Sir Walter’s unsportsmanlike behaviour must begin with proof that the
ballad, as it stands, cannot conceivably be other than “a pack o’ lees.”
Here Colonel Elliot, to a great extent and on an essential point, agrees
with me. In sketching rapidly the story of the ballad,—the raid from
England into Ettrick, the return of the raiders, the pursuit,—I omitted
the _clou_, the pivot, the central point of dramatic interest. It is
this: in one version of the ballad,—call it A for the present,—the
unfortunate Telfer runs to ask aid from the laird of Buccleuch, at
Branksome Hall, some three and a half or four miles above Hawick, on the
Teviot. From the Dodhead it was a stiff run of eight miles, through
new-fallen snow. The farmer of Dodhead, in the centre of the Scott
country, naturally went for help to the nearest of his neighbours, the
greatest chief in the mid-Border. In version A (which I shall call “the
Elliot version”), “auld Buccleuch” (who was a man of about thirty in
fact) was deaf to Telfer’s prayer.
Gae seek your succour frae Martin Elliot,
For succour ye’s get nane frae me,
Gae seek your succour where ye paid blackmail,
For, man, ye ne’er paid money to me.
This is impossibly absurd! As Colonel Elliot writes, “I pointed out in
my book” (_The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads_) “that the allegation
that Buccleuch had refused to strike a blow at a party of English
raiders, who had insolently ridden some twenty-five miles into Scottish
ground and into the very middle of his own territory, was too absurd to
be believed . . . ” {91a}
Certainly; and the story is the more ridiculous as Buccleuch (who has
taken Telfer’s protection-money, or “blackmail”) pretends to believe that
Telfer—living in Ettrick, about nine miles from Selkirk—pays
protection-money to Martin Elliot, residing at Preakinhaugh, high up the
water of Liddel. Martin was too small a potentate, and far too remote to
be chosen as protector by a man living near the farm of Singlee on
Ettrick, and near the bold Buccleuch.
All this is nonsense. Colonel Elliot sees that, and suggests that all
this is not by the original poet, but has been “inserted at some later
period.” {91b} But, if so, _what was the original ballad before the
insertion_? As it stands, all hinges on this impossible refusal of
Buccleuch to help his neighbour and retainer, James Telfer. If Colonel
Elliot excises Buccleuch’s refusal of aid as a later interpolation, and
if he allows Telfer to reach Branksome and receive the aid which
Buccleuch would rejoice to give, then the Elliot version of the ballad
cannot take a further step. It becomes a Scott ballad, Buccleuch sends
out his Scotts to pursue the English raiders, and the Elliots, if they
come in at all, must only be subordinates. But as the Elliot version
stands, it is Buccleuch’s refusal to do his duty that compels poor Jamie
to run to his brother-in-law, “auld Jock Grieve” in Coultartcleugh, four
miles higher on Teviot than Branksome. Jock gives him a mount, and he
rides to “Martin’s Hab” at “Catlockhill,” a place unknown to research
thereabout. Thence they both ride to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh, high
up in Liddesdale, and the Elliots under Martin rescue Jamie’s kye.
Now the original ballad, if it did not contain Buccleuch’s refusal of aid
to Telfer (which refusal is a thing “too absurd to be believed”) must
merely have told about the rescue of Jamie’s kye by the Scotts, Wat of
Harden, and the rest. If Buccleuch did not refuse help he gave it, and
there was no ride by Telfer to Martin Elliot. Therefore, without a
passage “too absurd to be believed” (Buccleuch’s refusal), _there could
be no Elliots in the story_. The alternative is, that Telfer in Ettrick
_did_ pay blackmail to a man so remote as Elliot of Preakinhaugh, though
Buccleuch was his chief and his neighbour. This is absurd. Yet Colonel
Elliot firmly maintains that the version, in which the Elliots have all
the glory and Buccleuch all the shame, is the original version, and is
true on essential points.
That is only possible if we cut out the verses about Buccleuch and make
an Ettrick man not appeal to him, but go direct to a Liddesdale man for
succour. He must run from Dodhead to Coultartcleugh, get a horse from
Jock Grieve (Buccleuch’s man and tenant), and then ride into Liddesdale
to Martin. But an Ettrick man, in a country of Scotts, would inevitably
go to his chief and neighbour, Buccleuch: it is inconceivable that he
should choose the remote Martin Elliot as his protector, and go to _him_.
Thus, as a corollary from Colonel Elliot’s own disbelief in the Buccleuch
incident, the Elliot version of the ballad must be absolutely false and
foolish.
