That Scott got the ballad in spring 1802 is easily proved. On 10th April 1802, Joseph Ritson, the crabbed, ill-tempered, but meticulously accurate scholar, who thought that ballad-forging should be made a capital offence, wrote thus to Scott:—
“I have the pleasure of enclosing my copy of a very ancient poem, which appears to me to be the original of The Wee Wee Man, and which I learn from Mr. Ellis you are desirous to see.” In Scott’s letter to Ellis, just quoted, he says: “I have lately had from him” (Ritson) “a copie of ‘Ye litel wee man,’ of which I think I can make some use. In return, I have sent him a sight of Auld Maitland, the original MS . . . I wish him to see it in puris naturalibus.” “The precaution here taken was very natural,” says Lockhart, considering Ritson’s temper and hatred of literary forgeries. Scott, when he wrote to Ellis, had received Ritson’s The Wee Wee Man “lately”: it was sent to him by Ritson on 10th April 1802. Scott had already, when he wrote to Ellis, got “the original MS. of Auld Maitland” (now in Abbotsford Library). By 10th June 1802 Ritson wrote saying, “You may depend on my taking the utmost care of Old Maitland, and returning it in health and safety. I would not use the liberty of transcribing it into my manuscript copy of Mrs. Brown’s ballads, but if you will signify your permission, I shall be highly gratified.” [25] “Your ancient and curious ballad,” he styles the piece.
Thus Scott had Auld Maitland in May 1802; he sent the original MS. to Ritson; Ritson received it graciously; he had, on 10th April 1802, sent Scott another MS., The Wee Wee Man: and when Scott wrote to Ellis about his surprise at getting “a complete and perfect copy of Maitland,” he had but lately received The Wee Wee Man, sent by Ritson on 10th April 1802. He had made a spring, not an autumn, raid into the Forest.
We now know the external history of the ballad. Laidlaw, hearing his servant repeat some stanzas, asks Hogg for the full copy, which Hogg sends with a pedigree from which he never wavered. Auld Andrew Muir taught the song to Hogg’s mother and uncle. Hogg took it from his uncle’s recitation, and sent it, directed outside,
To Mr. William laidlaw,
Blackhouse,
and Laidlaw gave it to Scott, in March 12–May 12, 1802. But Scott, publishing the ballad in The Minstrelsy (1803), says it is given “as written down from the recitation of the mother of Mr. James Hogg, who sings, or rather chants, it with great animation” (manifestly he had heard the recitation which he describes).
It seems that Scott, before he wrote to Ellis in May 1802, had misgivings about the ballad. Says Carruthers, he “made another visit to Blackhouse for the purpose of getting Laidlaw as a guide to Ettrick,” being “curious to see the poetical shepherd.”
Laidlaw’s MS., used by Carruthers, describes the wild ride by the marshes at the head of the Loch of the Lowes, through the bogs on the knees of the hills, down a footpath to Ramseycleuch in Ettrick. They sent to Ettrick House for Hogg; Scott was surprised and pleased with James’s appearance. They had a delightful evening: “the qualities of Hogg came out at every instant, and his unaffected simplicity and fearless frankness both surprised and pleased the Sheriff.” [26a] Next morning they visited Hogg and his mother at her cottage, and Hogg tells how the old lady recited Auld Maitland. Hogg gave the story in prose, with great vivacity and humour, in his Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott (1834).
In an earlier poetical address to Scott, congratulating him on his elevation to the baronetcy (1818), the Shepherd says—
When Maitland’s song first met your ear,
How the furled visage up did clear.
Beaming delight! though now a shade
Of doubt would darken into dread,
That some unskilled presumptuous arm
Had marred tradition’s mighty charm.
Scarce grew thy lurking dread the less,
Till she, the ancient Minstreless,
With fervid voice and kindling eye,
And withered arms waving on high,
Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek,
While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek:
“Na, we are nane o’ the lads o’ France,
Nor e’er pretend to be;
We be three lads of fair Scotland,
Auld Maitland’s sons a’ three.”