Chapter 6

33. (_H._) Scott deletes the stanza.

35. (_H._)

When stout Sir Hugh wi’ Piercy met.

30. (_S._)

The Percy and Montgomery met. {83a}

36. (_H._)

“O yield thee, Piercy,” said Sir Hugh, “O yield, or ye shall die!” “Fain would I yield,” proud Percy said, “But ne’er to loon like thee.”

31. (_S._)

“Now yield thee, yield thee, Percy,” he said, “Or else I vow I’ll lay thee low,” “To whom must I yield,” quoth Earl Percy, “Now that I see it must be so?”

Scott took this from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe’s MS. copy. {84a}

38. (_H._)

38. (_S._) Scott makes a slight verbal alteration.

39. (_H._) Line 1.

34. (_S._) Line 1.

Scott substitutes Herd’s

As soon as he knew it was Montgomery.

40. (_H._) Hogg’s broken stanza on the death of Montgomery, derived from a lost form of the _Huntiss of Chevets_, named in _The Complaynte of Scotland_.

35. (_S._) Scott omits giving the formula common to the English of 1550 and to Herd. This was the whole of Scott’s editorial alteration. Any one may discover the facts from Professor Kittredge’s useful abbreviation of Child’s collection into a single volume (Nutt. London, 1905). Colonel Elliot quotes Professor Kittredge’s book three or four times, but in place of looking at the facts he abounds in the Higher Criticism. Colonel Elliot says that Scott does not tell us of a single line having been borrowed from Percy’s version. {84b} Scott has only “a single line” to tell of, the fourth line in his stanza xxii., “Till he fell to the ground.”

For the rest, the old English version and Herd’s have many inter-borrowings of stanzas, but we do not know whether a Scot borrowed from an Englishman, or _vice versa_. Thus, in another and longer traditional version—Hogg’s—more correspondence must be expected than in Herd’s fourteen stanzas. It is, of course, open to scepticism to allege that Hogg merely made his text, invented the two crazy old reciters, and the whole story about them, and his second “pumping of their memories,” invented “Almonshire,” which he could not understand, and invented his last broken stanza on the death of Montgomery, to give the idea that _The Huntiss of Chevets_ was mingled in the recollections of the reciters with _The Battle of Otterburn_. He also gave the sword in place of the pennon of Percy as the trophy of Douglas, “and the same with intent to deceive,” just as he pretended, in _Auld Maitland_, not to know what “springwalls” were, and wrote “springs: wall-stanes.” If this probable theory be correct, then Scott was the dupe of Truthful James. At all events, though for three years Scott was moving heaven and earth and Ettrick Forest to find a copy of a Scottish ballad of Otterburn, he did not sit down and make one, as, in Colonel Elliot’s system, he easily could and probably would have done.

Before studying his next ill deed, we must repeat that the Otterburn ballads prove that in early times one nation certainly pirated a ballad of a rival nation, and very ingeniously altered it and inverted the parts of the heroes.

We have next to examine a case in a later generation, in which a maker who was interested in one clan, pirated, perverted, and introverted the _rôles_ of the heroes in a ballad by a maker interested in another clan. Either an Elliotophile perverted a ballad by a Scottophile, or a Scottophile perverted a ballad by an Elliotophile.

This might be done at the time when the ballad was made (say 1620–60). But Colonel Elliot believes that the perversion was inflicted on an Elliotophile ballad by a Scottophile impostor about 1800–1802. The name of this desperate and unscrupulous character was Walter Scott, Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, commonly called Selkirkshire.

In this instance I have no manuscript evidence. The name of “Jamie of the Fair Dodhead,” the ballad, appears in a list of twenty-two ballads in Sir Walter’s hand, written in a commonplace book about 1800–1801. Eleven are marked X. “Jamie” is one of that eleven. _Kinmont Willie_ is among the eleven not marked X. We may conjecture that he had obtained the first eleven, and was hunting for the second eleven,—some of which he never got, or never published.