If Colonel Elliot leaves in the verses on Buccleuch’s refusal, he leaves
in what he calls “too absurd to be believed.” If he cuts out these
verses as an interpolation, then Buccleuch lent aid to Telfer, and there
was no occasion to approach Martin Elliot. Or, by a third course, the
Elliot ballad originally made an Ettrick man, a neighbour of the great
Buccleuch, never dream of appealing to _him_ for help, but run to
Coultartcleugh, four miles above Buccleuch’s house, and thence make his
way over to distant Liddesdale to Martin Elliot! Yet Colonel Elliot says
that in what I call “the Elliot version,” “the story defies criticism.”
{93a} Now, however you take it,—I give you three choices,—the story is
absolutely impossible.
This Elliot version was unknown to lovers of the ballads, till the late
Professor Child of Harvard, the greatest master of British ballad-lore
that ever lived, in his beautiful _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_,
printed it from a manuscript belonging to Mr. Macmath, which had
previously been the property of a friend of Scott, Charles Kirkpatrick
Sharpe. This version is entitled “Jamie Telfer _in_ the Fair Dodhead,”
not “_of_”: Jamie was a tenant (there was no Jamie Telfer tenant of
Dodhead in 1570–1609, but concerning that I have more to say). Jamie was
no laird.
Before Professor Child’s publication of the Elliot version, we had only
that given by Scott in _The Border Minstrelsy_ of 1802. Now Scott’s
version is at least as absurdly incredible as the Elliot version. In
Scott’s version the unhappy Jamie runs, not to Branksome and Buccleuch,
to meet a refusal; but to “the Stobs’s Ha’”(on Slitterick above Hawick)
and to “auld Gibby Elliot,” the laird. Elliot bids him go to Branksome
and the laird of Buccleuch,
For, man, ye never paid money to me!
Naturally Telfer did not pay to Elliot: he paid to Buccleuch, if to any
one. More, till after the Union of 1603, and the end of Border raids,
Gilbert Elliot, a cousin and friend of Buccleuch, _was not the owner of
Stobs_. The Hon. George Elliot pointed out this fact in his _Border
Elliots and the Family of Minto_: Colonel Elliot rightly insists on this
point.
The Scott version is therefore as hopelessly false as the Elliot version.
The Elliot version, with the Buccleuch incident, is “too absurd to be
believed,” and could not have been written (except in banter of
Buccleuch), while men remembered the customs of the sixteenth century.
The Scott version, again, could not be composed before the tradition
arose that Gilbert Elliot _was_ laird of Stobs before the Union of the
Crowns in 1603. Now that tradition was in full force on the Border
before 1688. We know that (see chapter on _Kinmont Willie_, _infra_),
for, in 1688, a man born in 1613, Captain Walter Scott of Satchells, in
his _Metrical History of the Honourable Families of the Names of Scott
and Elliot_, represents Gilbert Elliot of Stobs as riding with Buccleuch
in the rescue of Kinmont Willie, in 1596. {95a} Now Satchells’s own
father rode in that fray, he says, {95b} and he gives a minute genealogy
of the Elliots of Stobs. {95c}
Thus the belief that Gilbert Elliot was laird of Stobs by 1596 was
current in the traditions of a man born seventeen years after 1596. _The
Scott version rests on that tradition_, and is not earlier than the rise
of that erroneous belief.
Neither the Scott nor Elliot version is other than historically false.
But the Scott version, if we cut out the reference to auld Gibby Elliot,
offers a conceivable, though not an actual, course of events. The Elliot
version, if we excise the Buccleuch incident, does not. Cutting out the
Buccleuch incident, Telfer goes all the way from Ettrick to Liddesdale,
seeking help in that remote country, and never thinks of asking aid from
Buccleuch, his neighbour and chief. This is idiotic. In the Scott
version, if we cut out the refusal of Gilbert Elliot of Stobs, Telfer
goes straight to his brother-in-law, auld Jock Grieve, within four miles
of Buccleuch at Branksome; thence to another friend, William’s Wat, at
Catslockhill (now Branksome-braes), and so to Buccleuch at Branksome.
This is absurd enough. Telfer would have gone straight to Branksome and
Buccleuch, unless he were a poor shy small farmer, _who wanted sponsors_,
known to Buccleuch. Jock Grieve and William’s Wat, both of them
retainers and near neighbours of Buccleuch, were such sponsors. Granting
this, the Scott version runs smoothly, Telfer goes to his sponsors, and
with his sponsors to Buccleuch, and Buccleuch’s men rescue his kye.
