland_ be a good or a bad ballad is not part of the
question. It was a favourite of mine in childhood, and I agree with
Scott in thinking that it has strong dramatic situations. If it is a bad
ballad, such as many people could compose, then it is not by Sir Walter.
The _Ballad of Otterburne_ is said to have been constructed from Herd’s
version, tempered by Percy’s version, with additions from a modern
imagination. We have merely to read Professor Child’s edition of
_Otterburne_, with Hogg’s letter covering his MS. copy of _Otterburne_
from recitation, to see that this is a wholly erroneous view of the
matter. We have all the materials for forming a judgment accessible to
us in print, and have no excuse for preferring our own conjectures.
“No one now believes,” it may be said, “in the aged persons who lived at
the head of Ettrick,” and recited _Otterburne_ to Hogg. Colonel Elliot
disbelieves, but he shows no signs of having read Hogg’s curious letter,
in two parts, about these “old parties”; a letter written on the day when
Hogg, he says, twice “pumped their memories.”
I print this letter, and, if any one chooses to think that it is a crafty
fabrication, I can only say that its craft would have beguiled myself as
it beguiled Scott.
It is a common, cheap, and ignorant scepticism that disbelieves in the
existence, in Scott’s day, or in ours, of persons who know and can recite
variants of our traditional ballads. The strange song of _The Bitter
Withy_, unknown to Professor Child, was recovered from recitation but
lately, in several English counties. The ignoble lay of _Johnny
Johnston_ has also been recovered: it is widely diffused. I myself
obtained a genuine version of _Where Goudie rins_, through the kindness
of Lady Mary Glyn; and a friend of Lady Rosalind Northcote procured the
low English version of _Young Beichan_, or _Lord Bateman_, from an old
woman in a rural workhouse. In Shropshire my friend Miss Burne, the
president of the Folk-Lore Society, received from Mr. Hubert Smith, in
1883, a very remarkable variant, undoubtedly antique, of _The Wife of
Usher’s Well_. {0a} In 1896 Miss Backus found, in the hills of Polk
County, North Carolina, another variant, intermediate between the
Shropshire and the ordinary version. {0b}
There are many other examples of this persistence of ballads in the
popular memory, even in our day, and only persons ignorant of the facts
can suppose that, a century ago, there were no reciters at the head of
Ettrick, and elsewhere in Scotland. Not even now has the halfpenny
newspaper wholly destroyed the memories of traditional poetry and of
traditional tales even in the English-speaking parts of our islands,
while in the Highlands a rich harvest awaits the reapers.
I could not have produced the facts, about _Auld Maitland_ especially,
and in some other cases, without the kind and ungrudging aid, freely
given to a stranger, of Mr. William Macmath, whose knowledge of
ballad-lore, and especially of the ballad manuscripts at Abbotsford, is
unrivalled. As to _Auld Maitland_, Mr. T. F. Henderson, in his edition
of the _Minstrelsy_ (Blackwood, 1892), also made due use of Hogg’s MS.,
and his edition is most valuable to every student of Scott’s method of
editing, being based on the Abbotsford MSS. Mr. Henderson suspects, more
than I do, the veracity of the Shepherd.
I am under obligations to Colonel Elliot’s book, as it has drawn my
attention anew to _Auld Maitland_, a topic which I had studied “somewhat
lazily,” like Quintus Smyrnæus. I supposed that there was an
inconsistency in two of Scott’s accounts as to how he obtained the
ballad. As Colonel Elliot points out, there was no inconsistency. Scott
had two copies. One was Hogg’s MS.: the other was derived from the
recitation of Hogg’s mother.
This trifle is addressed to lovers of Scott, of the Border, and of
ballads, _et non aultres_.
It is curious to see how facts make havoc of the conjectures of the
Higher Criticism in the case of _Auld Maitland_. If Hogg was the forger
of that ballad, I asked, how did he know the traditions about Maitland
and his three sons, which we only know from poems of about 1576 in the
manuscripts of Sir Richard Maitland? These poems in 1802 were, as far as
I am aware, still unpublished.
Colonel Elliot urged that Leyden would know the poems, and must have
known Hogg. From Leyden, then, Hogg would get the information. In the
text I have urged that Leyden did not know Hogg. I am able now to prove
that Hogg and Leyden never met till after Laidlaw gave the manuscript of
_Auld Maitland_ to Hogg.
The fact is given in the original manuscript of Laidlaw’s _Recollections
of Sir Walter Scott_ (among the Laing MSS. in the library of the
University of Edinburgh). Carruthers, in publishing Laidlaw’s
reminiscences, omitted the following passage. After Scott had read _Auld
Maitland_ aloud to Leyden and Laird Laidlaw, the three rode together to
dine at Whitehope.
“Near the Craigbents,” says Laidlaw, “Mr. Scott and Leyden drew together
in a close and seemingly private conversation. I, of course, fell back.
After a minute or two, Leyden reined in his horse (a black horse that Mr.