THE MYSTERY OF THE BALLAD OF JAMIE TELFER

I A RIDING SONG

_The Ballad of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead_ has many charms for lovers of the Border. The swift and simple stanzas carry us through a great tract of country, which remains not unlike what it was in the days when Scotts, Armstrongs, and Elliots rode the hills in jack and knapscap, with sword and lance. The song leads us first, with a foraging party of English riders, from Bewcastle, an English hold, east of the Border stream of the Liddel; then through the Armstrong tribe, on the north bank; then through more Armstrongs north across Tarras water (“Tarras for the good bull trout”); then north up Ewes water, that springs from the feet of the changeless green hills and the _pastorum loca vasta_, where now only the shepherd or the angler wakens the cry of the curlews, but where then the Armstrongs were in force. We ride on, as it were, and look down into the dale of the stripling Teviot, _electro clarior_ (then held by the Scotts); we descend and ford “Borthwick’s roaring strand,” as Leyden sings, though the burn is usually a purling brook even where it joins Teviot, three miles above Hawick.

Next we pass across the green waves of moorlands that rise to the heights over Ettrick (held by the Scotts), whence the foragers of the song gallop down to “The Fair Dodhead,” now a heap of grass-covered stones, but in their day a peel tower, occupied, _according to the ballad_, by one James Telfer. The English rob the peel tower, they drive away ten cows, and urge them southwards over Borthwick water, then across Teviot at Coultart Cleugh (say seven miles above Hawick), then up the Frostily burn, and so down Ewes water as before; but the Scottish pursuers meet them before they cross the Liddel again into English bounds. The English are defeated, their captain is shot through the head (which in no way affects his power of making speeches); he is taken, twenty or thirty of his men are killed or wounded, his own cattle are seized, and his victim Telfer, returns rejoicing to Dodhead in distant Ettrick.

_C’est magnifique_, _mais ce n’est pas la guerre_! These events never occurred, as we shall see later, yet the poet has the old reiving spirit, the full sense of the fierce manly times, and possesses a traditional knowledge of the historical personages of the day, and knows the country,—more or less.

The poem has raised as many difficulties as Nestor’s long story about raided cattle in the eleventh book of the _Iliad_. Historical Greece knew but dimly the places which were familiar to Nestor, the towns that time had ruined, the hill where Athene “turned the people again.” We, too, have to seek in documents of the end of the sixteenth century, or in an old map of 1654 (drawn about 1600), to find Dodhead, Catslack, or Catloch, or Catlock hill, and Preakinhaugh, places essential to our inquiry.

I see the student who has ventured so far into my tract wax wan! He does not,—she does not,—wish to hear about dusty documents and ancient maps. For him or for her the ballad is enough, and a very good ballad it is. I would shake the faith of no man in the accuracy of the ballad tale, if it were not necessary for me to defend the character of Sir Walter Scott, which, on occasion of this and other ballads, is impugned by Colonel the Hon. FitzWilliam Elliot. He “hopes, though he cannot expect,” that I will give my reasons for not sharing his belief that Sir Walter did a certain thing which I could not easily palliate. {89}

II THE BALLAD IMPOSSIBLE

My attempts to relieve Colonel Elliot from his painful convictions about Sir Walter’s unsportsmanlike behaviour must begin with proof that the ballad, as it stands, cannot conceivably be other than “a pack o’ lees.” Here Colonel Elliot, to a great extent and on an essential point, agrees with me. In sketching rapidly the story of the ballad,—the raid from England into Ettrick, the return of the raiders, the pursuit,—I omitted the _clou_, the pivot, the central point of dramatic interest. It is this: in one version of the ballad,—call it A for the present,—the unfortunate Telfer runs to ask aid from the laird of Buccleuch, at Branksome Hall, some three and a half or four miles above Hawick, on the Teviot. From the Dodhead it was a stiff run of eight miles, through new-fallen snow. The farmer of Dodhead, in the centre of the Scott country, naturally went for help to the nearest of his neighbours, the greatest chief in the mid-Border. In version A (which I shall call “the Elliot version”), “auld Buccleuch” (who was a man of about thirty in fact) was deaf to Telfer’s prayer.

Gae seek your succour frae Martin Elliot, For succour ye’s get nane frae me, Gae seek your succour where ye paid blackmail, For, man, ye ne’er paid money to me.

