Chapter 8

I know no proof that Scott was acquainted with variant E of _Young Beichan_. {120b} If he had been, he could not have introduced into _Jamie Telfer_ lines so utterly out of keeping with Telfer’s circumstances, as Colonel Elliot himself says that stanza xii. is. It may be argued, “if Scott _did_ find stanza xii. in his copy, it was in his power to cut it out; he treated his copies as he pleased.” This is true, but my position is that, of the two, Scott is more likely to have let the stanza abide where he found it (as he did with his MS. of _Tamlane_, retaining its absurdities) in his copy, than to “pitchfork it in,” from an obscure variant of _Young Beichan_, which we cannot prove that he had ever heard or read. But as we can never tell that Scott did _not_ know any rhyme, we ask, why did he “pitchfork in” the stanza, where it was quite out of place? Child absolves him from this absurdity.

Thus Scott had before him another than the Sharpe copy; had a copy containing stanza xii. That copy presented the perversion—the transposition of Scott’s and Elliot’s—and into that copy Scott wrote the stanzas which bear his modern romantic mark. Colonel Elliot, we saw, is uncertain whether to attribute stanza xii. to “another hand, an artist of higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker,” or to regard it as belonging “to some other ballad,” and as having been “accidentally pitchforked into this one.” The stanza is, in fact, an old floating ballad stanza, attracted into the _cantefable of Susie Pye_, and the ballad of _Young Beichan_ (E), and partly into _Jamie Douglas_. Thus Scott did not _make_ the stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the stanza in any form, he either “accidentally pitchforked” or wilfully inserted into _Jamie Telfer_ anything so absurdly inappropriate. The inference is that Scott worked on another copy, not the Sharpe copy.

If Scott had not a copy other than Sharpe’s, why should he alter Sharpe’s (vii.)

The moon was up and the sun was down,

into

The sun wasna up but the moon was down?

What did he gain by that? _Why did he make Jamie_ “_of_” _not_ “_in_” _the Dodhead_, _if he found_ “_in_” _in his copy_? “In” means “tenant in,” “of” means “laird of,” as nobody knew better than Scott. Jamie is evidently no laird, but “of” was in Scott’s copy.

If the question were about two Greek texts, the learned would admit that these points in A (Scott) are not derived from B (Sharpe). Scott’s additions have an obvious motive, they add picturesqueness to his clan. But the differences which I have noticed do nothing of that kind. When they affect the poetry they spoil the poetry, when they do not affect the poetry they are quite motiveless, whence I conclude that Scott followed his copy in these cases, and that his copy was not the Sharpe MS.

If I have satisfied the reader on that point I need not touch on Colonel Elliot’s long and intricate argument to prove, or suggest, that Scott had before him no copy of the ballad except one supposed by the Colonel to have been taken by James Hogg from his mother’s recitation, while that copy, again, is supposed to be the Sharpe MS.—all sheer conjecture. {122a} Not that I fear to encounter Colonel Elliot on this ground, but argufying on it is dull, and apt to be inconclusive.

In the letter of Hogg to Scott (June 30, 1803) as given by Mr. Douglas in _Familiar Letters_, Hogg says, “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s . . . _Jamie Telfer_ differs in many particulars.” {123a} The marks of omission were all filled up in Hogg’s MS. letter thus: “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine? I suspect it.” Then it runs on, “_Jamie Telfer_ differs in many particulars.”

I owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Macmath. What does Hogg mean? Does “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine?” mean all Herd’s MS. copies used by Scott? Or does it refer to _Jamie Telfer_ in especial?

Mr. Macmath, who possesses C. K. Sharpe’s MS. copy of the Elliot version, believes that it is Herd’s hand as affected by age. Mr. Macmath and I independently reached the conclusion that by “Mr. Herd’s MS.” Hogg meant all Herd’s MSS., which Scott quoted in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1803. Their readings varied from Mrs. Hogg’s; therefore Hogg misdoubted them. He adds that _Jamie Telfer_ differs from his mother’s version, without meaning that, for _Jamie_, Scott used a Herd MS.