Scott’s servant used to ride) and let me come up. ‘This Hogg,’ said he,
‘writes verses, I understand.’ I assured him that he wrote very
beautiful verses, and with great facility. ‘But I trust,’ he replied,
‘that there is no fear of his passing off any of his own upon Scott for
old ballads.’ I again assured him that he would never think of such a
thing; and neither would he at that period of his life.
“‘Let him beware of forgery,’ cried Leyden with great force and energy,
and in, I suppose, what Mr. Scott used afterwards to call the _saw tones
of his voice_.”
This proves that Leyden had no personal knowledge of “this Hogg,” and did
not supply the shepherd with the traditions about Auld Maitland.
Mr. W. J. Kennedy, of Hawick, pointed out to me this passage in Laidlaw’s
_Recollections_, edited from the MS. by Mr. James Sinton, as reprinted
from the _Transactions_ of the Hawick Archæological Society, 1905.
CONTENTS
PAGE
SCOTT AND THE BALLADS 1
AULD MAITLAND 18
THE BALLAD OF OTTERBURNE 53
SCOTT’S TRADITIONAL COPY AND HOW HE EDITED IT 67
THE MYSTERY OF THE BALLAD OF JAMIE TELFER 87
KINMONT WILLIE 126
CONCLUSIONS 148
SCOTT AND THE BALLADS
IT was through his collecting and editing of _The Border Minstrelsy_ that
Sir Walter Scott glided from law into literature. The history of the
conception and completion of his task, “a labour of love truly, if ever
such there was,” says Lockhart, is well known, but the tale must be
briefly told if we are to understand the following essays in defence of
Scott’s literary morality.
Late in 1799 Scott wrote to James Ballantyne, then a printer in Kelso, “I
have been for years collecting Border ballads,” and he thought that he
could put together “such a selection as might make a neat little volume,
to sell for four or five shillings.” In December 1799 Scott received the
office of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, or, as he preferred to say, of Ettrick
Forest. In the Forest, as was natural, he found much of his materials.
The people at the head of Ettrick were still, says Hogg, {1a} like many
of the Highlanders even now, in that they cheered the long winter nights
with the telling of old tales; and some aged people still remembered, no
doubt in a defective and corrupted state, many old ballads. Some of
these, especially the ballads of Border raids and rescues, may never even
have been written down by the original authors. The Borderers, says
Lesley, Bishop of Ross, writing in 1578, “take much pleasure in their old
music and chanted songs, which they themselves compose, whether about the
deeds of their ancestors, or about ingenious raiding tricks and
stratagems.” {2a}
The historical ballads about the deeds of their ancestors would be far
more romantic than scientifically accurate. The verses, as they passed
from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation, would be in a
constant state of flux and change. When a man forgot a verse, he would
make something to take its place. A more or less appropriate stanza from
another ballad would slip in; or the reciter would tell in prose the
matter of which he forgot the versified form.
Again, in the towns, street ballads on remarkable events, as early at
least as the age of Henry VIII., were written or printed. Knox speaks of
ballads on Queen Mary’s four Maries. Of these ballads only one is left,
and it is a libel. The hanging of a French apothecary of the Queen, and
a French waiting-maid, for child murder, has been transferred to one of
the Maries, or rather to an apocryphal Mary Hamilton, with Darnley for
her lover. Of this ballad twenty-eight variants—and extremely various
they are—were collected by Professor Child in his _English and Scottish
Popular Ballads_ (ten parts, 1882–1898). In one mangled form or another
such ballads would drift at last even to Ettrick Forest.
A ballad may be found in a form which the first author could scarcely
recognise, dozens of hands, in various generations, having been at work
on it. At any period, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the cheap press might print a sheet of the ballads, edited and
interpolated by the very lowest of printer’s hacks; that copy would
circulate, be lost, and become in turn a traditional source, though full
of modernisms. Or an educated person might make a written copy, filling
up gaps himself in late seventeenth or in eighteenth century ballad
style, and this might pass into the memory of the children and servants
of the house, and so to the herds and to the farm lasses. I suspect that
this process may have occurred in the cases of _Auld Maitland_ and of
_The Outlaw Murray_—“these two bores” Mr. Child is said to have styled
them.
When Allan Ramsay, about 1720, took up and printed a ballad, he altered
it if he pleased. More faithful to his texts (wherever he got them), was
David Herd, in his collection of 1776, but his version did not reach, as
we shall see, old reciters in Ettrick. If Scott found any traditional
ballads in Ettrick, as his collectors certainly did, they had passed
through the processes described. They needed re-editing of some sort if
they were to be intelligible, and readable with pleasure.
In 1800, apparently, while Scott made only brief flying visits from the
little inn of Clovenfords, on Tweed, to his sheriffdom, he found a
coadjutor. Richard Heber, the wealthy and luxurious antiquary and
collector, looked into Constable’s first little bookselling shop, and saw
a strange, poor young student prowling among the books. This was John
Leyden, son of a shepherd in Roxburghshire, a lad living in extreme
poverty.
