Chapter VII: Scott Had a Copy of the Ballad Which Was Not the Sharpe Copy

Did Scott know no other version than that of the Sharpe MS.? In Scott’s version, stanza xlix., the last, is absent from the Elliot version, which concludes triumphantly, thus—

Now on they came to the fair Dodhead,
They were a welcome sight to see,
And instead of his ain ten milk-kye
Jamie Telfer’s gotten thirty and three.

Scott too gives this, but ends with a verse not in Sharpe—

And he has paid the rescue shot
Baith wi’ goud and white money,
And at the burial o’ Willie Scott
I wat was mony a weeping ee.

Did Scott add this? Proof is impossible; but the verse is so prosaic, and so injurious to the triumphant preceding verse, that I think Scott found it in his copy: in which case he had another copy than Sharpe’s.

Scott (stanza xviii.) reads “Catslockhill” where the Sharpe MS. reads “Catlockhill.” In Scott’s time it was a mound, but the name was then known to Mr. Grieve, the tenant of Branksome Park. To-day I cannot find the mound; is it likely that Scott, before making the change, sought diligently for the mound and its name? If so, he found “_Catlochill_,” for so Mr. Grieve writes it, not Catslockhill.

Meanwhile Colonel Elliot, we know, has no Catlockhill where he wants it; he has only Gatliehill, unless his Blaeu varies from my copy, and Gatliehill is not Catlockhill.

Scott gives (xlviii.) the speech of the Captain after he is shot through the head and in another dangerous part of his frame—

“Hae back thy kye!” the Captain said,
“Dear kye, I trow, to some they be,
For gin I suld live a hundred years,
There will ne’er fair lady smile on me.”

This is not in Sharpe’s MS., and I attribute this redundant stanza to Scott’s copy. The Captain, remember, has a shot “through his head,” and another which must have caused excruciating torture. In these circumstances would a poet like Scott put in his mouth a speech which merely reiterates the previous verse? No! But the verse was in Scott’s copy.

Colonel Elliot has himself noted a more important point than these: he quotes Scott’s stanza xii., which is absent from the Sharpe MS.—

My hounds may a’ rin masterless,
My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,
My lord may grip my vassal lands,
For there again maun I never be!

“They are, doubtless, beautiful lines, but their very beauty jars like a false note. One feels they were written by another hand, by an artist of a higher stamp than a Border ‘ballad-maker.’ And not only is it their beauty that jars, but so also does their inapplicability to Jamie Telfer and to the circumstances in which he found himself—so much so, indeed, that it may well occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has accidentally been pitchforked into this one. It would not have been out of place in the ballad of _The Battle of Otterbourne_, and, indeed, it bears some resemblance to a stanza in that ballad.” Here the Colonel says that the lines “one feels were written by another hand, by an artist of a higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker.” But “it may also occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has _accidentally_” (my italics) “been pitchforked into this”: a very sound inference.

Now if Scott had only the Sharpe version, he was the last man to “pitchfork” into it, “accidentally,” a stanza from “some other ballad,” that stanza being as Colonel Elliot says “inapplicable” to Telfer and his circumstances. Poor Jamie, a small tenant-farmer, with ten cows, and, as far as we learn, not one horse, had no hawks and hounds; no “vassal lands,” and no reason to say that at the Dodhead he “maun never be again.” He could return from his long run! Scott certainly did not compose these lines; and he could not have pitchforked them into _Jamie Telfer_, either by accident or design.

Professor Child remarked on all this: “Stanza xii. is not only found elsewhere (compare _Young Beichan_, E vi.), but could not be more inappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not responsible for that.” {120a}

The hawk that flies from tree to tree

is a formula; it comes in the Kinloch MS. copy of the ballad of _Jamie Douglas_, date about 1690.

