a mere mythical perversion of carefully recorded facts,”—“it would surely
be more correct to say that it is a fairly true, though jumbled, account
of actual incidents, separated from each other by only short periods of
time . . . ” {108b} If he means, or thinks that I mean, that the actual
facts were the capture of Musgrave near Bewcastle in 1596 by the
Armstrongs, with Buccleuch’s hot-trod, and Martin Elliot’s slaying in
1597, I entirely agree with him that the facts are “jumbled.” But as to
the opinion that the ballad is “fairly true” about the raid to Ettrick
(the Captain could not ride a mile beyond the Border without the Warden’s
permission), about the non-existent Jamie Telfer, about the shooting,
taking, and plundering of the Captain, about his loss of seventeen men
wounded and slain (he lost about as many prisoners),—I have given reasons
for my disbelief.
VI
IS THE SCOTT VERSION, WITH ELLIOTS AND SCOTTS TRANSPOSED, THE LATER
VERSION?
We now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the ballad
(apart from Sir Walter’s decorative stanzas) necessarily _later_ than the
Elliot version in Sharpe’s copy? The chief argument for the lateness of
the Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of Stobs at a date
when this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have already treated.
If the ballad is no earlier than the date when Elliot was believed (as by
Satchells) to have obtained Stobs before 1596, the argument falls to the
ground.
Starting from that point, and granting that a minstrel fond of the Scotts
wants to banter the Elliots, he may make Telfer ask aid at Stobs. After
that, which version is better in its topography? Bidden by Stobs to seek
Buccleuch, Telfer runs to Teviot, to Coultartcleugh, some four miles
above Branksome. Branksome was nearer, but Telfer was shy, let us say,
and did not know Buccleuch; while at Coultartcleugh, Jock Grieve was his
brother-in-law. Jock gives him a mount, and takes him to “Catslockhill.”
Now, no Catslockhill is known anywhere, to me or to Colonel Elliot. Mr.
Henderson, in a note to the ballad, {110a} speaks of “Catslack in
Branxholm,” and cites the _Register of the Privy Seal_ for 4th June 1554,
and the _Register of the Privy Council_ for 14th October 1592. The
records are full of _that_ Catslack, but it is not in Branksome. Blaeu’s
map (1600–54) gives it, with its appurtenances, on the north side of St.
Mary’s Loch. There is a Catslack on the north side of Yarrow, near
Ladhope, on the southern side. Neither Catslack is the Catslockhill of
the Scott ballad. But on evidence, “and it is good evidence,” says
Colonel Elliot, {110b} I prove that, in 1802, a place called “Catlochill”
existed between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The place (Mrs. Grieve,
Branksome Park, informs me) is now called Branksome-braes. On his copy
of _The Minstrelsy_ of 1802, Mr. Grieve, then tenant of Branksome Park,
made a marginal note. Catlochill was still known to him; it was in a
commanding site, and had been strengthened by the art of man. His note I
have seen and read.
Thus, on good evidence, there was a Catlochill, or Catlockhill, between
Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The Scott version is right in its
topography.
This fact was unknown to Colonel Elliot. Not knowing a Catslackhill or
Catslockhill in Teviot, he made Scott’s Telfer go to an apocryphal
Catlockhill in Liddesdale. Professor Veitch had said that the
Catslockhill of the ballad “_is to be sought_” in some locality between
Coultartcleugh and Branxholm. Colonel Elliot calls this “a really
preposterously cool suggestion.” {111a} Why “really preposterously
cool”? Being sought, the place is found where it had always been. Jamie
Telfer found it, and in it his friend “William’s Wat,” who took him to
the laird of Buccleuch at Branksome.
In the Elliot version, when refused aid by Buccleuch, Jamie ran to
Coultartcleugh,—as in Scott’s,—on his way to Martin Elliot at
Preakinhaugh on the Liddel. Jamie next “takes the fray” to “the
Catlockhill,” and is there remounted by “Martin’s Hab,” an Elliot (not by
William’s Wat), and _they_ “take the fray” to Martin Elliot at
Preakinhaugh in Liddesdale. This is very well, but where _is_ this
“Catlockhill” in Liddesdale? Is it even a real place?
Colonel Elliot has found no such place; nor can I find it in the
_Registrum Magni Sigilli_, nor in Blaeu’s map of 1600–54.