Leyden, in 1800, was making himself a savant. Heber spoke with him,
found that he was rich in ballad-lore, and carried him to Scott. He was
presently introduced into the best society in Edinburgh (which would not
happen in our time), and a casual note of Scott’s proves that he did not
leave Leyden in poverty. Early in 1802, Leyden got the promise of an
East Indian appointment, read medicine furiously, and sailed for the East
in the beginning of 1803. It does not appear that Leyden went
ballad-hunting in Ettrick before he rode thither with Scott in the spring
of 1802. He was busy with books, with editorial work, and in aiding
Scott in Edinburgh. It was he who insisted that a small volume at five
shillings was far too narrow for the materials collected.
Scott also corresponded with the aged Percy, Bishop of Dromore, editor of
the _Reliques_, and with Joseph Ritson, the precise collector, Percy’s
bitter foe. Unfortunately the correspondence on ballads with Ritson, who
died in 1803, is but scanty; nor has most of the correspondence with
another student, George Ellis, been published. Even in Mr. Douglas’s
edition of Scott’s _Familiar Letters_, the portion of an important letter
of Hogg’s which deals with ballad-lore is omitted. I shall give the
letter in full.
In 1800–01, “_The Minstrelsy_ formed the editor’s chief occupation,” says
Lockhart; but later, up to April 1801, the Forest and Liddesdale had
yielded little material. In fact, I do not know that Scott ever procured
much in Liddesdale, where he had no Hogg or Laidlaw always on the spot,
and in touch with the old people. It was in spring, 1802, that Scott
first met his lifelong friend, William Laidlaw, farmer in Blackhouse, on
Douglasburn, in Yarrow. Laidlaw, as is later proved completely,
introduced Scott to Hogg, then a very unsophisticated shepherd.
“Laidlaw,” says Lockhart, “took care that Scott should see, without
delay, James Hogg.” {4a} These two men, Hogg and Laidlaw, knowing the
country people well, were Scott’s chief sources of recited balladry; and
probably they sometimes improved, in making their copies, the materials
won from the failing memories of the old. Thus Laidlaw, while tenant in
Traquair Knowe, obtained from recitation, _The Dæmon Lover_. Scott does
not tell us whether or not he knew the fact that Laidlaw wrote in stanza
6 (half of it traditional), stanza 12 (also a ballad formula), stanzas 17
and 18 (necessary to complete the sense; the last two lines of 18 are
purely and romantically modern).
We shall later quote Hogg’s account of his own dealings with his raw
materials from recitation.
In January 1802 Scott published the two first volumes of _The
Minstrelsy_. Lockhart describes the enthusiasm of dukes, fine ladies,
and antiquarians. In the end of April 1803 the third volume appeared,
including ballads obtained through Hogg and Laidlaw in spring 1802.
Scott, by his store of historic anecdote in his introductions and notes,
by his way of vivifying the past, and by his method of editing, revived,
but did not create, the interest in the romance of ballad poetry.
It had always existed. We all know Sidney’s words on “The Douglas and
the Percy”; Addison’s on folk-poetry; Mr. Pepys’ ballad collection; the
ballads in Tom Durfey’s and other miscellanies; Allan Ramsay’s
_Evergreen_; Bishop Percy’s _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_; Herd’s ballad
volumes of 1776; Evans’ collections; Burns’ remakings of old songs;
Ritson’s publications, and so forth. But the genius of Burns, while it
transfigured many old songs, was not often exercised on old narrative
ballads, and when Scott produced _The Minstrelsy_, the taste for ballads
was confined to amateurs of early literature, and to country folk.
Sir Walter’s method of editing, of presenting his traditional materials,
was literary, and, usually, not scientific. A modern collector would
publish things—legends, ballads, or folk-tales—exactly as he found them
in old broadsides, or in MS. copies, or received them from oral
recitation. He would give the names and residences and circumstances of
the reciters or narrators (Herd, in 1776, gave no such information). He
would fill up no gaps with his own inventions, would add no stanzas of
his own, and the circulation of his work would arrive at some two or
three hundred copies given away!
As Lockhart says, “Scott’s diligent zeal had put him in possession of a
variety of copies in various stages of preservation, and to the task of
selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials he brought
a knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of
taste, such as had never before been united in the person of a poetical
antiquary.”
Lockhart speaks of “The editor’s conscientious fidelity . . . which
prevented the introduction of anything new, and his pure taste in the
balancing of discordant recitations.” He had already written that “Scott
had, I firmly believe, interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of
his own.” {8a}
It is clear that Lockhart had not compared the texts in _The Minstrelsy_
with the mass of manuscript materials which are still at Abbotsford.
These, copied by the accurate Mr. Macmath, have been published in the
monumental collection of _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, in ten
parts, by the late Professor Child of Harvard, the greatest of scholars
in ballad-lore. From his book we often know exactly what kinds of copies
of ballads Scott possessed, and what alterations he made in his copies.
