Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy

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.

Dear Sir, – I have been perusing your minstrelsy very diligently for a while past, and it being the first book I ever perused which was written by a person I had seen and conversed with, the consequence hath been to me a most sensible pleasure; for in fact it is the remarks and modern pieces that I have delighted most in, being as it were personally acquainted with many of the modern pieces formerly. My mother is actually a living miscellany of old songs. I never believed that she had half so many until I came to a trial. There are some (sic) in your collection of which she hath not a part, and I should by this time had a great number written for your amusement, thinking them all of great antiquity and lost to posterity, had I not luckily lighted upon a collection of songs in two volumes, published by I know not who, in which I recognised about half-a-score of my mother’s best songs, almost word for word. No doubt I was piqued, but it saved me much trouble, paper, and ink; for I am carefully avoiding anything which I have seen or heard of being in print, although I have no doubt that I shall err, being acquainted with almost no collections of that sort, but I am not afraid that you too will mistake. I am still at a loss with respect to some: such as the Battle of Flodden beginning, “From Spey to the Border,” a long poetical piece on the battle of Bannockburn, I fear modern: The Battle of the Boyne, Young Bateman’s Ghost, all of which, and others which I cannot mind, I could mostly recover for a few miles’ travel were I certain they could be of any use concerning the above; and I might have mentioned May Cohn and a duel between two friends, Graham and Bewick, undoubtedly very old. You must give me information in your answer. I have already scraped together a considerable quantity – suspend your curiosity, Mr. Scott, you will see them when I see you, of which I am as impatient as you can be to see the songs for your life. But as I suppose you have no personal acquaintance in this parish, it would be presumption in me to expect that you will visit my cottage, but I will attend you in any part of the Forest if you will send me word. I am far from supposing that a person of your discernment, – d – n it, I’ll blot out that, ’tis so like flattery. I say I don’t think you would despise a shepherd’s “humble cot an’ hamely fare,” as Burns hath it, yet though I would be extremely proud of a visit, yet hang me if I would know what to do wi’ ye. I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s. Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine? I suspect it. Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars. Johnny Armstrong of Gilnockie is another song altogether. I have seen a verse of my mother’s way called Johny Armstrong’s last good-night cited in the Spectator, and another in Boswell’s Journal. It begins, “Is there ne’er a man in fair Scotland?” Do you know if this is in print, Mr. Scott? In the Tale of Tomlin the whole of the interlude about the horse and the hawk is a distinct song altogether. [20 - Sweet William’s Ghost.] Clerk Saunders is nearly the same with my mother’s, until that stanza [xvi.] which ends, “was in the tower last night wi’ me,” then with another verse or two which are not in yours, ends Clerk Saunders. All the rest of the song in your edition is another song altogether, which my mother hath mostly likewise, and I am persuaded from the change in the stile that she is right, for it is scarce consistent with the forepart of the ballad. I have made several additions and variations out, to the printed songs, for your inspection, but only when they could be inserted without disjointing the songs as they are at present; to have written all the variations would scarcely be possible, and I thought would embarrass you exceedingly. I have recovered another half verse of Old Maitlan, and have rhymed it thus—

Remember Fiery of the Scot
Hath cowr’d aneath thy hand;
For ilka drap o’ Maitlen’s blood
I’ll gie thee rigs o’ land. —

The two last lines only are original; you will easily perceive that they occur in the very place where we suspected a want. I am surprised to hear that this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; this will be best proved by most of the old people hereabouts having a great part of it by heart; many, indeed, are not aware of the manners of this place, it is but lately emerged from barbarity, and till this present age the poor illiterate people in these glens knew of no other entertainment in the long winter nights than in repeating and listening to these feats of their ancestors, which I believe to be handed down inviolate from father to son, for many generations, although no doubt, had a copy been taken of them at the end of every fifty years, there must have been some difference, which the repeaters would have insensibly fallen into merely by the change of terms in that period. I believe that it is thus that many very ancient songs have been modernised, which yet to a connoisseur will bear visible marks of antiquity. The Maitlen, for instance, exclusive of its mode of description, is all composed of words, which would mostly every one spell and pronounce in the very same dialect that was spoken some centuries ago.

Pardon, my dear Sir, the freedom I have taken in addressing you – it is my nature; and I could not resist the impulse of writing to you any longer. Let me hear from you as soon as this comes to your hand, and tell me when you will be in Ettrick Forest, and suffer me to subscribe myself, Sir, your most humble and affectionate servant,

    James Hogg.

In Scott’s printed text of the ballad, two interpolations, of two lines each, are acknowledged in notes. They occur in stanzas vii., xlvi., and are attributed to Hogg. In fact, Hogg sent one of them (vii.) to Laidlaw in his manuscript. The other he sent to Scott on 30th June 1802.

Colonel Elliot, in the spirit of the Higher Criticism (chimæra bombinans in vacuo), writes, [21 - Further Essays, pp. 225, 226.] “Few will doubt that the footnotes” (on these interpolations) “were inserted with the purpose of leading the public to think that Hogg made no other interpolations; but I am afraid I must go further than this and say that, since they were inserted on the editor’s responsibility, the intention must have been to make it appear as if no other interpolations by any other hand had been inserted.”

But no other interpolations by another hand were inserted! Some verbal emendations were made by Scott, but he never put in a stanza or two lines of his own.

Colonel Elliot provides us with six pages of the Higher Criticism. He knows how to distinguish between verses by Hogg, and verses by Scott! [22 - Further Essays, pp. 227–234.] But, save when Scott puts one line, a ballad formula, where Hogg has another line, Scott makes no interpolations, and the ballad formula he probably took, with other things of no more importance, from Mrs. Hogg’s recitation. Oh, Higher Criticism!

I now print the ballad as Hogg sent it to Laidlaw, between August 1801 and March 1802, in all probability.

[Back of Hogg’s MS.: Mr. William Laidlaw, Blackhouse.]

OLD MAITLAND

A VERY ANTIENT SONG

There lived a king in southern land
King Edward hecht his name
Unwordily he wore the crown
Till fifty years was gane.

He had a sister’s son o’s ain
Was large o’ blood and bane
And afterwards when he came up,
Young Edward hecht his name.

One day he came before the king,
And kneeld low on his knee
A boon a boon my good uncle,
I crave to ask of thee

“At our lang wars i’ fair Scotland
I lang hae lang’d to be
If fifteen hunder wale wight men
You’ll grant to ride wi’ me.”

“Thou sal hae thae thou sal hae mae
I say it sickerly;