Colonel Elliot’s argument has been that the Elliot version, the version
of the Sharpe MS., is the earlier, for, among other reasons, its
topography is correct. {112a} It makes Telfer run from Dodhead to
Branksome for aid, because that was the comparatively near residence of
the powerful Buccleuch. Told by Buccleuch to seek aid from Martin Elliot
in Liddesdale, Telfer does so. He runs up Teviot four miles to his
brother-in-law, Jock Grieve, who mounts him. He then rides off at a
right angle, from Teviot to Catlockhill, says the Elliot ballad, where he
is rehorsed by Martin’s Hab. The pair then take the fray to Martin
Elliot at Preakinhaugh on Liddel water, and Martin summons and leads the
pursuers of the Captain.
This, to Colonel Elliot’s mind, is all plain sailing, all is feasible and
natural. And so it _is_ feasible and natural, if Colonel Elliot can find
a Catlockhill anywhere between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. On that
line, in Mr. Veitch’s words, Catlockhill “is to be sought.” But just as
Mr. Veitch could find no Catslockhill between Coultartcleugh and
Branksome, so Colonel Elliot can find no Catlockhill between
Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. He tells us {112b} indeed of
“Catlockhill on Hermitage water.” But there is no such place known!
Colonel Elliot’s method is to take a place which, he says, is given as
“Catlie” Hill, “between Dinlay burn and Hermitage water, on Blaeu’s map
of 1654.” We may murmur that Catlie Hill is one thing and Catlock
another, but Colonel Elliot points out that “lock” means “the meeting of
waters,” and that Catlie Hill is near the meeting of Dinlay burn and the
Hermitage water. But then why does Blaeu call it, not Catlockhill, nor
Catlie hill, nor “Catlie” even, but “_Gatlie_,” for so it is distinctly
printed on my copy of the map? Really we cannot take a place called
“Gatlie Hill” and pronounce that we have found “Catlockhill”! Would
Colonel Elliot have permitted Mr. Veitch—if Mr. Veitch had found “Gatlie
Hill” near Branksome, in Blaeu—to aver that he had found Catslockhill
near Branksome?
Thus, till Colonel Elliot produces on good evidence a Catlockhill between
Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh, the topography of the Elliot ballad, of
the Sharpe copy of the ballad, is nowhere, for neither Catliehill nor
Gatliehill is Catlockhill. That does not look as if the Elliot were
older than the Scott version. (There was a Sim _Armstrong_ of the
_Cathill_, slain by a Ridley of Hartswell in 1597. {113a})
We now take the Scott version where Telfer has arrived at Branksome.
Scott’s stanza xxv. is Sharpe’s xxiv. In Scott, Buccleuch; in Sharpe,
Martin Elliot bids his men “warn the waterside” (Sharpe), “warn the water
braid and wide” (Scott). Scott’s stanza xxvi. is probably his own, or
may be, for he bids them warn Wat o’ Harden, Borthwick water, and the
Teviot Scotts, and Gilmanscleuch—which is remote. Then, in xxvii.,
Buccleuch says—
Ride by the gate of Priesthaughswire,
And warn the Currors o’ the Lee,
As ye come down the Hermitage slack
Warn doughty Wiliie o’ Gorrinberry.
All this is plain sailing, by the pass of Priesthaughswire the Scotts
will ride from Teviot into Hermitage water, and, near the Slack, they
will pass Gorrinberry, will call Will, and gallop down Hermitage water to
the Liddel, where they will nick the returning Captain at the Ritterford.
The Sharpe version makes Martin order the warning of the waterside
(xxiv.), and then Martin says (xxv.)—
When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack,
Warn doughty Will o’ Gorranherry.
Colonel Elliot {114a} supposes Martin (if I follow his meaning) to send
Simmy with his command, _back over all the course that Telfer and
Martin’s Hab have already ridden_: back past Shaws, near Braidley (a
house of Martin’s), past “Catlockhill,” to Gorranberry, to “warn the
waterside.” But surely Telfer, who passed Gorranberry gates, and with
Hab passed the other places, had “taken the fray,” and warned the water
quite sufficiently already. If this be granted, the Sharpe version is
taking from the Scott version the stanza, so natural there, about the
Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry. But Colonel Elliot infers, from stanzas
xxvi., xxx., xxxi., that Simmy has warned the water as far as Gorranberry
(_again_), has come in touch with the Captain, “between the Frostily and
the Ritterford,” and that this is “consistent only with his having moved
up the Hermitage water.”
Meanwhile Martin, he thinks, rode with his men down Liddel water. But
here we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the
hypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the
English to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they
were met by Martin’s men on the Hermitage line of advance. I cannot find
this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me
hypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back up
Hermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy’s path.