The _Ballad of Otterburne_ is especially instructive, as we shall see
later. But of the most famous of Border historical ballads, _Kinmont
Willie_, and its companion, _Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead_, Scott has
left no original manuscript texts. Now into each of these ballads Scott
has written (if internal evidence be worth anything) verses of his own;
stanzas unmistakably marked by his own spirit, energy, sense of romance,
and, occasionally, by a somewhat inflated rhetoric. On this point doubt
is not easy. When he met the names of his chief, Buccleuch, and of his
favourite ancestor, Wat of Warden, Scott did, in two cases, for those
heroes what, by his own confession, he did for anecdotes that came in his
way—he decked them out “with a cocked hat and a sword.”
Sir Walter knew perfectly well that he was not “playing the game” in a
truly scientific spirit. He explains his ideas in his “Essay on Popular
Poetry” as late as 1830. He mentions Joseph Ritson’s “extreme attachment
to the severity of truth,” and his attacks on Bishop Percy’s purely
literary treatment of the materials of his _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_
(1765).
As Scott says, “by Percy words were altered, phrases improved, and whole
verses were inserted or omitted at pleasure.” Percy “accommodated” the
ballads “with such emendations as might recommend them to the modern
taste.” Ritson cried “forgery,” but Percy, says Scott, had to win a
hearing from his age, and confessed (in general terms) to his additions
and decorations.
Scott then speaks reprovingly of Pinkerton’s wholesale fabrication of
_entire ballads_ (1783), a crime acknowledged later by the culprit
(1786). Scott applauds Ritson’s accuracy, but regrets his preference of
the worst to the better readings, as if their inferiority was a security
for their being genuine. Scott preferred the best, the most poetical
readings.
In 1830, Scott also wrote an essay on “Imitations of the Ancient
Ballads,” and spoke very leniently of imitations passed off as authentic.
“There is no small degree of cant in the violent invectives with which
impostors of this nature have been assailed.” As to _Hardyknute_, the
favourite poem of his infancy, “the first that I ever learned and the
last that I shall forget,” he says, “the public is surely more enriched
by the contribution than injured by the deception.” Besides, he says,
the deception almost never deceives.
His method in _The Minstrelsy_, he writes, was “to imitate the plan and
style of Bishop Percy, observing only more strict fidelity concerning my
originals.” That is to say, he avowedly made up texts out of a variety
of copies, when he had more copies than one. This is frequently
acknowledged by Scott; what he does not acknowledge is his own occasional
interpolation of stanzas. A good example is _The Gay Gosshawk_. He had
a MS. of his own “of some antiquity,” a MS. of Mrs. Brown, a famous
reciter and collector of the eighteenth century; and the Abbotsford MSS.
show isolated stanzas from Hogg, and a copy from Will Laidlaw. Mr. T. F.
Henderson’s notes {10a} display the methods of selection, combination,
emendation, and possible interpolation.
By these methods Scott composed “a standard text,” now the classical
text, of the ballads which he published. Ballad lovers, who are not
specialists, go to _The Minstrelsy_ for their favourite fare, and for
historical elucidation and anecdote.
Scott often mentions his sources of all kinds, such as MSS. of Herd and
Mrs. Brown; “an old person”; “an old woman at Kirkhill, West Lothian”;
“an ostler at Carlisle”; Allan Ramsay’s _Tea-Table Miscellany_; Surtees
of Mainsforth (these ballads are by Surtees himself: Scott never
suspected him); Caw’s _Hawick Museum_ (1774); Ritson’s copies, others
from Leyden; the Glenriddell MSS. (collected by the friend of Burns); on
several occasions copies from recitations procured by James Hogg or Will
Laidlaw, and possibly or probably each of these men emended the copy he
obtained; while Scott combined and emended all in his published text.
Sometimes Scott gives no source at all, and in these cases research finds
variants in old broadsides, or elsewhere.
In thirteen cases he gives no source, or “from tradition,” which is the
same thing; though “tradition in Ettrick Forest” may sometimes imply,
once certainly does, the intermediary Hogg, or Will Laidlaw.
We now understand Scott’s methods as editor. They are not scientific;
they are literary. We also acknowledge (on internal evidence) his
interpolation of his own stanzas in _Kinmont Willie_ and _Jamie Telfer_,
where he exalts his chief and ancestor. We cannot do otherwise (as
scholars) than regret and condemn Scott’s interpolations, never
confessed. As lovers of poetry we acknowledge that, without Scott’s
interpolation, we could have no more of _Kinmont Willie_ than verses,
“much mangled by reciters,” as Scott says, of a ballad perhaps no more
poetical than _Jock o’ the Side_. Scott says that “some conjectural
emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible.”
As it is now very intelligible, to say “conjectural emendations” is a way
of saying “interpolations.”
But while thus confessing Scott’s sins, I cannot believe that he, like
Pinkerton, palmed off on the world any ballad or ballads of his own sole
manufacture, or any ballad which he knew to be forged.
