Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/210

 194 Correspondence.

people in the Forest. Yet even in 1801, before the ballad was published, Hogg writes to Scott: "I am surprized to hear that this song is suspected by some to be a modern forgery." Pro- fessor Child, in his early ballad collection (1861), says, "it is with reluctance that I make for it the room which it requires." Later, he omitted the piece. In 1859, Aytoun gave his reasons for scepticism. " The ballad refers to remote events little likely to have been selected as a theme by a minstrel, even of the sixteenth century." But that, in the sixteenth century, Auld Maitland, "and his nobile sonnis three" were really topics of ballad, Scott proves by quotations from the Maitland MSS. Aytoun next sees no proof that Scott or Leyden " had heard the ballad recited by old Mrs. Hogg. I find no such statement. On the contrary it is expressly said " (by Scott writing to Ellis) " that the ballad was written down from her recitation ' by a country farmer.'" But in this letter to Ellis, Scott says that, not Mrs. Hogg, but "an old shepherd," was the reciter. Leyden was with him, he says, when he received this ^'' my firsi copy." {Lockhart, ii., pp. 99, 109.) The phrase, "my first copy," implies that Scott obtained more than one copy, and the copy which he published is not that recited by the "old shepherd," but that chanted by old Mrs. Hogg. It is certain that Scott knew her, and had heard her ballad chants.

Everyone knows Hogg's account of his first meeting with Scott. " My mother chaunted the ballad of Old Maitlaii' to him, with which he was highly delighted, and asked if it had ever been in print. And her answer was, ' O na, na, sir, it never was printed in the world, for my brothers and me learned it and many mae frae auld Andrew Moor, and he learned it frae auld Baby Metlin ' (Maitland), 'who was housekeeper to the first laird' (in the Anderson family) 'of Tushilaw.'" This sounds veracious enough; it was written in 1834.

As to Scott's letter to Ellis; probably the "country farmer" who wrote the ballad from " the old shepherd's " recitation was Laidlaw. Aytoun himself published MS. notes of Laidlaw's, in which he says that he first heard of the ballad from one of the girls on his own farm, who communicated several stanzas of which he kept the copy. The girl said that Hogg's grandfather could repeat the whole, but this was obviously an error. It was from his uncle, Will of Phawhope, and his mother that Hogg