Sir Walters method of editing, of presenting his traditional materials, was literary, and, usually, not scientific. A modern collector would publish things legends, ballads, or folk-tales exactly as he found them in old broadsides, or in MS. copies, or received them from oral recitation. He would give the names and residences and circumstances of the reciters or narrators (Herd, in 1776, gave no such information). He would fill up no gaps with his own inventions, would add no stanzas of his own, and the circulation of his work would arrive at some two or three hundred copies given away!
As Lockhart says, Scotts diligent zeal had put him in possession of a variety of copies in various stages of preservation, and to the task of selecting a standard text among such a diversity of materials he brought a knowledge of old manners and phraseology, and a manly simplicity of taste, such as had never before been united in the person of a poetical antiquary.
Lockhart speaks of The editors conscientious fidelity.. which prevented the introduction of anything new, and his pure taste in the balancing of discordant recitations. He had already written that Scott had, I firmly believe, interpolated hardly a line or even an epithet of his own. 6
It is clear that Lockhart had not compared the texts in The Minstrelsy with the mass of manuscript materials which are still at Abbotsford. These, copied by the accurate Mr. Macmath, have been published in the monumental collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, in ten parts, by the late Professor Child of Harvard, the greatest of scholars in ballad-lore. From his book we often know exactly what kinds of copies of ballads Scott possessed, and what alterations he made in his copies. The Ballad of Otterburne is especially instructive, as we shall see later. But of the most famous of Border historical ballads, Kinmont Willie, and its companion, Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead, Scott has left no original manuscript texts. Now into each of these ballads Scott has written (if internal evidence be worth anything) verses of his own; stanzas unmistakably marked by his own spirit, energy, sense of romance, and, occasionally, by a somewhat inflated rhetoric. On this point doubt is not easy. When he met the names of his chief, Buccleuch, and of his favourite ancestor, Wat of Warden, Scott did, in two cases, for those heroes what, by his own confession, he did for anecdotes that came in his way he decked them out with a cocked hat and a sword.
Sir Walter knew perfectly well that he was not playing the game in a truly scientific spirit. He explains his ideas in his Essay on Popular Poetry as late as 1830. He mentions Joseph Ritsons extreme attachment to the severity of truth, and his attacks on Bishop Percys purely literary treatment of the materials of his Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765).
As Scott says, by Percy words were altered, phrases improved, and whole verses were inserted or omitted at pleasure. Percy accommodated the ballads with such emendations as might recommend them to the modern taste. Ritson cried forgery, but Percy, says Scott, had to win a hearing from his age, and confessed (in general terms) to his additions and decorations.
Scott then speaks reprovingly of Pinkertons wholesale fabrication of entire ballads (1783), a crime acknowledged later by the culprit (1786). Scott applauds Ritsons accuracy, but regrets his preference of the worst to the better readings, as if their inferiority was a security for their being genuine. Scott preferred the best, the most poetical readings.
In 1830, Scott also wrote an essay on Imitations of the Ancient Ballads, and spoke very leniently of imitations passed off as authentic. There is no small degree of cant in the violent invectives with which impostors of this nature have been assailed. As to Hardyknute, the favourite poem of his infancy, the first that I ever learned and the last that I shall forget, he says, the public is surely more enriched by the contribution than injured by the deception. Besides, he says, the deception almost never deceives.
His method in The Minstrelsy, he writes, was to imitate the plan and style of Bishop Percy, observing only more strict fidelity concerning my originals. That is to say, he avowedly made up texts out of a variety of copies, when he had more copies than one. This is frequently acknowledged by Scott; what he does not acknowledge is his own occasional interpolation of stanzas. A good example is The Gay Gosshawk. He had a MS. of his own of some antiquity, a MS. of Mrs. Brown, a famous reciter and collector of the eighteenth century; and the Abbotsford MSS. show isolated stanzas from Hogg, and a copy from Will Laidlaw. Mr. T. F. Hendersons notes 7 display the methods of selection, combination, emendation, and possible interpolation.
By these methods Scott composed a standard text, now the classical text, of the ballads which he published. Ballad lovers, who are not specialists, go to The Minstrelsy for their favourite fare, and for historical elucidation and anecdote.