The truth is that Scott was easily deceived by a modern imitation, if he
liked the poetry. Surtees hoaxed him not only with _Barthram’s Dirge_
and _Anthony Featherstonhaugh_, but with a long prose excerpt from a
non-existent manuscript about a phantom knight. Scott made the plot of
_Marmion_ hinge on this myth, in the encounter of Marmion with Wilfred as
the phantasmal cavalier. He tells us that in _The Flowers of the Forest_
“the manner of the ancient minstrels is so happily imitated, that it
required the most positive evidence to convince the editor that the song
was of modern date.” Really the author was Miss Jane Elliot (1747–1805),
daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto. Herd published a made-up copy
in 1776. The tune, Scott says, is old, and he has heard an imperfect
verse of the original ballad—
“I ride single on my saddle,
For the flowers o’ the forest are a’ wede awa’”
The _constant_ use of double rhymes within the line—
“At e’en, in the gloaming, nae younkers are roaming,”
an artifice rare in genuine ballads, might alone have proved to Scott
that the poem of Miss Elliot is not popular and ancient.
I have cleared my conscience by confessing Scott’s literary sins. His
interpolations, elsewhere mere stopgaps, are mainly to be found in
_Kinmont Willie_ and _Jamie Telfer_. His duty was to say, in his preface
to each ballad, “The editor has interpolated stanza” so and so; if he
made up the last verses of _Kinmont Willie_ from the conclusion of a
version of _Archie o’ Ca’field_, he should have said so; as he does
acknowledge two stopgap interpolations by Hogg in _Auld Maitland_. But
as to the conclusion of _Kinmont Willie_, he did, we shall see, make
confession.
Professor Kittredge, who edited Child’s last part (X.), says in his
excellent abridged edition of Child (1905), “It was no doubt the feeling
that the popular ballad is a fluid and unstable thing that has prompted
so many editors—among them Sir Walter Scott, whom it is impossible to
assail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove—to deal
freely with the versions that came into their hands.”
Twenty-five years after the appearance of _The Border Minstrelsy_, in
1827, appeared Motherwell’s _Minstrelsy_, _Ancient and Modern_.
Motherwell was in favour of scientific methods of editing. Given two
copies of a ballad, he says, “perhaps they may not have a single stanza
which is mutual property, except certain commonplaces which seem an
integral portion of the original mechanism of all our ancient ballads
. . . ” By selecting the most beautiful and striking passages from each
copy, and making those cohere, an editor, he says, may produce a more
perfect and ornate version than any that exists in tradition. Of the
originals “the individuality entirely disappears.”
Motherwell disapproved of this method, which, as a rule, is Scott’s, and,
scientifically, the method is not defensible. Thus, having three ballads
of rescues, in similar circumstances, with a river to ford, Scott
confessedly places that incident where he thinks it most “poetically
appropriate”; and in all probability, by a single touch, he gives poetry
in place of rough humour. Of all this Motherwell disapproved. (See
_Kinmont Willie_, _infra._)
Aytoun, in _The Ballads of Scotland_, thought Motherwell hypercritical;
and also, in his practice inconsistent with his preaching. Aytoun
observed, “with much regret and not a little indignation” (1859), “that
later editors insinuated a doubt as to the fidelity of Sir Walter’s
rendering. My firm belief, resting on documentary evidence, is that
Scott was most scrupulous in adhering to the very letter of his
transcripts, whenever copies of ballads, previously taken down, were
submitted to him.” As an example, Aytoun, using a now lost MS. copy of
about 1689–1702, of _The Outlaw Murray_, says “Sir Walter has given it
throughout just as he received it.” Yet Scott’s copy, mainly from a lost
Cockburn MS., contains a humorous passage on Buccleuch which Child half
suspects to be by Sir Walter himself. {15a} It is impossible for me to
know whether Child’s hesitating conjecture is right or wrong. Certainly
we shall see, when Scott had but one MS. copy, as of _Auld Maitland_, his
editing left little or nothing to be desired.
But now Scott is assailed, both where he deserves, and where, in my
opinion, he does not deserve censure.
Scott did no more than his confessed following of Percy’s method implies,
to his original text of the _Ballad of Otterburne_. This I shall prove
from his original text, published by Child from the Abbotsford MSS., and
by a letter from the collector of the ballad, the Ettrick Shepherd.
The facts, in this instance, apparently are utterly unknown to
Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliot, in his _Further Essays on
Border Ballads_ (1910), pp. 1–45.
Again, I am absolutely certain, and can demonstrate, that Scott did not
(as Colonel Elliot believes) detect Hogg in forging _Auld Maitland_, join
with him in this fraud, and palm the ballad off on the public. Nothing
of the kind occurred. Scott did not lie in this matter, both to the
world and to his intimate friends, in private letters.
Once more, without better evidence than we possess, I do not believe
that, in _Jamie Telfer_, Scott transferred the glory from the Elliots to
the Scotts, and the shame from Buccleuch to Elliot of Stobs. The
discussion leads us into very curious matter. But here, with our present
materials, neither absolute proof nor disproof is possible.
Finally, as to _Kinmont Willie_, I merely give such reasons as I can find
for thinking that Scott _had_ “mangled” fragments of an old ballad before
him, and did not merely paraphrase the narrative of Walter Scott of
Satchells, in his doggerel _True History of the Name of Scott_ (1688).
