In 1802, Scott, correcting by another MS., published Herd’s copy. In 1806 he gave another version, for “fortunately two copies have since been obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head of Ettrick Forest.” [62a]
Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of recitations, so styled, [62b] and gives his suggestions about the copy being made up from the Reliques. When Scott’s copy of 1806 agrees with the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person, familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in with differences. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the actual words. When Scott’s version touches on an incident known in history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or remaniements which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).
So Colonel Elliot says, “We are not told, either in The Minstrelsy or in any of Scott’s works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the transcribers were.” [63a] We very seldom are told by Scott who the reciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic’s information is here mournfully limited—by his own lack of study. Colonel Elliot goes on to criticise a very curious feature in Scott’s version of 1806, and finds certain lines “beautiful” but “without a note of antiquity,” that he can detect, while the sentiment “is hardly of the kind met with in old ballads.”
To understand the position we must remember that, in the English, Percy and Douglas fight each other thus (1.)—
The Percy and the Douglas met,
That either of other was fain,
They swapped together while that they sweat,
With swords of fine Collayne. (Cologne steel.)
Douglas bids Percy yield, but Percy slays Douglas (as in Walsingham’s and other contemporary chronicles, stanzas li.–lvi.). The Scottish losses are then enumerated (only eighteen Scots were left alive!), and stanza lix. runs—
This fray began at Otterburn
Between the night and the day.
There the Douglas lost his life,
And the Percy was led away.
Herd ends—
This deed was done at Otterburn,
About the breaking of the day,
Earl Douglas was buried at the bracken bush,
And Percy led captive away.
Manifestly, either the maker of Herd’s version knew the English, and altered at pleasure, or the Englishman knew a Scots version, and altered at pleasure. The perversion is of ancient standing, undeniably. But when Scott’s original text exhibits the same phenomena of perversion, in a part of the ballad missing in Herd’s brief lay, Colonel Elliot supposes that now the exchanges are by a modern ballad-forger, shall we say Sir Walter? By Sir Walter they certainly are not! One tiny hint of Scots originality is dubious. In the English, and in all Scots versions, men “win their hay” at Lammastide. In Scotland the hay harvest is often much later. But if the English ballad be Northumbrian, little can be made out of that proof of Scottish origin. If the English version be a southern version (for the minstrel is a professional), then Lammastide for hay-making is borrowed from the Scots.