Scott saw the real meaning of this nonsense, and read—
With springalds, stones, and gads o’ airn.
In his preface he says that many words in the ballad, “which the reciters have retained without understanding them, still preserve traces of their antiquity.” For instance, springalls, corruptedly pronounced springwalls. Hogg, hearing the pronunciation, and not understanding, wrote, “with springs: wall stanes.” A leader would not throw “wall stanes” till he had exhausted his ammunition. Hogg heard “with springwalls stones, he threw,” and wrote it, “with springs: wall stones he threw.”
Hogg could not know of Auld Maitland “and his three noble sons” except through an informant familiar with the Maitland MSS. in Edinburgh University Library. On the theory of a conspiracy to forge, Scott taught him, but that theory is crushed.
Hogg says, in Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott, that when his mother met Scott she told him that her brother and she learned the ballad from auld Andrew Muir, and he from “auld Babby Mettlin,” housekeeper of the first (“Anderson”) laird of Tushielaw. This first Anderson, laird of Tushielaw, reigned from 1688 to 1721 (?) or 1724. [48a] Hogg’s mother was born in 1730, and was only one remove—filled up by Andrew Muir—from Babby, who was “ither than a gude yin,” and knew many songs. Does any one think Hogg crafty enough to have invented Babby Maitland as the source of a song about the Maitlands, and to have introduced her into his narrative in 1834? I conjecture that this Maitland woman knew a Maitland song, modernised in time, and perhaps copied out and emended by one of the Maitland family, possibly one of the descendants of Lethington. We know that, under James I., about 1620, Lethington’s impoverished son, James, had several children; and that Lauderdale was still supporting them (or their children) during the Restoration. Only a century before, ballads on the Maitlands had certainly been popular, and there is nothing impossible in the suggestion that one such ballad survived in the Lauderdale or Lethington family, and came through Babby Maitland to Andrew Muir, then to Hogg’s mother, to Hogg, and to Scott.
If a manuscript copy ever existed, and was Babby’s ultimate source, it would be of the late seventeenth century. That is the ascertained date of the oldest known MS. of The Outlaw Murray, as is proved from an allusion in a note appended to a copy, referring to a Judge of Session, Lord Philiphaugh, as then alive. The copy was of 1689–1702. [49a]
Granting a MS. of Auld Maitland existing in any branch of the Maitland family in 1680–1700, Babby Mettlin’s knowledge of the ballad, and its few modernisms, are explained.
As Lockhart truly says, Hogg “was the most extraordinary man that ever wore the maud of a shepherd.” He had none of Burns’ education. In 1802 he was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of research in the crabbed MSS. of the sixteenth century. Yet he gets at legendary persons known to us only through these MSS. He makes a ballad named Auld Maitland about them. Through him a farm-lass at Blackhouse acquires some stanzas which Laidlaw copies. In a fortnight Hogg sends Laidlaw the whole ballad, with the pedigree—his uncle, his mother, their father, and old Andrew Muir, servant to the famous Rev. Mr. Boston of Ettrick. The copy takes in Scott and Leyden. Later, Ritson makes no objection. Mrs. Hogg recites it to Scott, and, according to Hogg, gives a casual “auld Babby Maitland” as the original source.
Is the whole fraud conceivable? Hogg, we must believe, puts in two stanzas (xv., xviii.), of the lowliest order of printed stall-copy or “gangrel scrape-gut” style, and the same with intent to deceive. He introduces “Billop-Grace” as a deceptive popular corruption of Ville de Grace. This is far beyond any craft that I have found in the most artful modern “fakers.” One stanza (xlix.)—
But Ethert Lunn, a baited bear,
Had many battles seen—