Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/208

 1 92 Correspondence.

"Who the devil," asks Hogg, "was this Soudan TiirkV In an Abbotsford copy in Laidlaw's hand, is :

" I took it frae the Souden Turk

Where nae sic cuckold king might be."

The orthodox reading is :

" Frae Sondron I this forest won, When the king nors knights were not to see."

We can only conclude that the ballad was fairly old in 1801, when a reciter had already confused the English, " the Southron," with the " Soldan " or " Soudan Turk." Hogg at this time was anxious to make songs of his own on the lines of the ballad fragments, but doubted if this would be fair to Scott, himself busy with the subject.

Hogg is connected with the most puzzling of all the ballads, Auld Maitland, which I cannot find in Professor Child's great collection. On January 21, 1803, Scott writes to Laidlaw, in the unpublished correspondence : " Whenever the third volume is finished you shall have a copy, and you will see how very much it owes to our Selkirkshire collections. Auld Maitland^ laced and embroidered with antique notes and illustrations, makes a most superb figure." In his notes to the Minstrelsy Scott says that Hogg's mother got the ballad " from a bUnd man who died at the

advanced age of ninety She" (his mother) "sings or rather

chants it with great animation." ^ Scott thought that a modern ballad-maker could not have introduced archaic words like " sprmgalds," "sowies," and " portcullize," in which he rejoiced

' ["This ballad, notwithstanding its present appearance, has a claim to very high antiquity. It has been preserved by tradition, and is, perhaps, the most authentic instance of a long and very old poem exclusively thus preserved. It is only known to a few old people upon the sequestered banks of the Ettrick, and is published as written down from the recitation of the mother of Mr. James Hogg,** This old woman is still alive, and at present resides at Craig of Douglas, in Selkirkshire] who sings, or rather chaunts it, with great animation. She learned the ballad from a blind man, who died at the advanced age of ninety, and is said to have been possessed of much traditionary knowledge. Although the language of this poem is much modernised, yet many words which the reciters have retained without understanding them still preserve traces of its antiquity" (&c.). Introduction to Auld Maitland, Border Minstrelsy, 5th ed., iii., 15.

The ballad relates how "young Edward," apparently an unhistorical per-