The positions of Colonel Elliot are in each case the reverse of mine. In
the instance of _Auld Maitland_ (where Scott’s conduct would be
unpardonable if Colonel Elliot’s view were correct), I have absolute
proof that he is entirely mistaken. For _Otterburne_ I am equally
fortunate; that is, I can show that Scott’s part went no further than
“the making of a standard text” on his avowed principles. For _Jamie
Telfer_, having no original manuscript, I admit _decorative_
interpolations, and for the rest, argue on internal evidence, no other
being accessible. For _Kinmont Willie_, I confess that the poem, as it
stands, is Scott’s, but give reasons for thinking that he had ballad
fragments in his mind, if not on paper.
It will be understood that Colonel Elliot does not, I conceive, say that
his charges are _proved_, but he thinks that the evidence points to these
conclusions. He “hopes that I will give reasons for my disbelief” in his
theories; and “hopes, though he cannot expect that they will completely
dispose of” his views about _Jamie Telfer_. {17a}
I give my reasons, though I entertain but slight hope of convincing my
courteous opponent. That is always a task rather desperate. But the
task leads me, in defence of a great memory, into a countryside, and into
old times on the Border, which are so alluring that, like Socrates, I
must follow where the _logos_ guides me. To one conclusion it guides me,
which startles myself, but I must follow the _logos_, even against the
verdict of Professor Child, _notre maître à tous_. In some instances, I
repeat, positive proof of the correctness of my views is impossible; all
that I can do is to show that Colonel Elliot’s contrary opinions also
fall far short of demonstration, or are demonstrably erroneous.
AULD MAITLAND
THE ballad of _Auld Maitland_ holds in _The Border Minstrelsy_ a place
like that of the _Doloneia_, or Tenth Book, in the _Iliad_. Every
professor of the Higher Criticism throws his stone at the _Doloneia_ in
passing, and every ballad-editor does as much to _Auld Maitland_.
Professor Child excluded it from his monumental collection of “English
and Scottish Popular Ballads,” fragments, and variants, for which Mr.
Child and his friends and helpers ransacked every attainable collection
of ballads in manuscript, and ballads in print, as they listened to the
last murmurings of ballad tradition from the lips of old or young.
Mr. Child, says his friend and pupil, Professor Kittredge, “possessed a
kind of instinct” for distinguishing what is genuine and traditional, or
modern, or manipulated, or, if I may say so, “faked” in a ballad.
“This instinct, trained by thirty years of study, had become wonderfully
swift in its operations, and almost infallible. A forged or retouched
piece could not escape him for a moment: he detected the slightest jar in
the ballad ring.” {18a}
But all old traditional ballads are masses of “retouches,” made through
centuries, by reciters, copyists, editors, and so forth. Unluckily,
Child never gave in detail his reasons for rejecting that treasure of Sir
Walter’s, _Auld Maitland_. Child excluded the poem _sans phrase_. If he
did this, like Falstaff “on instinct,” one can only say that antiquarian
instincts are never infallible. We must apply our reason to the problem,
“What is _Auld Maitland_?”
Colonel Elliot has taken this course. By far the most blighting of the
many charges made by Colonel Elliot against Sir Walter Scott are
concerned with the ballad of _Auld Maitland_. {19a} After stating that,
in his opinion, “several stanzas” of the ballad are by Sir Walter
himself, Colonel Elliot sums up his own ideas thus:
“My view is that Hogg, in the first instance, tried to palm off the
ballad on Scott, and failed; and then Scott palmed it off on the public,
and succeeded . . . let us, as gentlemen and honest judges, admit that
the responsibility of the deception rests rather on the laird (Scott)
than on the herd” (Hogg.) {19b}
If Colonel Elliot’s “views” were correct (and it is absolutely
erroneous), the guilt of “the laird” would be great. Scott conspires
with a shepherd, a stranger, to palm off a forgery on the public. Scott
issues the forgery, and, what is worse, in a private letter to a learned
friend, he utters what I must borrow words for: he utters “cold and
calculated falsehoods” about the manner in which, and the person from
whom, he obtained what he calls “my first copy” of the song. If Hogg and
Scott forged the poem, then when Scott told his tale of its acquisition
by himself from Laidlaw, Scott lied.
Colonel Elliot is ignorant of the facts in the case. He gropes his way
under the misleading light of a false date, and of fragments torn from
the context of a letter which, in its complete form, has never till now
been published. Where positive and published information exists, it has
not always come within the range of the critic’s researches; had it done
so, he would have taken the information into account, but he does not.
Of the existence of Scott’s “first copy” of the ballad in manuscript our
critic seems never to have heard; certainly he has not studied the MS.
Had he done so he would not assign (on grounds like those of Homeric
critics) this verse to Hogg and that to Scott. He would know that Scott
did not interpolate a single stanza; that spelling, punctuation, and some
slight verbal corrections, with an admirable emendation, were the sum of
his industry: that he did not even excise two stanzas of, at earliest,
eighteenth century work.
I must now clear up misconceptions which have imposed themselves on all
critics of the ballad, on myself, for example, no less than on Colonel
Elliot: and must tell the whole story of how the existence of the ballad
first became known to Scott’s collector and friend, William Laidlaw, how
he procured the copy which he presented to Sir Walter, and how Sir Walter
obtained, from recitation, his “second copy,” that which he printed in
_The Minstrelsy_ in 1803.
