Looking next at Scott’s Auld Maitland the story is that King Edward I. reigned for fifty years. He had a nephew Edward (an apocryphal person: such figures are common in ballads), who wished to take part in the invasion of Scotland. The English are repulsed by old Maitland from his “darksome house” on the Leader. The English, however, (stanza xv.) conquer Scotland, and join Edward I. in France. They besiege that town,
Which some call Billop-Grace (xviii.).
Here Maitland’s three sons are learning at school, as Scots often were educated in France. They see that Edward’s standard quarters the arms of France, and infer that he has conquered their country. They “will try some jeopardy.” Persuading the English that they are themselves Englishmen, they ask leave to carry the royal flag. The eldest is told that he is singularly like Auld Maitland. In anger he stabs the standard-bearer, seizes the flag, and, with his brothers, spurs to Billop-Grace, where the French captain receives them. There is fighting at the gate. The King says that three disguised lads of France have stolen his flag. The Maitlands apparently heard of this; the youngest goes to Edward, and explains that they are Maitland’s sons, and Scots; they challenge any three Englishmen; a thing in the manner of the period. The three Scots are victorious. Young Edward then challenges one of the dauntless three, who slays him. Edward wishes himself home at London Tower.
Such is the story. It is out of the regular line of ballad narrative, but it does not follow that, in the sixteenth century, some such tale was not told “in rural rhyme” about Maitland’s “three noble sons.” That it is not historically true is nothing, of course, and that it is not in the Scots of the thirteenth century is nothing.
Colonel Elliot asks, What in the ballad raised suspicion of forgery (in 1802–03)? The historical inaccuracies are common to all historical ballads. (In an English ballad known to me of 1578, Henry Darnley is “hanged on a tree”!)
Next, “there are occasional lines, and even stanzas, which jar in style to such a degree that they must have been written by two separate hands.”
But this, also, is a common feature. In “Professor Child and the Ballad,” Mr. W. M. Hart gives a list of Professor Child’s notes on the multiplicity of hands, which he, and every critic, detect in some ballads with a genuinely antique substratum. [44a]
Colonel Elliot quotes, as in his opinion the best, stanzas viii., ix., x., xi., while he thinks xv., xviii. the worst. I give these stanzas—
VIII.
They lighted on the banks o’ Tweed,
And blew their coals sae het,
And fired the Merse and Teviotdale,
All in an evening late.