III
COLONEL ELLIOT’S CHARGE AGAINST SIR WALTER SCOTT
Colonel Elliot believes generally in the historical character of the
ballad as given in the Elliot version, but “is inclined to think that”
the original poet “never wrote the stanza” (the stanza with Buccleuch’s
refusal) “at all, and that it has been inserted at some later period.”
{97a} In that case Colonel Elliot is “inclined to think” that an Ettrick
farmer, robbed by the English, never dreamed of going to his neighbour
and potent chief, but went all the way to Martin Elliot, high up in
Liddesdale, to seek redress! Surely few can share the Colonel’s
inclination. Why should a farmer in Ettrick “choose to lord” a remote
Elliot, when he had the Cock of the Border, the heroic Buccleuch, within
eight miles of his home?
Holding these opinions, Colonel Elliot, with deep regret—
I wat the tear blinded his ee—
accuses Sir Walter Scott of having taken the Elliot version—till then the
only version—and of having altered stanzas vii.–xi. (in which Jamie goes
to Branksome, and is refused succour) into his own stanzas vii.–xi., in
which Jamie goes to Stobs and is refused succour. This evil thing Scott
did, thinks Colonel Elliot. Scott had no copy, he thinks, of the ballad
except an Elliot copy, which he deliberately perverted.
We must look into the facts of the case. I know no older published copy
of the ballad than that of Scott, in _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. i. p. 91
_et seqq._ (1802). Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick
shepherd to Scott of “June 30, 1802” thus: “I am surprised to find that
the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s; _Jamie
Telfer_ differs in many particulars.” {98a} (This is an incomplete
quotation. I give the MS. version later.)
Scott himself, before Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to
his _Jamie Telfer_: “There is another ballad, under the same title as the
following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little
difference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed
to the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief there called Martin Elliot
of the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simm, is said to have fallen in the
action. It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the
Elliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honour of
the victory.”
Old Mrs. Hogg’s version, “differing in many particulars” from Scott’s,
must have been the Elliot version, published by Professor Child, as “A*,”
“Jamie Telfer _in_” (not “_of_”) “the Fair Dodhead,” “from a MS. written
about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now in the possession
of Mr. William Macmath”; it had previously belonged to Charles
Kirkpatrick Sharpe. {98b}
There is one great point of difference between the two forms. In Sir
Walter’s variant, verse 26 summons the Scotts of Teviotdale, including
Wat of Harden. In his 28 the Scotts ride with the slogan “Rise for
Branksome readily.” Scott’s verses 34, 36, and the two first lines of
38, are, if there be such a thing as internal evidence, from his own pen.
Such lines as
The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white
Nor the lyart locks o’ Harden’s hair
are cryingly modern and “Scottesque.”
That Sir Walter knew the other version, as in Mr. Macmath’s MS. of the
early nineteenth century, is certain; he describes that version in his
preface. That he effected the whole transposition of Scotts for Elliots
is Colonel Elliot’s opinion. {99a}
If Scott did, I am not the man to defend his conduct; I regret and
condemn it; and shall try to prove that he found the matter in his copy.
I shall first prove, beyond possibility of doubt, that the ballad is,
from end to end, utterly unhistorical, though based on certain real
incidents of 1596–97. I shall next show that the Elliot version is
probably later than the Scott version. Finally, I shall make it certain
(or so it seems to me) that Scott worked on an old copy which was _not_
the copy that belonged to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, but contained points of
difference, _not_ those inserted by Sir Walter Scott about “Dinlay snaw,”
and so forth.
IV
WHO WAS THE FARMER IN THE DODHEAD IN 1580–1609?
Colonel Elliot has made no attempt to prove that one Telfer was tenant of
the Dodhead in 1580–1603, which must, we shall see, include the years in
which the alleged incidents occur. On this question—was there a Telfer
in the Dodhead in 1580–1603?—I consulted my friend, Mr. T. Craig Brown,
author of an excellent _History of Selkirkshire_. In that work (vol. i.
p. 356) the author writes: “Dodhead or Scotsbank; Dodhead was one of the
four stedes of Redefurd in 1455. In 1609 Robert Scot of Satchells
(ancestor of the poet-captain) obtained a Crown charter of the lands of
Dodbank.” For the statement that Dodhead was one of the three stedes in
1455, Mr. Craig Brown quotes “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “an
unimpeachable authority.” For the Crown charter of 1609, we have only to
look up “Dodbank” in the Register of the Great Seal of 1609. The charter
is of November 24, 1609, and gratifies “Robert Scott of Satscheillis”
(father of the Captain Walter Scott who composed the _Metrical History_
of the Scotts in 1688) with the lands, which have been occupied by him
and his forefathers “from a time past human memory.” Thus, writes Mr.