CONCLUSION

I have now proved, I hope, that the ballad of _Jamie Telfer_ is entirely mythical except for a few suggestions derived from historical events of 1596–97. I have shown, and Colonel Elliot agrees, that refusal of aid by Buccleuch (or by Elliot of Stobs) is impossible, and that the ballad, if it existed without this incident, must have been a Scott, and could not be an Elliot ballad. No farmer in Ettrick would pay protection-money to an Elliot on Liddel, while he had a Scott at Branksome. I have also disproved the existence of a _Jamie Telfer_ as farmer at “Dodhead or Dodbank” in the late sixteenth century.

As to the character of Sir Walter Scott, I have proved, I hope, that he worked on a copy of the ballad which was not the Elliot version, or the Sharpe copy; so that this copy may have represented the Scotts as taking the leading part; while for the reasons given, it is apparently earlier than the Elliot version—cannot, at least, be proved to be later—and is topographically the more correct of the two. I have given antique examples of the same sort of perversions in _Otterburn_. If I am right, Colonel Elliot’s charge against Scott lacks its base—that Scott knew none but the Sharpe copy, whence it is inferred that he not only decorated the song (as is undeniable), but perverted it in a way far from sportsmanlike.

I may have shaken Colonel Elliot’s belief in the historicity of the ballad. His suspicions of Scott I cannot hope to remove, and they are very natural suspicions, due to Scott’s method of editing ballads and habit of “giving them a cocked hat and a sword,” as he did to stories which he heard; and repeated, much improved.

Absolute proof that Scott did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing on the matter are discovered.

But, I repeat, as may be read in the chapter on _The Ballad of Otterburne_, such inversions and perversions of ballads occurred freely in the sixteenth century, and, in the seventeenth, the process may have been applied to _Jamie Telfer_. {125a}

KINMONT WILLIE

IF there be, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, a ballad which is still popular, or, at least, is still not forgotten, it is _Kinmont Willie_. This hero was an Armstrong, and one of the most active of that unbridled clan. He was taken prisoner, contrary to Border law, on a day of “Warden’s Truce,” by Salkeld of Corby on the Eden, deputy of Lord Scrope, the English Warden; and, despite the written remonstrances of Buccleuch, he was shut up in Carlisle Castle. Diplomacy failing, Buccleuch resorted to force, and, by a sudden and daring march, he surprised Carlisle Castle, rescued Willie, and returned to Branksome. The date of the rescue is 13th April 1596. The dispatches of the period are full of this event, and of the subsequent negotiations, with which we are not concerned.

The ballad is worthy of the cool yet romantic gallantry of the achievement. Kinmont Willie was a ruffian, but he had been unlawfully seized. This was one of many studied insults passed by Elizabeth’s officials on Scotland at that time, when the English Government, leagued with the furious pulpiteers of the Kirk, and with Francis Stewart, the wild Earl of Bothwell, was persecuting and personally affronting James VI.

In Buccleuch, the Warden of the March, England insulted the man who was least likely to pocket a wrong. Without causing the loss of an English life, Buccleuch repaid the affront, recovered the prisoner, broke the strong Castle of Carlisle, made Scrope ridiculous and Elizabeth frantic.

In addition to _Kinmont Willie_ there survive two other ballads on rescues of prisoners in similar circumstances. One is _Jock o’ the Side_, of which there is an English version in the Percy MSS., _John a Side_. Scott’s version, in _The Border Minstrelsy_, is from Caw’s _Museum_, published at Hawick in 1784. Scott leaves out Caw’s last stanza about a punch-bowl. There are other variations. Four Armstrongs break into Newcastle Tower. Jock, heavily ironed, is carried downstairs on the back of one of them; they ride a river in spait, where the English dare not follow.

