Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/207

 CORRESPONDENCE.

The Sources of some Ballads in the " Border Minstrelsy."

When writing the life of Lockhart I received from a member of the family of Sir William Laidlaw, the amanuensis and friend of Sir Walter Scott, some unpublished letters of Scott, Hogg, and Lockhart. These throw a little light on a difficult subject, Scott's method of editing the Border Minstrelsy. In the summer of 1800 Scott made the acquaintance of Laidlaw, at Blackhouse on the Douglas burn, a tributary of the Yarrow. Sir Walter was then collecting the ballads, and received much aid from Laidlaw, who was helped by James Hogg, then a shepherd. I found a letter of Scott's to Laidlaw, dated July -20, 1801. He was trying to recyver the ballad of The Outlaw Murray. This ballad is much of a mystery as to any historical grains of fact which it may contain. 1 Hogg had an uncle who remembered a few verses, including the Outlaw's boast as to his landed property :

" I took it irae the Soudan Turk, When you and your men durst na come see.""

' [This ballad professes to relate the origin of the Hereditary Sherift'dom of Ettrick Forest, in the family of Murray of Philiphaugh. The King of Scot- land hearing that " there was an outlaw in Ettrick P'orest, counted him nought, nor all his courtrie," sends a messenger desiring him to "come and be my man, and hold of me that forest free," or else " I will cast his castle down and make a widow of his gay ladye." The Outlaw Murray refuses (" ' The lands are mine ' the outlaw said, ' I ken nae King in Christentie ' "), backed by his wife, who fears treachery in Edinburgh. The King sets forth with 5,000 troops, halts on the borders of the Forest, and trysts Murray to a parley. Finally, Murray is " made Sheriff of Ettrick Forest, surely while upward grows the tree ; and if he was na traitour to the King, forfaulted he should never be." — Ed.]