Craig Brown to me, “Scott of Satchells was undoubtedly Scott of _Dodhead_
also in 1609.”
In “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “_Dodhead_ or Dodbank” appears as
Harden’s property. Thus in 1628 the place was “Dodhead or Dodbank,” a
farm that had been tenanted by Scotts “from beyond human memory.” But
Mr. Craig Brown proves from record that one Simpson farmed it in 1510.
So where does Jamie Telfer come in?
The farmers were Scotts, it was to their chief, Buccleuch, that they went
when they needed aid. {101a}
Thus vanishes the hero of the ballad, _Jamie Telfer in the Fair Dodhead_,
and thus the ballad is pure fiction from end to end.
V
MORE IMPOSSIBILITIES IN THE BALLAD
This is only one of the impossibilities in the ballad. That the Captain
of Bewcastle, an English hold, stated in a letter of the period to be
distant three miles from the frontier, the Liddel water, should seek “to
drive a prey” from the Ettrick, far through the bounds of his neighbours
and foes, Grahams, Armstrongs, Scotts, and Elliots, is a ridiculously
absurd circumstance.
Colonel Elliot attempts to meet this difficulty by his theory of the
route taken by the Captain, which he illustrates by a map. {102a} The
ballad gives no details except that the Captain found his first guide
“high up in Hardhaughswire,” which Colonel Elliot cannot identify. The
second guide was “laigh down in Borthwick water.” If this means on the
lower course of the Borthwick, the Captain was perilously near Branksome
Hall and Harden, and his ride was foolhardy. But “laigh down,” I think,
means merely “on lower ground than Hardhaughswire.”
The Captain, as soon as he crossed the Ritterford after leaving
Bewcastle, was in hostile and very watchful Armstrong country. This
initial difficulty Colonel Elliot meets by marking on his map, as
Armstrong country, the north bank of the Liddel down to Kershope burn;
and the Captain crosses Liddel below that burn at Ritterford. Thence he
goes north by west, across Tarras water, up Ewes water, up Mickledale
burn, by Merrylaw and Ramscleugh and so on to Howpasley, which is not on
the lower but the upper Borthwick.
Looking at Colonel Elliot’s chart of the Captain’s route, all seems easy
enough for the Captain. He does not try to ride into Teviotdale, for
which he is making, up the Liddel water, and thence by the Hermitage
tributary on his left. Colonel Elliot studs that region with names of
Armstrong and Elliot strongholds. He makes the Captain, crossing Liddel
by the Ritterford, bear to his left, through a space empty of hostile
habitations, in his map. This seems prudent, but the region thus left
blank was full of the fiercest and most warlike of the Armstrong name.
That road was closed to the Captain!
Colonel Elliot has failed to observe this fact, which I go on to prove,
from a memoir addressed in 1583 to Burleigh, by Thomas Musgrave, the
active son of the aged Captain of Bewcastle, Sir Simon Musgrave. Thomas
describes the topography of the Middle Marches. He says that the
Armstrongs hold both banks of Liddel as far south as “Kershope foot” (the
junction of the Kershope with the Liddel), and hold the north side of the
Liddel as far as its junction with the Esk. {103a} Thus on crossing
Liddel by the Ritterford, the Captain had at once to pass through the
hostile Armstrongs. Thereby also were Grahams with whom the Musgraves of
Bewcastle were in deadly feud. Farther down Esk, west of Esk, dwelt
Kinmont Willie, an Armstrong, “at a place called Morton.” If he did pass
so far through Armstrongs, the Captain met them again, farther north, on
Tarras side, where Runyen Armstrong lived at Thornythaite. Near him was
Armstrong of Hollhouse, Musgrave’s great enemy. North of Tarras the
Captain rode through Ewesdale; there he had to deal with three hundred
Armstrong men of the spear. {104a} When he reached Ramscleuch (which he
never could have done), the Colonel’s map makes the Captain ride past
Ramscleuch, then farmed by the Grieves, retainers of Buccleuch, who would
warn Branksome. When the Captain reached Howpasley on Borthwick water,
he would be observed by the men of Scott of Howpasley, the Grieves, who
could send a rider some six miles to warn Branksome.
We get the same information as to the perils of the Captain’s path from
the places marked on Blaeu’s map of 1600–54. There are Hollhouse and
Thornythaite, Armstrong towers, and the active John Armstrong of Langholm
can come at a summons.
It seems to be a great error to suppose that the route chosen for the
Captain by Colonel Elliot could lead him into anything better than a
death-trap. I must insist that it would have been madness for a Captain
of Bewcastle to ride far through Armstrong country, deep into Buccleuch’s
country, and return on another line through Scott, and near Elliot, and
through Armstrong country—and all for no purpose but to steal ten cows in
remote Selkirkshire!
