Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy | Page 4

Maitland The Ballad of Otterburne
Scott's Traditional Copy and how he edited it The Mystery of the

Ballad of Jamie Telfer Kinmont Willie Conclusions

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