_Archie o’ Cafield_, another rescue, Scott printed in 1802 from a MS. of Mr. Riddell of Glenriddell, a great collector, the friend of Burns. He omitted six stanzas, and “made many editorial improvements, besides Scotticising the spelling.” In the edition published after his death (1833) he “has been enabled to add several stanzas from recitation.” Leyden appears to have collected the copy whence the additional stanzas came; the MS., at Abbotsford, is in his hand. In this ballad the Halls, noted freebooters, rescue Archie o’ Cafield from prison in Dumfries. As in _Jock o’ the Side_ and _Kinmont Willie_, they speak to their friend, asking how he sleeps; they carry him downstairs, irons and all, and, as in the two other ballads, they are pursued, cross a flooded river, banter the English, and then, in a version in the Percy MSS., “communicated to Percy by Miss Fisher, 1780,” the English lieutenant says—

I think some witch has bore thee, Dicky, Or some devil in hell been thy daddy. I would not swam that wan water, double-horsed, For a’ the gold in Christenty.

Manifestly here was a form of Lord Scrope’s reply to Buccleuch, in the last stanza of _Kinmont Willie_—

He is either himself a devil frae hell, Or else his mother a witch may be, I wadna hae ridden that wan water For a’ the gowd in Christentie.

Scott writes, in a preface to _Archie o’ Cafield_ and _Jock o’ the Side_, that there are, with _Kinmont Willie_, three ballads of rescues, “the incidents in which nearly resemble each other; though the poetical description is so different, that the editor did not feel himself at liberty to reject any one of them, as borrowed from the others. As, however, there are several verses, which, in recitation, are common to all these three songs, the editor, to prevent unnecessary and disagreeable repetition, has used the freedom of appropriating them to that in which they have the best poetical effect.” {129a}

Consequently the verse quoted from the Percy MS. of _Archie o’ Cafield_ may be improved and placed in the lips of Lord Scrope, in _Kinmont Willie_. But there is no evidence that Scott ever saw or even heard of this Percy MS., and probably he got the verse from recitation.

Now the affair of the rescue of Kinmont Willie was much more important and resonant than the two other rescues, and was certain to give rise to a ballad, which would contain much the same formulæ as the other two. The ballad-maker, like Homer, always uses a formula if he can find one. But _Kinmont Willie_ is so much superior to the two others, so epic in its speed and concentration of incidents, that the question rises, had Scott even fragments of an original ballad of the Kinmont, “much mangled by reciters,” as he admits, or did he compose the whole? No MS. copies exist at Abbotsford. There is only one hint. In a list of twenty-two ballads, pasted into a commonplace book, eleven are marked X (as if he had obtained them), and eleven others are unmarked, as if they were still to seek. Unmarked is _Kinmount Willie_.

Did he find it, or did he make it all?

In 1888, in a note to _Kinmont Willie_, I wrote: “There is a prose account very like the ballad in Scott of Satchells’ _History of the Name of Scott_” (1688). Satchells’ long-winded story is partly in unrhymed and unmetrical lines, partly in rhymes of various metres. The man, born in 1613, was old, had passed his life as a soldier; certainly could not write, possibly could not read.

Colonel Elliot “believes that Sir Walter wrote the whole from beginning to end, and that it is, in fact, a clever and extremely beautiful paraphrase of Satchells’ rhymes.” {130a}

This thorough scepticism is not a novelty, as Colonel Elliot quotes me I had written years ago, “In _Kinmont Willie_, Scott has been suspected of making the whole ballad.” I did not, as the Colonel says, “mention the names of the sceptics or the grounds of their suspicions.” “The sceptics,” or one of them, was myself: I had “suspected” on much the same grounds as Colonel Elliot’s own, and I shall give my reasons for adopting a more conservative opinion. One reason is merely subjective. As a man, by long familiarity with ancient works of art, Greek gems, for example, acquires a sense of their authenticity, or the reverse, so he does in the case of ballads—or thinks he does—but of course this result of experience is no ground of argument: experts are often gulled. The ballad varies in many points from Satchells’, which Colonel Elliot explains thus: “I think that the cause for the narrative at times diverging from that recorded by the rhymes (of Satchells), is due, partly to artistic considerations, partly to the author having wished to bring it more or less into conformity with history.” {131a}

Colonel Elliot quotes Scott’s preface to the ballad: “In many things Satchells agrees with the ballads current in his time” (1643–88), “from which in all probability he derived most of his information as to past events, and from which he occasionally pirates whole verses, as we noticed in the annotations upon the _Raid of the Reidswire_. In the present instance he mentions the prisoner’s large spurs (alluding to fetters), and some other little incidents noticed in the ballad, which therefore was probably well known in his day.”