Colonel Elliot himself writes: “It is certain that after the news of the
raid reached Catlockhill” (_and_ Gorranberry, Telfer passed it), “it must
have spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most unlikely for
the men of this district to have delayed taking action until they
received instructions from their chief.” {115}
That is exactly what I say; but Martin says, “When ye come in at the
Hermitage Slack, warn doughty Will o’ Gorranberry.” Why go to warn him,
when, as Colonel Elliot says, the news is running through Hermitage
water, and the men are most probably acting on it,—as they certainly
would do?
Martin’s orders, in Sharpe xxv., are taken, I think, from Buccleuch’s, in
Scott’s xxvii.
The point is that Martin had no need to warn men so far away as
Gorranberry,—they were roused already. Yet he orders them to be warned,
and about a combined movement of Martin and Simmy on different lines the
ballad says not a word. All this is inference merely, inference not from
historical facts, but from what may be guessed to have been in the mind
of the poet.
Thus the Elliot or Sharpe version has topography that will not hold
water, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song
seems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a
form of the Scott version. This being the case, the original version on
which Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version. In the Scott
version the rescuers must come down the Hermitage Slack: in the Elliot
they have no reason for riding _back_ to that place.
VII
SCOTT HAD A COPY OF THE BALLAD WHICH WAS NOT THE SHARPE COPY
Did Scott know no other version than that of the Sharpe MS.? In Scott’s
version, stanza xlix., the last, is absent from the Elliot version, which
concludes triumphantly, thus—
Now on they came to the fair Dodhead,
They were a welcome sight to see,
And instead of his ain ten milk-kye
Jamie Telfer’s gotten thirty and three.
Scott too gives this, but ends with a verse not in Sharpe—
And he has paid the rescue shot
Baith wi’ goud and white money,
And at the burial o’ Willie Scott
I wat was mony a weeping ee.
Did Scott add this? Proof is impossible; but the verse is so prosaic,
and so injurious to the triumphant preceding verse, that I think Scott
found it in his copy: in which case he had another copy than Sharpe’s.
Scott (stanza xviii.) reads “Catslockhill” where the Sharpe MS. reads
“Catlockhill.” In Scott’s time it was a mound, but the name was then
known to Mr. Grieve, the tenant of Branksome Park. To-day I cannot find
the mound; is it likely that Scott, before making the change, sought
diligently for the mound and its name? If so, he found “_Catlochill_,”
for so Mr. Grieve writes it, not Catslockhill.
Meanwhile Colonel Elliot, we know, has no Catlockhill where he wants it;
he has only Gatliehill, unless his Blaeu varies from my copy, and
Gatliehill is not Catlockhill.
Scott gives (xlviii.) the speech of the Captain after he is shot through
the head and in another dangerous part of his frame—
“Hae back thy kye!” the Captain said,
“Dear kye, I trow, to some they be,
For gin I suld live a hundred years,
There will ne’er fair lady smile on me.”
This is not in Sharpe’s MS., and I attribute this redundant stanza to
Scott’s copy. The Captain, remember, has a shot “through his head,” and
another which must have caused excruciating torture. In these
circumstances would a poet like Scott put in his mouth a speech which
merely reiterates the previous verse? No! But the verse was in Scott’s
copy.
Colonel Elliot has himself noted a more important point than these: he
quotes Scott’s stanza xii., which is absent from the Sharpe MS.—
My hounds may a’ rin masterless,
My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,
My lord may grip my vassal lands,
For there again maun I never be!
“They are, doubtless, beautiful lines, but their very beauty jars like a
false note. One feels they were written by another hand, by an artist of
a higher stamp than a Border ‘ballad-maker.’ And not only is it their
beauty that jars, but so also does their inapplicability to Jamie Telfer
and to the circumstances in which he found himself—so much so, indeed,
that it may well occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other
ballad, and has accidentally been pitchforked into this one. It would
not have been out of place in the ballad of _The Battle of Otterbourne_,
and, indeed, it bears some resemblance to a stanza in that ballad.” Here
the Colonel says that the lines “one feels were written by another hand,
by an artist of a higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker.” But “it may
also occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has
_accidentally_” (my italics) “been pitchforked into this”: a very sound
inference.
Now if Scott had only the Sharpe version, he was the last man to
“pitchfork” into it, “accidentally,” a stanza from “some other ballad,”
that stanza being as Colonel Elliot says “inapplicable” to Telfer and his
circumstances. Poor Jamie, a small tenant-farmer, with ten cows, and, as
far as we learn, not one horse, had no hawks and hounds; no “vassal
lands,” and no reason to say that at the Dodhead he “maun never be
again.” He could return from his long run! Scott certainly did not
compose these lines; and he could not have pitchforked them into _Jamie
Telfer_, either by accident or design.