Scott often mentions his sources of all kinds, such as MSS. of Herd and Mrs. Brown; an old person; an old woman at Kirkhill, West Lothian; an ostler at Carlisle; Allan Ramsays Tea-Table Miscellany; Surtees of Mainsforth (these ballads are by Surtees himself: Scott never suspected him); Caws Hawick Museum (1774); Ritsons copies, others from Leyden; the Glenriddell MSS. (collected by the friend of Burns); on several occasions copies from recitations procured by James Hogg or Will Laidlaw, and possibly or probably each of these men emended the copy he obtained; while Scott combined and emended all in his published text.
Sometimes Scott gives no source at all, and in these cases research finds variants in old broadsides, or elsewhere.
In thirteen cases he gives no source, or from tradition, which is the same thing; though tradition in Ettrick Forest may sometimes imply, once certainly does, the intermediary Hogg, or Will Laidlaw.
We now understand Scotts methods as editor. They are not scientific; they are literary. We also acknowledge (on internal evidence) his interpolation of his own stanzas in Kinmont Willie and Jamie Telfer, where he exalts his chief and ancestor. We cannot do otherwise (as scholars) than regret and condemn Scotts interpolations, never confessed. As lovers of poetry we acknowledge that, without Scotts interpolation, we could have no more of Kinmont Willie than verses, much mangled by reciters, as Scott says, of a ballad perhaps no more poetical than Jock o the Side. Scott says that some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to render it intelligible. As it is now very intelligible, to say conjectural emendations is a way of saying interpolations.
But while thus confessing Scotts sins, I cannot believe that he, like Pinkerton, palmed off on the world any ballad or ballads of his own sole manufacture, or any ballad which he knew to be forged.
The truth is that Scott was easily deceived by a modern imitation, if he liked the poetry. Surtees hoaxed him not only with Barthrams Dirge and Anthony Featherstonhaugh, but with a long prose excerpt from a non-existent manuscript about a phantom knight. Scott made the plot of Marmion hinge on this myth, in the encounter of Marmion with Wilfred as the phantasmal cavalier. He tells us that in The Flowers of the Forest the manner of the ancient minstrels is so happily imitated, that it required the most positive evidence to convince the editor that the song was of modern date. Really the author was Miss Jane Elliot (17471805), daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto. Herd published a made-up copy in 1776. The tune, Scott says, is old, and he has heard an imperfect verse of the original ballad
But while thus confessing Scotts sins, I cannot believe that he, like Pinkerton, palmed off on the world any ballad or ballads of his own sole manufacture, or any ballad which he knew to be forged.
The truth is that Scott was easily deceived by a modern imitation, if he liked the poetry. Surtees hoaxed him not only with Barthrams Dirge and Anthony Featherstonhaugh, but with a long prose excerpt from a non-existent manuscript about a phantom knight. Scott made the plot of Marmion hinge on this myth, in the encounter of Marmion with Wilfred as the phantasmal cavalier. He tells us that in The Flowers of the Forest the manner of the ancient minstrels is so happily imitated, that it required the most positive evidence to convince the editor that the song was of modern date. Really the author was Miss Jane Elliot (17471805), daughter of Sir Gilbert Elliot of Minto. Herd published a made-up copy in 1776. The tune, Scott says, is old, and he has heard an imperfect verse of the original ballad
I ride single on my saddle,
For the flowers o the forest are a wede awa
The constant use of double rhymes within the line
At een, in the gloaming, nae younkers are roaming,
an artifice rare in genuine ballads, might alone have proved to Scott that the poem of Miss Elliot is not popular and ancient.
I have cleared my conscience by confessing Scotts literary sins. His interpolations, elsewhere mere stopgaps, are mainly to be found in Kinmont Willie and Jamie Telfer. His duty was to say, in his preface to each ballad, The editor has interpolated stanza so and so; if he made up the last verses of Kinmont Willie from the conclusion of a version of Archie o Cafield, he should have said so; as he does acknowledge two stopgap interpolations by Hogg in Auld Maitland. But as to the conclusion of Kinmont Willie, he did, we shall see, make confession.