In 1801 Scott, who was collecting ballads, gave a list of songs which he
wanted to Mr. Andrew Mercer, of Selkirk. Mercer knew young Will Laidlaw,
farmer in Blackhouse on Yarrow, where Hogg had been a shepherd for ten
years. Laidlaw applied for two ballads, one of them _The Outlaw Murray_,
to Hogg, then shepherding at Ettrick House, at the head of Ettrick, above
Thirlestane. Hogg replied on 20th July 1801. He could get but a few
verses of _The Outlaw_ from his maternal uncle, Will Laidlaw of Phawhope.
He said that, from traditions known to him, he could make good songs,
“but without Mr. Scott’s permission this would be an imposition, neither
could I undertake it without an order from him in his own handwriting
. . . ” {21a} Laidlaw went on trying to collect songs for Scott. We now
take his own account of _Auld Maitland_ from a manuscript left by him.
{21b}
“I heard from one of the servant girls, who had all the turn and
qualifications for a collector, of a ballad called _Auld Maitland_, that
a grandfather (maternal) of Hogg could repeat, and she herself had
several of the first stanzas, which I took a note of, and have still the
copy. This greatly aroused my anxiety to procure the whole, for this was
a ballad not even hinted at by Mercer in his list of desiderata received
from Mr. Scott. I forthwith wrote to Hogg himself, requesting him to
endeavour to procure the whole ballad. In a week or two I received his
reply, containing _Auld Maitland_ exactly as he had received it from the
recitation of his uncle Will of Phawhope, corroborated by his mother, who
both said they learned it from their father, a still older Will of
Phawhope, and an old man called Andrew Muir, who had been servant to the
famous Mr. Boston, minister of Ettrick.” Concerning Laidlaw’s evidence,
Colonel Elliot says not a word.
This copy of _Auld Maitland_, with the superscription outside—
MR. WILLIAM LAIDLAW,
BLACKHOUSE,
all in Hogg’s hand, is now at Abbotsford. We next have, through
Carruthers using Laidlaw’s manuscript, an account of the arrival of Scott
and Leyden at Blackhouse, of Laidlaw’s presentation of Hogg’s manuscript,
which Scott read aloud, and of their surprise and delight. Scott was
excited, so that his _burr_ became very perceptible. {23a}
The time of year when Scott and Leyden visited Yarrow was not the
_autumn_ vacation of 1802, as Lockhart erroneously writes, {23b} but the
_spring_ vacation of 1802. The spring vacation, Mr. Macmath informs me,
ran from 11th March to 12th May in 1802. In May, apparently, Scott
having obtained the _Auld Maitland_ MS. in the vernal vacation of the
Court of Session, gave his account of his discovery to his friend Ellis
(Lockhart does not date the letter, but wrongly puts it after the return
to Edinburgh in November 1802).
Scott wrote thus:—“We” (John Leyden and himself) “have just concluded an
excursion of two or three weeks through my jurisdiction of Selkirkshire,
where, in defiance of mountains, rivers, and bogs, damp and dry, we have
penetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest . . . I have . . .
returned _loaded_ with the treasures of oral tradition. The principal
result of our inquiries has been a complete and perfect copy of “Maitland
with his Auld Berd Graie,” referred to by [Gawain] Douglas in his _Palice
of Honour_ (1503), along with John the Reef and other popular characters,
and celebrated in the poems from the Maitland MS.” (_circ._ 1575). You
may guess the surprise of Leyden and myself when this was presented to
us, copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd, by a country
farmer . . . Many of the old words are retained, which neither the
reciter nor the copyer understood. Such are the military engines,
sowies, _springwalls_ (springalds), and many others . . . ” {24a}
That Scott got the ballad in spring 1802 is easily proved. On 10th April
1802, Joseph Ritson, the crabbed, ill-tempered, but meticulously accurate
scholar, who thought that ballad-forging should be made a capital
offence, wrote thus to Scott:—
“I have the pleasure of enclosing my copy of a very ancient poem, which
appears to me to be the original of _The Wee Wee Man_, and which I learn
from Mr. Ellis you are desirous to see.” In Scott’s letter to Ellis,
just quoted, he says: “I have lately had from him” (Ritson) “_a copie_ of
‘Ye litel wee man,’ of which I think I can make some use. In return, I
have sent him a sight of _Auld Maitland_, the original MS . . . I wish
him to see it _in puris naturalibus_.” “The precaution here taken was
very natural,” says Lockhart, considering Ritson’s temper and hatred of
literary forgeries. Scott, when he wrote to Ellis, had received Ritson’s
_The Wee Wee Man_ “lately”: it was sent to him by Ritson on 10th April
1802. Scott had already, when he wrote to Ellis, got “the original MS.
of _Auld Maitland_” (now in Abbotsford Library). By 10th June 1802
Ritson wrote saying, “You may depend on my taking the utmost care of _Old
Maitland_, and returning it in health and safety. I would not use the
liberty of transcribing it into my manuscript copy of Mrs. Brown’s
ballads, but if you will signify your permission, I shall be highly
gratified.” {25} “Your ancient and curious ballad,” he styles the piece.