I know no proof that Scott was acquainted with variant E of _Young Beichan_. {120b} If he had been, he could not have introduced into _Jamie Telfer_ lines so utterly out of keeping with Telfer’s circumstances, as Colonel Elliot himself says that stanza xii. is. It may be argued, “if Scott _did_ find stanza xii. in his copy, it was in his power to cut it out; he treated his copies as he pleased.” This is true, but my position is that, of the two, Scott is more likely to have let the stanza abide where he found it (as he did with his MS. of _Tamlane_, retaining its absurdities) in his copy, than to “pitchfork it in,” from an obscure variant of _Young Beichan_, which we cannot prove that he had ever heard or read. But as we can never tell that Scott did _not_ know any rhyme, we ask, why did he “pitchfork in” the stanza, where it was quite out of place? Child absolves him from this absurdity.

Thus Scott had before him another than the Sharpe copy; had a copy containing stanza xii. That copy presented the perversion—the transposition of Scott’s and Elliot’s—and into that copy Scott wrote the stanzas which bear his modern romantic mark. Colonel Elliot, we saw, is uncertain whether to attribute stanza xii. to “another hand, an artist of higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker,” or to regard it as belonging “to some other ballad,” and as having been “accidentally pitchforked into this one.” The stanza is, in fact, an old floating ballad stanza, attracted into the _cantefable of Susie Pye_, and the ballad of _Young Beichan_ (E), and partly into _Jamie Douglas_. Thus Scott did not _make_ the stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the stanza in any form, he either “accidentally pitchforked” or wilfully inserted into _Jamie Telfer_ anything so absurdly inappropriate. The inference is that Scott worked on another copy, not the Sharpe copy.

If Scott had not a copy other than Sharpe’s, why should he alter Sharpe’s (vii.)

The moon was up and the sun was down,

into

The sun wasna up but the moon was down?

What did he gain by that? _Why did he make Jamie_ “_of_” _not_ “_in_” _the Dodhead_, _if he found_ “_in_” _in his copy_? “In” means “tenant in,” “of” means “laird of,” as nobody knew better than Scott. Jamie is evidently no laird, but “of” was in Scott’s copy.

If the question were about two Greek texts, the learned would admit that these points in A (Scott) are not derived from B (Sharpe). Scott’s additions have an obvious motive, they add picturesqueness to his clan. But the differences which I have noticed do nothing of that kind. When they affect the poetry they spoil the poetry, when they do not affect the poetry they are quite motiveless, whence I conclude that Scott followed his copy in these cases, and that his copy was not the Sharpe MS.

If I have satisfied the reader on that point I need not touch on Colonel Elliot’s long and intricate argument to prove, or suggest, that Scott had before him no copy of the ballad except one supposed by the Colonel to have been taken by James Hogg from his mother’s recitation, while that copy, again, is supposed to be the Sharpe MS.—all sheer conjecture. {122a} Not that I fear to encounter Colonel Elliot on this ground, but argufying on it is dull, and apt to be inconclusive.

In the letter of Hogg to Scott (June 30, 1803) as given by Mr. Douglas in _Familiar Letters_, Hogg says, “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s . . . _Jamie Telfer_ differs in many particulars.” {123a} The marks of omission were all filled up in Hogg’s MS. letter thus: “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine? I suspect it.” Then it runs on, “_Jamie Telfer_ differs in many particulars.”

I owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Macmath. What does Hogg mean? Does “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine?” mean all Herd’s MS. copies used by Scott? Or does it refer to _Jamie Telfer_ in especial?

Mr. Macmath, who possesses C. K. Sharpe’s MS. copy of the Elliot version, believes that it is Herd’s hand as affected by age. Mr. Macmath and I independently reached the conclusion that by “Mr. Herd’s MS.” Hogg meant all Herd’s MSS., which Scott quoted in _The Minstrelsy_ of 1803. Their readings varied from Mrs. Hogg’s; therefore Hogg misdoubted them. He adds that _Jamie Telfer_ differs from his mother’s version, without meaning that, for _Jamie_, Scott used a Herd MS.