This is impossibly absurd! As Colonel Elliot writes, “I pointed out in my book” (_The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads_) “that the allegation that Buccleuch had refused to strike a blow at a party of English raiders, who had insolently ridden some twenty-five miles into Scottish ground and into the very middle of his own territory, was too absurd to be believed . . . ” {91a}

Certainly; and the story is the more ridiculous as Buccleuch (who has taken Telfer’s protection-money, or “blackmail”) pretends to believe that Telfer—living in Ettrick, about nine miles from Selkirk—pays protection-money to Martin Elliot, residing at Preakinhaugh, high up the water of Liddel. Martin was too small a potentate, and far too remote to be chosen as protector by a man living near the farm of Singlee on Ettrick, and near the bold Buccleuch.

All this is nonsense. Colonel Elliot sees that, and suggests that all this is not by the original poet, but has been “inserted at some later period.” {91b} But, if so, _what was the original ballad before the insertion_? As it stands, all hinges on this impossible refusal of Buccleuch to help his neighbour and retainer, James Telfer. If Colonel Elliot excises Buccleuch’s refusal of aid as a later interpolation, and if he allows Telfer to reach Branksome and receive the aid which Buccleuch would rejoice to give, then the Elliot version of the ballad cannot take a further step. It becomes a Scott ballad, Buccleuch sends out his Scotts to pursue the English raiders, and the Elliots, if they come in at all, must only be subordinates. But as the Elliot version stands, it is Buccleuch’s refusal to do his duty that compels poor Jamie to run to his brother-in-law, “auld Jock Grieve” in Coultartcleugh, four miles higher on Teviot than Branksome. Jock gives him a mount, and he rides to “Martin’s Hab” at “Catlockhill,” a place unknown to research thereabout. Thence they both ride to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh, high up in Liddesdale, and the Elliots under Martin rescue Jamie’s kye.

Now the original ballad, if it did not contain Buccleuch’s refusal of aid to Telfer (which refusal is a thing “too absurd to be believed”) must merely have told about the rescue of Jamie’s kye by the Scotts, Wat of Harden, and the rest. If Buccleuch did not refuse help he gave it, and there was no ride by Telfer to Martin Elliot. Therefore, without a passage “too absurd to be believed” (Buccleuch’s refusal), _there could be no Elliots in the story_. The alternative is, that Telfer in Ettrick _did_ pay blackmail to a man so remote as Elliot of Preakinhaugh, though Buccleuch was his chief and his neighbour. This is absurd. Yet Colonel Elliot firmly maintains that the version, in which the Elliots have all the glory and Buccleuch all the shame, is the original version, and is true on essential points.

That is only possible if we cut out the verses about Buccleuch and make an Ettrick man not appeal to him, but go direct to a Liddesdale man for succour. He must run from Dodhead to Coultartcleugh, get a horse from Jock Grieve (Buccleuch’s man and tenant), and then ride into Liddesdale to Martin. But an Ettrick man, in a country of Scotts, would inevitably go to his chief and neighbour, Buccleuch: it is inconceivable that he should choose the remote Martin Elliot as his protector, and go to _him_.

Thus, as a corollary from Colonel Elliot’s own disbelief in the Buccleuch incident, the Elliot version of the ballad must be absolutely false and foolish.

If Colonel Elliot leaves in the verses on Buccleuch’s refusal, he leaves in what he calls “too absurd to be believed.” If he cuts out these verses as an interpolation, then Buccleuch lent aid to Telfer, and there was no occasion to approach Martin Elliot. Or, by a third course, the Elliot ballad originally made an Ettrick man, a neighbour of the great Buccleuch, never dream of appealing to _him_ for help, but run to Coultartcleugh, four miles above Buccleuch’s house, and thence make his way over to distant Liddesdale to Martin Elliot! Yet Colonel Elliot says that in what I call “the Elliot version,” “the story defies criticism.” {93a} Now, however you take it,—I give you three choices,—the story is absolutely impossible.

This Elliot version was unknown to lovers of the ballads, till the late Professor Child of Harvard, the greatest master of British ballad-lore that ever lived, in his beautiful _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, printed it from a manuscript belonging to Mr. Macmath, which had previously been the property of a friend of Scott, Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. This version is entitled “Jamie Telfer _in_ the Fair Dodhead,” not “_of_”: Jamie was a tenant (there was no Jamie Telfer tenant of Dodhead in 1570–1609, but concerning that I have more to say). Jamie was no laird.

