Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 13, 1902.djvu/212

196 seems probable that there really existed, in the memories of old people, a ballad of Auld Maitland.

What Hogg did to it, if anything, we can only conjecture. If he did much, it is not easy to see how his old mother and uncle learned his additions off by rote. But Scott overlooked the obvious circumstance that a forger could have found the old words which impressed him in an accessible source.

The ballad has:—

Now Scott himself cited, as an illustration, Blind Harry's

Blind Harry was probably well known to Hogg; it was a favourite of the peasantry. If he wanted local colour he would go to Blind Harry. Thus there is a balance of probabilities. The shepherd loved a hoax, but I fail to see how he would obtain a base for his operations; for in 1801 it is all but physically impossible that he would have even heard of the Maitland MSS. of 1560-1580.

The ballad of Otterbourne has caused many searchings of heart, and Scott has even been charged with writing in,

If so, he foisted them into his first edition, where the Douglas is killed by his own page. This variant of the tale Scott later rejected. His final edition, in place of

has