Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy | Page 5

I had studied
"somewhat lazily," like Quintus Smyrnaeus. 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as far as I am aware, still unpublished.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 Archaeological Society,
1905.

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.