Before Professor Child’s publication of the Elliot version, we had only that given by Scott in _The Border Minstrelsy_ of 1802. Now Scott’s version is at least as absurdly incredible as the Elliot version. In Scott’s version the unhappy Jamie runs, not to Branksome and Buccleuch, to meet a refusal; but to “the Stobs’s Ha’”(on Slitterick above Hawick) and to “auld Gibby Elliot,” the laird. Elliot bids him go to Branksome and the laird of Buccleuch,

For, man, ye never paid money to me!

Naturally Telfer did not pay to Elliot: he paid to Buccleuch, if to any one. More, till after the Union of 1603, and the end of Border raids, Gilbert Elliot, a cousin and friend of Buccleuch, _was not the owner of Stobs_. The Hon. George Elliot pointed out this fact in his _Border Elliots and the Family of Minto_: Colonel Elliot rightly insists on this point.

The Scott version is therefore as hopelessly false as the Elliot version. The Elliot version, with the Buccleuch incident, is “too absurd to be believed,” and could not have been written (except in banter of Buccleuch), while men remembered the customs of the sixteenth century. The Scott version, again, could not be composed before the tradition arose that Gilbert Elliot _was_ laird of Stobs before the Union of the Crowns in 1603. Now that tradition was in full force on the Border before 1688. We know that (see chapter on _Kinmont Willie_, _infra_), for, in 1688, a man born in 1613, Captain Walter Scott of Satchells, in his _Metrical History of the Honourable Families of the Names of Scott and Elliot_, represents Gilbert Elliot of Stobs as riding with Buccleuch in the rescue of Kinmont Willie, in 1596. {95a} Now Satchells’s own father rode in that fray, he says, {95b} and he gives a minute genealogy of the Elliots of Stobs. {95c}

Thus the belief that Gilbert Elliot was laird of Stobs by 1596 was current in the traditions of a man born seventeen years after 1596. _The Scott version rests on that tradition_, and is not earlier than the rise of that erroneous belief.

Neither the Scott nor Elliot version is other than historically false. But the Scott version, if we cut out the reference to auld Gibby Elliot, offers a conceivable, though not an actual, course of events. The Elliot version, if we excise the Buccleuch incident, does not. Cutting out the Buccleuch incident, Telfer goes all the way from Ettrick to Liddesdale, seeking help in that remote country, and never thinks of asking aid from Buccleuch, his neighbour and chief. This is idiotic. In the Scott version, if we cut out the refusal of Gilbert Elliot of Stobs, Telfer goes straight to his brother-in-law, auld Jock Grieve, within four miles of Buccleuch at Branksome; thence to another friend, William’s Wat, at Catslockhill (now Branksome-braes), and so to Buccleuch at Branksome. This is absurd enough. Telfer would have gone straight to Branksome and Buccleuch, unless he were a poor shy small farmer, _who wanted sponsors_, known to Buccleuch. Jock Grieve and William’s Wat, both of them retainers and near neighbours of Buccleuch, were such sponsors. Granting this, the Scott version runs smoothly, Telfer goes to his sponsors, and with his sponsors to Buccleuch, and Buccleuch’s men rescue his kye.

III COLONEL ELLIOT’S CHARGE AGAINST SIR WALTER SCOTT

Colonel Elliot believes generally in the historical character of the ballad as given in the Elliot version, but “is inclined to think that” the original poet “never wrote the stanza” (the stanza with Buccleuch’s refusal) “at all, and that it has been inserted at some later period.” {97a} In that case Colonel Elliot is “inclined to think” that an Ettrick farmer, robbed by the English, never dreamed of going to his neighbour and potent chief, but went all the way to Martin Elliot, high up in Liddesdale, to seek redress! Surely few can share the Colonel’s inclination. Why should a farmer in Ettrick “choose to lord” a remote Elliot, when he had the Cock of the Border, the heroic Buccleuch, within eight miles of his home?

Holding these opinions, Colonel Elliot, with deep regret—

I wat the tear blinded his ee—

accuses Sir Walter Scott of having taken the Elliot version—till then the only version—and of having altered stanzas vii.–xi. (in which Jamie goes to Branksome, and is refused succour) into his own stanzas vii.–xi., in which Jamie goes to Stobs and is refused succour. This evil thing Scott did, thinks Colonel Elliot. Scott had no copy, he thinks, of the ballad except an Elliot copy, which he deliberately perverted.

