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192 Lang : Scott and the Border Minstrelsy
Earlier we find :
So printed ;
read
Then fifteen barks, all gaily good,
Met themen on a day.
Met them inon a day.
This idiom is
evidently found in the original. is Hogg's copy what it professes
to be ; he wrote down Auld Maitland as
accurately as he could from
recitation.
This still leaves the : problem Where did the ballad come from ? It is
not a true ballad in it is
; style a mixture of the ballad and the
romance. The latter element comes out in the
hack
*
'
springald verse
4 With springalds, stones and gads o' aim
Among
them fast he threw.'
This is prosy grammar, such as historians use. Auld Maitland came
into oral tradition from a more or less literary source ; it is not the same
sort of thing as the ballads which have their whole life in oral tradition ; it
belongs to another stock, closely
related indeed to the true ballad. That
it was handed on in the same manner as the ballads, that Hogg's mother
knew it, and it repeated
in the same way as her other songs, and that
Hogg's account is true, it seems impossible now to question.
The chapters on Otterburn also prove Hogg's good faith.
*
Hogg had a
copy from reciters a copy which he could not understand.' It may be
enough, for the present, to recommend Mr. Lang's demonstration to those
who care for these matters ; to do proper justice
to it would need as much
space as the original chapters themselves. One thing in it is perhaps doubtful.
Hogg's version gives * Almonshire '
where '
Bambroughshire '
is
usually
read ; Hogg knew *
Bamborowshire," but both his reciters insisted on
*
Almonshire.' Mr. Lang says, and one would like to believe, that
4
Almonshire' is
Alnwick Castle.
for Alneshire
*
'Alneshire' or Alnwickshire,' where is the
Percy's
But is there authority in the history of Northumberland
'
?
In Jamie it
Telfer
is shown that Scott did not tamper with the facts as
Colonel Elliot thinks he did ;
there are two separate versions of the
story,
an Elliot ballad and a Scott ballad dealing the honours differently. As for
the facts, there are none ; the is
story impossible with the geography as given
'
in any version ; though in a higher sense '
it may be true as a general statement
of what might and did happen in raids and recoveries of driven cattle
on the Borders.
Klnmont Willie remains as a problem hard to solve. The external evidence
that decides Auld Maitland is wanting in this case, except what is given
in Satchells' narrative, and the relation of Satchells to the ballad may be construed
in different ways. It is minutely examined by Colonel Elliot, with
the conclusion that Satchells was turned into the ballad by Scott. The
other side is presented here, not so as to deny Scott's share in the poem of
Kinmont Willie, but so as to make it probable that Satchells, in the first place,