Here I may save the reader trouble, by omitting a great mass of detail as
to the deplorable condition of Bewcastle itself in 1580–96. Sir Simon,
the Captain, declares himself old and weary. The hold is “utterly
decayed,” the riders are only thirty-seven men fairly equipped. Soldiers
are asked for, sometimes fifty are sent from the garrison of Berwick,
then they are withdrawn. Bewcastle is forayed almost daily; “March
Bills” minutely describe the cattle, horses, and personal property taken
from the Captain and the people by the Armstrongs and Elliots.
Once, in 1582, Thomas Musgrave slew Arthur Graham, a near neighbour, and
took one hundred and sixty kye, but this only caused such a feud that the
Musgraves could not stir safely from home. From 1586 onwards, Thomas
Musgrave, officially or unofficially, was acting Captain of Bewcastle.
He had no strength to justify him in raiding to remote Ettrick, through
enemies who penned him in at Bewcastle.
I look on Musgrave as the Captain whose existence is known to the
ballad-maker, and I find the origin of the tale of his defeat and capture
in the ballad, in a distorted memory of his actual capture.
On 3rd July 1596, Thomas (having got Scrope’s permission, without which
he dared not cross the Border on affairs of war) attempted a retaliatory
raid on Armstrongs within seven miles of the Border, the Armstrongs of
Hollace, or Hollhouse. “He found only empty houses;” he “sought a prey”
in vain; he let his men straggle, and returning homeward, with some
fifteen companions, he was ambushed by the Armstrongs near Bewcastle, was
refused shelter by a Graham, was taken prisoner, and was sent to
Buccleuch at Branksome. On 15th July he came home under a bond of £200
for ransom. {106a} As every one did, in his circumstances, the Captain
made out his Bill for Damages. It was indented on 28th April 1597. We
learn that John (Armstrong) of Langholm, Will of Kinmont (not Liddesdale
men), and others, who took him, are in the Captain’s debt for “24 horses
and mares, himself prisoner, and ransomed to £200, and 16 other
prisoners, and slaughter.” The charges are admitted by the accused; the
Captain is to get £400. {106b}
In my opinion this capture of the Captain of Bewcastle and others,
poetically handled, is, with other incidents, the basis of the ballad.
Colonel Elliot says that the incident “is no proof that a Captain of
Bewcastle was not also taken or killed at some other place or at some
other time.” But _what_ Captain, and when? Sir Simon, in 1586, had been
Captain, he says, for thirty years. Thenceforth till near the Union of
the Crowns, Thomas was Captain, or acting Captain.
So considerable an event as the taking of a Captain of Bewcastle, who, in
the ballad, was shot through the head and elsewhere, could not escape
record in dispatches, and the periodical “March Bills,” or statements of
wrongs to be redressed. Colonel Elliot’s reply takes the shape of the
argument that the ballad may speak of some other Captain, at some other
time; and that, in one way or another, the sufferings and losses of
_that_ Captain may have escaped mention in the English dispatches from
the Border. These dispatches are full of minute details, down to the
theft of a single mare. I am content to let historians familiar with the
dispatches decide as to whether the Captain’s mad ride into Ettrick, with
his dangerous wounds, loss of property, and loss of seventeen men killed
and wounded (as in the ballad), could escape mention.
The capture of Thomas Musgrave, I think, and two other
incidents,—confused in course of tradition, and handled by the poet with
poetic freedom,—are the materials of _Jamie Telfer_. One of the other
incidents is of April 1597. {107a} Here Buccleuch in person, on the
Sabbath, burned twenty houses in Tynedale, and “slew fourteen men who had
been in Scotland and brought away their booty.” Here we have Buccleuch
“on the hot trod,” pursuing English reivers, recovering the spoils
probably, and slaying as many of the raiders as the Captain lost, in the
ballad. Again, not a _son_ of Elliot of Preakinhaugh (as I had
erroneously said), but a _nephew_ named Martin, was slain in a Tynedale
raid into Liddesdale. {108a} Soldiers aided the English raiders. A
confused memory of this death of Elliot’s nephew in 1597 may be the
source of the story of the death of his son, Simmy, in the ballad.
Our traditional ballads all arise out of some germs of history, all
handle the facts romantically, and all appear to have been composed, in
their extant shapes, at a considerable time after the events. I may cite
_Mary Hamilton_; _The Laird of Logie_ is another case in point; there are
many others.
Colonel Elliot does not agree with me. So be it.