As Satchells was born in 1613, while the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ by Buccleuch, out of Carlisle Castle, was in 1596, and as Satchells’ father was in that adventure (or so Satchells says) he probably knew much about the affair from fresh tradition. Colonel Elliot notices this, and says: “The probability of Satchells having obtained information from a hypothetical ballad is really quite an inadmissible argument.”

This comes near to begging the question. As contemporary incidents much less striking and famous than the rescue of _Kinmont Willie_ were certainly recorded in ballads, the opinion that there was a ballad of _Kinmont Willie_ is a legitimate hypothesis, which must be tested on its merits. For example, we shall ask, Does Satchells’ version yield any traces of ballad sources?

My own opinion has been anticipated by Mr. Frank Miller in his _The Poets of Dumfriesshire_ (p. 33, 1910), and in ballad-lore Mr. Miller is well equipped. He says: “The balance of probability seems to be in favour of the originality of _Kinmont Willie_,” rather than of Satchells (he means, not of our _Kinmont Willie_ as Scott gives it, but of a ballad concerning the Kinmont). “Captain Walter Scott’s” (of Satchells) “_True History_ was certainly gathered out of the ballads current in his day, as well as out of formal histories, and his account of the assault on the Castle reads like a narrative largely due to suggestions from some popular lay.”

Does Satchells’ version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay? Undoubtedly it does.

Satchells’ prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie—

It fell about the Martinmas When kine was in the prime

that Willie “brought a prey out of Northumberland.” The old ballad, disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula. Lord Scrope vowed vengence:—

Took Kinmont the self-same night.

If he had had but ten men more, That had been as stout as he, Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta’en With all his company.

Scott’s ballad (stanza i.) says that “fause Sakelde” and Scrope took Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby _did_), and

Had Willie had but twenty men, But twenty men as stout as he, Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta’en, Wi’ eight score in his cumpanie.

Manifestly either Satchells is here “pirating” a verse of a ballad (as Scott holds) or Scott, if he had _no_ ballad fragments before him, is “pirating” a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.

In my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like _Jamie Telfer_, “It fell about the Martinmas tyde,” or, like _Otterburn_, “It fell about the Lammas tide,” and he opened with this formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, “If he had had but ten men more,” which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott’s ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satchells is again reminiscent of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.

In the ballad (iii.–viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table. Satchells also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises to “take his leave” of Scrope before he quits the Castle.

In Scott’s ballad (Scrope speaks) (stanza vi.).

Before ye cross my castle yate, I trow ye shall take fareweel o’ me.

Willie replies—

I never yet lodged in a hostelrie, But I paid my lawing before I gaed.

In Satchells, Lord Scrope says—

“Before thou goest away thou must Even take thy leave of me?” “By the cross of my sword,” says Willie then, “I’ll take my leave of thee.”

Now, had Scott been pirating Satchells, I think he would have kept “By the cross of my sword,” which is picturesque and probable, Willie being no good Presbyterian. In _Otterburne_, Scott, _altering Hogg’s copy_, makes Douglas swear “By the might of Our Ladye.”

It is a question of opinion; but I do think that if Scott were merely paraphrasing and pirating Satchells, he could not have helped putting into his version the Catholic, “‘By the cross of my sword,’ then Willy said,” as given by Satchells. To do this was safe, as Scott had said that Satchells does pirate ballads. On the other hand, Satchells, composing in black 1688, when Catholicism had been stamped out on the _Scottish Border_, was not apt to invent “By the cross of my sword.” It _looks_ like Scott’s work, for he, of course, knew how Catholicism lingered among the spears of Bothwell, himself a Catholic, in 1596. But it is _not_ Scott’s work, it is in Satchells. In both Satchells and the ballad, news comes to Buccleuch. Here Satchells again balladises—

“It is that way?” Buckcleugh did say; “Lord Scrope must understand That he has not only done me wrong But my Sovereign, James of Scotland.

