Chapter 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.