Professor Child remarked on all this: “Stanza xii. is not only found
elsewhere (compare _Young Beichan_, E vi.), but could not be more
inappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not responsible
for that.” {120a}
The hawk that flies from tree to tree
is a formula; it comes in the Kinloch MS. copy of the ballad of _Jamie
Douglas_, date about 1690.
I know no proof that Scott was acquainted with variant E of _Young
Beichan_. {120b} If he had been, he could not have introduced into
_Jamie Telfer_ lines so utterly out of keeping with Telfer’s
circumstances, as Colonel Elliot himself says that stanza xii. is. It
may be argued, “if Scott _did_ find stanza xii. in his copy, it was in
his power to cut it out; he treated his copies as he pleased.” This is
true, but my position is that, of the two, Scott is more likely to have
let the stanza abide where he found it (as he did with his MS. of
_Tamlane_, retaining its absurdities) in his copy, than to “pitchfork it
in,” from an obscure variant of _Young Beichan_, which we cannot prove
that he had ever heard or read. But as we can never tell that Scott did
_not_ know any rhyme, we ask, why did he “pitchfork in” the stanza, where
it was quite out of place? Child absolves him from this absurdity.
Thus Scott had before him another than the Sharpe copy; had a copy
containing stanza xii. That copy presented the perversion—the
transposition of Scott’s and Elliot’s—and into that copy Scott wrote the
stanzas which bear his modern romantic mark. Colonel Elliot, we saw, is
uncertain whether to attribute stanza xii. to “another hand, an artist of
higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker,” or to regard it as belonging
“to some other ballad,” and as having been “accidentally pitchforked into
this one.” The stanza is, in fact, an old floating ballad stanza,
attracted into the _cantefable of Susie Pye_, and the ballad of _Young
Beichan_ (E), and partly into _Jamie Douglas_. Thus Scott did not _make_
the stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the stanza in any
form, he either “accidentally pitchforked” or wilfully inserted into
_Jamie Telfer_ anything so absurdly inappropriate. The inference is that
Scott worked on another copy, not the Sharpe copy.
If Scott had not a copy other than Sharpe’s, why should he alter Sharpe’s
(vii.)
The moon was up and the sun was down,
into
The sun wasna up but the moon was down?
What did he gain by that? _Why did he make Jamie_ “_of_” _not_ “_in_”
_the Dodhead_, _if he found_ “_in_” _in his copy_? “In” means “tenant
in,” “of” means “laird of,” as nobody knew better than Scott. Jamie is
evidently no laird, but “of” was in Scott’s copy.
If the question were about two Greek texts, the learned would admit that
these points in A (Scott) are not derived from B (Sharpe). Scott’s
additions have an obvious motive, they add picturesqueness to his clan.
But the differences which I have noticed do nothing of that kind. When
they affect the poetry they spoil the poetry, when they do not affect the
poetry they are quite motiveless, whence I conclude that Scott followed
his copy in these cases, and that his copy was not the Sharpe MS.
If I have satisfied the reader on that point I need not touch on Colonel
Elliot’s long and intricate argument to prove, or suggest, that Scott had
before him no copy of the ballad except one supposed by the Colonel to
have been taken by James Hogg from his mother’s recitation, while that
copy, again, is supposed to be the Sharpe MS.—all sheer conjecture.
{122a} Not that I fear to encounter Colonel Elliot on this ground, but
argufying on it is dull, and apt to be inconclusive.
In the letter of Hogg to Scott (June 30, 1803) as given by Mr. Douglas in
_Familiar Letters_, Hogg 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.” {123a} The marks of omission were all
filled up in Hogg’s MS. letter thus: “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine? I
suspect it.” Then it runs on, “_Jamie Telfer_ differs in many
particulars.”
I owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Macmath. What does Hogg
mean? Does “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine?” mean all Herd’s MS. copies used
by Scott? Or does it refer to _Jamie Telfer_ in especial?
Mr. Macmath, who possesses C. K. Sharpe’s MS. copy of the Elliot version,
believes that it is Herd’s hand as affected by age. Mr. Macmath and I
independently reached the conclusion that by “Mr. Herd’s MS.” Hogg meant
all Herd’s MSS., which Scott quoted in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1803. Their
readings varied from Mrs. Hogg’s; therefore Hogg misdoubted them. He
adds that _Jamie Telfer_ differs from his mother’s version, without
meaning that, for _Jamie_, Scott used a Herd MS.