We must look into the facts of the case. I know no older published copy of the ballad than that of Scott, in _Border Minstrelsy_, vol. i. p. 91 _et seqq._ (1802). Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick shepherd to Scott of “June 30, 1802” thus: “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s; _Jamie Telfer_ differs in many particulars.” {98a} (This is an incomplete quotation. I give the MS. version later.)

Scott himself, before Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to his _Jamie Telfer_: “There is another ballad, under the same title as the following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little difference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed to the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief there called Martin Elliot of the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simm, is said to have fallen in the action. It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the Elliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honour of the victory.”

Old Mrs. Hogg’s version, “differing in many particulars” from Scott’s, must have been the Elliot version, published by Professor Child, as “A*,” “Jamie Telfer _in_” (not “_of_”) “the Fair Dodhead,” “from a MS. written about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now in the possession of Mr. William Macmath”; it had previously belonged to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. {98b}

There is one great point of difference between the two forms. In Sir Walter’s variant, verse 26 summons the Scotts of Teviotdale, including Wat of Harden. In his 28 the Scotts ride with the slogan “Rise for Branksome readily.” Scott’s verses 34, 36, and the two first lines of 38, are, if there be such a thing as internal evidence, from his own pen. Such lines as

The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white Nor the lyart locks o’ Harden’s hair

are cryingly modern and “Scottesque.”

That Sir Walter knew the other version, as in Mr. Macmath’s MS. of the early nineteenth century, is certain; he describes that version in his preface. That he effected the whole transposition of Scotts for Elliots is Colonel Elliot’s opinion. {99a}

If Scott did, I am not the man to defend his conduct; I regret and condemn it; and shall try to prove that he found the matter in his copy. I shall first prove, beyond possibility of doubt, that the ballad is, from end to end, utterly unhistorical, though based on certain real incidents of 1596–97. I shall next show that the Elliot version is probably later than the Scott version. Finally, I shall make it certain (or so it seems to me) that Scott worked on an old copy which was _not_ the copy that belonged to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, but contained points of difference, _not_ those inserted by Sir Walter Scott about “Dinlay snaw,” and so forth.

IV WHO WAS THE FARMER IN THE DODHEAD IN 1580–1609?

Colonel Elliot has made no attempt to prove that one Telfer was tenant of the Dodhead in 1580–1603, which must, we shall see, include the years in which the alleged incidents occur. On this question—was there a Telfer in the Dodhead in 1580–1603?—I consulted my friend, Mr. T. Craig Brown, author of an excellent _History of Selkirkshire_. In that work (vol. i. p. 356) the author writes: “Dodhead or Scotsbank; Dodhead was one of the four stedes of Redefurd in 1455. In 1609 Robert Scot of Satchells (ancestor of the poet-captain) obtained a Crown charter of the lands of Dodbank.” For the statement that Dodhead was one of the three stedes in 1455, Mr. Craig Brown quotes “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “an unimpeachable authority.” For the Crown charter of 1609, we have only to look up “Dodbank” in the Register of the Great Seal of 1609. The charter is of November 24, 1609, and gratifies “Robert Scott of Satscheillis” (father of the Captain Walter Scott who composed the _Metrical History_ of the Scotts in 1688) with the lands, which have been occupied by him and his forefathers “from a time past human memory.” Thus, writes Mr. Craig Brown to me, “Scott of Satchells was undoubtedly Scott of _Dodhead_ also in 1609.”

In “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “_Dodhead_ or Dodbank” appears as Harden’s property. Thus in 1628 the place was “Dodhead or Dodbank,” a farm that had been tenanted by Scotts “from beyond human memory.” But Mr. Craig Brown proves from record that one Simpson farmed it in 1510.

So where does Jamie Telfer come in?

The farmers were Scotts, it was to their chief, Buccleuch, that they went when they needed aid. {101a}

Thus vanishes the hero of the ballad, _Jamie Telfer in the Fair Dodhead_, and thus the ballad is pure fiction from end to end.

V MORE IMPOSSIBILITIES IN THE BALLAD

This is only one of the impossibilities in the ballad. That the Captain of Bewcastle, an English hold, stated in a letter of the period to be distant three miles from the frontier, the Liddel water, should seek “to drive a prey” from the Ettrick, far through the bounds of his neighbours and foes, Grahams, Armstrongs, Scotts, and Elliots, is a ridiculously absurd circumstance.