“My Sovereign Lord, King of Scotland, Thinks not his cousin Queen, Will offer to invade his land Without leave asked and gi’en.”

I do not see how Satchells could either invent or glean from tradition the gist of Buccleuch’s diplomatic remonstrances, first with Salkeld, for Scrope was absent at the time of Willie’s capture, then with Scrope. Buccleuch, in fact, wrote that the taking of Willie was “to the touch of the King,” a stain on his honour, says a contemporary manuscript. {135a}

In a _contemporary_ ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would be known and reported. But at this point (at Buccleuch’s reception of the news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity, and, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.

O is my basnet a widow’s curch? Or my lance a wand o’ the willow tree?

and so on. Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is only sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other grounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza xiii.

O were there war between the lands, As well I wot that there is none, I would slight Carlisle castle high, Tho’ it were built o’ marble stone!

Thence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made “harmonious,” as Hogg put it) ran into stanza xxxi., where Scott probably introduced the Elliot tune (if it be ancient)—

O wha dare meddle wi’ me?

Satchells next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch’s correspondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all their names and estates, with remarks on their relationships. He thinks himself a historian and a genealogist. The stuff is partly in prose lines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths. There are two or three more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too bad for any author but Satchells.

Scott’s ballad “cuts” all that, omits even what Satchells gives—mentions of Harden, and goes on (xv.)—

He has called him forty marchmen bauld, I trow they were of his own name. Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.

Now I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that “stall-copy” stanza! Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the ballad-faker should avoid being too poetical. The ballad-faker _should_ shun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott did not know this, nor did Hogg. We can always track them by their too decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.

The ballad next gives (xvi.–xxv.) the spirited stanzas on the ride to the Border—

There were five and five before them a’, Wi’ hunting horns and bugles bright; And five and five came wi’ Buccleuch, Like Warden’s men arrayed for fight.

And five and five like a mason gang, That carried the ladders lang and hie; And five and five like broken men, And so they reached the Woodhouselee.

—a house in Scotland, within “a lang mile” of Netherby, in England, the seat of the Grahams, who were partial, for private reasons, to the Scottish cause. They were at deadly feud with Thomas Musgrave, Captain of Bewcastle, and Willie had married a Graham.

Now in my opinion, up to stanza xxvi., all the evasive answers given to Salkeld by each gang, till Dicky o’ Dryhope (a real person) replies with a spear-thrust—

“For never a word o’ lear had he,”

are not an invention of Scott’s (who knew that Salkeld was not met and slain), but a fantasy of the original ballad. Here I have only familiarity with the romantic perversion of facts that marks all ballads on historical themes to guide me.

Salkeld is met—

“As we crossed the Batable land, When to the English side we held.”

The ballad does not specify the crossing of Esk, nor say that Salkeld was on the English side; nor is there any blunder in the reply of the “mason gang”—

“We gang to harry a corbie’s nest, That wons not far frae Woodhouselee.”

Whether on English or Scottish soil the masons say not, and their pretence is derisive, bitterly ironical.

Colonel Elliot makes much of the absence of mention of the Esk, and says “it is _after_ they are in England that the false reports are spread.” {139a} But the ballad does not say so—read it! All passes with judicious vagueness.

“As we crossed the Batable land, When to the English side we held.”

Satchells knows that the ladders were made at Woodhouselee; it took till nightfall to finish them. The ballad, swift and poetical, takes the ladders for granted—as a matter of fact, chronicled in the dispatches, the Grahams of Netherby harboured Buccleuch: Netherby was his base.

“I could nought have done that matter without great friendship of the Grames of Eske,” wrote Buccleuch, in a letter which Scrope intercepted. {139b}