CONCLUSION
I have now proved, I hope, that the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_ is entirely
mythical except for a few suggestions derived from historical events of
1596–97. I have shown, and Colonel Elliot agrees, that refusal of aid by
Buccleuch (or by Elliot of Stobs) is impossible, and that the ballad, if
it existed without this incident, must have been a Scott, and could not
be an Elliot ballad. No farmer in Ettrick would pay protection-money to
an Elliot on Liddel, while he had a Scott at Branksome. I have also
disproved the existence of a _Jamie Telfer_ as farmer at “Dodhead or
Dodbank” in the late sixteenth century.
As to the character of Sir Walter Scott, I have proved, I hope, that he
worked on a copy of the ballad which was not the Elliot version, or the
Sharpe copy; so that this copy may have represented the Scotts as taking
the leading part; while for the reasons given, it is apparently earlier
than the Elliot version—cannot, at least, be proved to be later—and is
topographically the more correct of the two. I have given antique
examples of the same sort of perversions in _Otterburn_. If I am right,
Colonel Elliot’s charge against Scott lacks its base—that Scott knew none
but the Sharpe copy, whence it is inferred that he not only decorated the
song (as is undeniable), but perverted it in a way far from
sportsmanlike.
I may have shaken Colonel Elliot’s belief in the historicity of the
ballad. His suspicions of Scott I cannot hope to remove, and they are
very natural suspicions, due to Scott’s method of editing ballads and
habit of “giving them a cocked hat and a sword,” as he did to stories
which he heard; and repeated, much improved.
Absolute proof that Scott did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a
false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new
documents bearing on the matter are discovered.
But, I repeat, as may be read in the chapter on _The Ballad of
Otterburne_, such inversions and perversions of ballads occurred freely
in the sixteenth century, and, in the seventeenth, the process may have
been applied to _Jamie Telfer_. {125a}
KINMONT WILLIE
IF there be, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, a ballad which is still popular,
or, at least, is still not forgotten, it is _Kinmont Willie_. This hero
was an Armstrong, and one of the most active of that unbridled clan. He
was taken prisoner, contrary to Border law, on a day of “Warden’s Truce,”
by Salkeld of Corby on the Eden, deputy of Lord Scrope, the English
Warden; and, despite the written remonstrances of Buccleuch, he was shut
up in Carlisle Castle. Diplomacy failing, Buccleuch resorted to force,
and, by a sudden and daring march, he surprised Carlisle Castle, rescued
Willie, and returned to Branksome. The date of the rescue is 13th April
1596. The dispatches of the period are full of this event, and of the
subsequent negotiations, with which we are not concerned.
The ballad is worthy of the cool yet romantic gallantry of the
achievement. Kinmont Willie was a ruffian, but he had been unlawfully
seized. This was one of many studied insults passed by Elizabeth’s
officials on Scotland at that time, when the English Government, leagued
with the furious pulpiteers of the Kirk, and with Francis Stewart, the
wild Earl of Bothwell, was persecuting and personally affronting James
VI.
In Buccleuch, the Warden of the March, England insulted the man who was
least likely to pocket a wrong. Without causing the loss of an English
life, Buccleuch repaid the affront, recovered the prisoner, broke the
strong Castle of Carlisle, made Scrope ridiculous and Elizabeth frantic.
In addition to _Kinmont Willie_ there survive two other ballads on
rescues of prisoners in similar circumstances. One is _Jock o’ the
Side_, of which there is an English version in the Percy MSS., _John a
Side_. Scott’s version, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, is from Caw’s
_Museum_, published at Hawick in 1784. Scott leaves out Caw’s last
stanza about a punch-bowl. There are other variations. Four Armstrongs
break into Newcastle Tower. Jock, heavily ironed, is carried downstairs
on the back of one of them; they ride a river in spait, where the English
dare not follow.
_Archie o’ Cafield_, another rescue, Scott printed in 1802 from a MS. of
Mr. Riddell of Glenriddell, a great collector, the friend of Burns. He
omitted six stanzas, and “made many editorial improvements, besides
Scotticising the spelling.” In the edition published after his death
(1833) he “has been enabled to add several stanzas from recitation.”
Leyden appears to have collected the copy whence the additional stanzas
came; the MS., at Abbotsford, is in his hand. In this ballad the Halls,
noted freebooters, rescue Archie o’ Cafield from prison in Dumfries. As
in _Jock o’ the Side_ and _Kinmont Willie_, they speak to their friend,
asking how he sleeps; they carry him downstairs, irons and all, and, as
in the two other ballads, they are pursued, cross a flooded river, banter
the English, and then, in a version in the Percy MSS., “communicated to
Percy by Miss Fisher, 1780,” the English lieutenant says—