This ballad is inserted, not for its
merit, still less for its authenticity, but for the problem of its
puzzling history. Scott certainly got it from the mother of the
Ettrick Shepherd, in 1801. The Shepherd's father had been a grown-
up man in 1745, and his mother was also of a great age, and
unlikely to be able to learn a new-forged ballad by heart. The
Shepherd himself (then a most unsophisticated person) said, in a
letter of June 30, 1801, that he was "surprized to hear this song
is suspected by some to be a modern forgery; the contrary will be
best proved by most of the old people, here about, having a great
part of it by heart." The two last lines of verse seven were,
confessedly, added by Hogg, to fill a lacuna. They are especially
modern in style. Now thus to fill up sham lacunae in sham ballads
of his own, with lines manifestly modern, was a favourite trick of
Surtees of Mainsforth. He used the device in "Barthram's Dirge,"
which entirely took in Sir Walter, and was guilty of many other
supercheries, especially of the "Fray of Suport Mill." Could the
unlettered Shepherd, fond of hoaxes as he was, have invented this
stratagem, sixteen years before he joined the Blackwood set? And
is it conceivable that his old mother, entering into the joke,
would commit her son's fraudulent verses to memory, and recite them
to Sir Walter as genuine tradition? She said to Scott, that the
ballad "never was printed i' the world, for my brothers and me
learned it and many mae frae auld Andrew Moore, and he learned it
frae auld Baby Mettlin" (Maitland?) "wha was housekeeper to the
first laird o' Tushilaw.
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