Thus Scott had _Auld Maitland_ in May 1802; he sent the original MS. to
Ritson; Ritson received it graciously; he had, on 10th April 1802, sent
Scott another MS., _The Wee Wee Man_: and when Scott wrote to Ellis about
his surprise at getting “a complete and perfect copy of Maitland,” he had
but lately received _The Wee Wee Man_, sent by Ritson on 10th April 1802.
He had made a spring, not an autumn, raid into the Forest.
We now know the external history of the ballad. Laidlaw, hearing his
servant repeat some stanzas, asks Hogg for the full copy, which Hogg
sends with a pedigree from which he never wavered. Auld Andrew Muir
taught the song to Hogg’s mother and uncle. Hogg took it from his
uncle’s recitation, and sent it, directed outside,
TO MR. WILLIAM LAIDLAW,
BLACKHOUSE,
and Laidlaw gave it to Scott, in March 12–May 12, 1802. But Scott,
publishing the ballad in _The Minstrelsy_ (1803), says it is given “as
written down from the recitation of the mother of Mr. James Hogg, who
sings, or rather chants, it with great animation” (manifestly he had
heard the recitation which he describes).
It seems that Scott, before he wrote to Ellis in May 1802, had misgivings
about the ballad. Says Carruthers, he “made another visit to Blackhouse
for the purpose of getting Laidlaw as a guide to Ettrick,” being “curious
to see the poetical shepherd.”
Laidlaw’s MS., used by Carruthers, describes the wild ride by the marshes
at the head of the Loch of the Lowes, through the bogs on the knees of
the hills, down a footpath to Ramseycleuch in Ettrick. They sent to
Ettrick House for Hogg; Scott was surprised and pleased with James’s
appearance. They had a delightful evening: “the qualities of Hogg came
out at every instant, and his unaffected simplicity and fearless
frankness both surprised and pleased the Sheriff.” {26a} Next morning
they visited Hogg and his mother at her cottage, and Hogg tells how the
old lady recited _Auld Maitland_. Hogg gave the story in prose, with
great vivacity and humour, in his _Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott_
(1834).
In an earlier poetical address to Scott, congratulating him on his
elevation to the baronetcy (1818), the Shepherd says—
When Maitland’s song first met your ear,
How the furled visage up did clear.
Beaming delight! though now a shade
Of doubt would darken into dread,
That some unskilled presumptuous arm
Had marred tradition’s mighty charm.
Scarce grew thy lurking dread the less,
Till she, the ancient Minstreless,
With fervid voice and kindling eye,
And withered arms waving on high,
Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek,
While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek:
“Na, we are nane o’ the lads o’ France,
Nor e’er pretend to be;
We be three lads of fair Scotland,
Auld Maitland’s sons a’ three.”
(Stanza xliii. as printed. In Hogg’s MS. copy, given to Laidlaw there
are two verbal differences, in lines 1 and 4.)
Then says Hogg—
Thy fist made all the table ring,
By —, sir, but that is the thing!
Hogg could not thus describe the scene in addressing Scott himself, in
1818, if his story were not true. It thus follows that his mother knew
the sixty-five stanzas of the ballad by heart. Does any one believe
that, as a woman of seventy-two, she learned the poem to back Hogg’s
hoax? That he wrote the poem, and caused her to learn it by rote, so as
to corroborate his imposture?
This is absurd.
But now comes the source of Colonel Elliot’s theory of a conspiracy
between Scott and Hogg, to forge a ballad and issue the forgery. Colonel
Elliot knows scraps of a letter to Hogg of 30th June 1802. He has read
parts, not bearing on the question, in Mr. Douglas’s _Familiar Letters of
Sir Walter Scott_ (vol. i. pp. 12–15), and another scrap, in which Hogg
says that “I am surprised to hear that _Auld Maitland_ is suspected by
some to be a modern forgery.” This part of Hogg’s letter of 30th June
1802 was published by Scott himself in the third volume of _The
Minstrelsy_ (April 1803).
Not having the context of the letter, Colonel Elliot seems to argue,
“Scott says he got his first copy in autumn 1802” (Lockhart’s mistake),
“yet here are Hogg and Scott corresponding about the ballad long before
autumn, in June 1802. This is very suspicious.” I give what appears to
be Colonel Elliot’s line of reflection in my own words. He decides that,
as early as June 1802, “Hogg”(in the Colonel’s ‘view’), “in the first
instance, tried to palm off the ballad on Scott, and failed; and that
then Scott palmed it off on the public, and succeeded.”
This is all a mare’s nest. Scott, in March-May 1802, had the whole of
the ballad except one stanza, which Hogg sent to him on 30th June.
I now print, for the first time, the whole of Hogg’s letter of 30th June,
with its shrewd criticism on ballads, hitherto omitted, and I italicise
the passage about _Auld Maitland_:—
ETTRICK HOUSE, _June_ 30.