Professor Kittredge, who edited Childs last part (X.), says in his excellent abridged edition of Child (1905), It was no doubt the feeling that the popular ballad is a fluid and unstable thing that has prompted so many editors among them Sir Walter Scott, whom it is impossible to assail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove to deal freely with the versions that came into their hands.
Twenty-five years after the appearance of The Border Minstrelsy, in 1827, appeared Motherwells Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern. Motherwell was in favour of scientific methods of editing. Given two copies of a ballad, he says, perhaps they may not have a single stanza which is mutual property, except certain commonplaces which seem an integral portion of the original mechanism of all our ancient ballads.. By selecting the most beautiful and striking passages from each copy, and making those cohere, an editor, he says, may produce a more perfect and ornate version than any that exists in tradition. Of the originals the individuality entirely disappears.
Motherwell disapproved of this method, which, as a rule, is Scotts, and, scientifically, the method is not defensible. Thus, having three ballads of rescues, in similar circumstances, with a river to ford, Scott confessedly places that incident where he thinks it most poetically appropriate; and in all probability, by a single touch, he gives poetry in place of rough humour. Of all this Motherwell disapproved. (See Kinmont Willie, infra.)
Aytoun, in The Ballads of Scotland, thought Motherwell hypercritical; and also, in his practice inconsistent with his preaching. Aytoun observed, with much regret and not a little indignation (1859), that later editors insinuated a doubt as to the fidelity of Sir Walters rendering. My firm belief, resting on documentary evidence, is that Scott was most scrupulous in adhering to the very letter of his transcripts, whenever copies of ballads, previously taken down, were submitted to him. As an example, Aytoun, using a now lost MS. copy of about 16891702, of The Outlaw Murray, says Sir Walter has given it throughout just as he received it. Yet Scotts copy, mainly from a lost Cockburn MS., contains a humorous passage on Buccleuch which Child half suspects to be by Sir Walter himself. 8 It is impossible for me to know whether Childs hesitating conjecture is right or wrong. Certainly we shall see, when Scott had but one MS. copy, as of Auld Maitland, his editing left little or nothing to be desired.
But now Scott is assailed, both where he deserves, and where, in my opinion, he does not deserve censure.
Scott did no more than his confessed following of Percys method implies, to his original text of the Ballad of Otterburne. This I shall prove from his original text, published by Child from the Abbotsford MSS., and by a letter from the collector of the ballad, the Ettrick Shepherd.
The facts, in this instance, apparently are utterly unknown to Lieutenant-Colonel the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliot, in his Further Essays on Border Ballads (1910), pp. 145.
Again, I am absolutely certain, and can demonstrate, that Scott did not (as Colonel Elliot believes) detect Hogg in forging Auld Maitland, join with him in this fraud, and palm the ballad off on the public. Nothing of the kind occurred. Scott did not lie in this matter, both to the world and to his intimate friends, in private letters.
Once more, without better evidence than we possess, I do not believe that, in Jamie Telfer, Scott transferred the glory from the Elliots to the Scotts, and the shame from Buccleuch to Elliot of Stobs. The discussion leads us into very curious matter. But here, with our present materials, neither absolute proof nor disproof is possible.
Finally, as to Kinmont Willie, I merely give such reasons as I can find for thinking that Scott had mangled fragments of an old ballad before him, and did not merely paraphrase the narrative of Walter Scott of Satchells, in his doggerel True History of the Name of Scott (1688).
The positions of Colonel Elliot are in each case the reverse of mine. In the instance of Auld Maitland (where Scotts conduct would be unpardonable if Colonel Elliots view were correct), I have absolute proof that he is entirely mistaken. For Otterburne I am equally fortunate; that is, I can show that Scotts part went no further than the making of a standard text on his avowed principles. For Jamie Telfer, having no original manuscript, I admit decorative interpolations, and for the rest, argue on internal evidence, no other being accessible. For Kinmont Willie, I confess that the poem, as it stands, is Scotts, but give reasons for thinking that he had ballad fragments in his mind, if not on paper.
It will be understood that Colonel Elliot does not, I conceive, say that his charges are proved, but he thinks that the evidence points to these conclusions. He hopes that I will give reasons for my disbelief in his theories; and hopes, though he cannot expect that they will completely dispose of his views about Jamie Telfer. 9