We must look into the facts of the case. I know no older published copy of the ballad than that of Scott, in Border Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 91 et seqq. (1802). Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick shepherd to Scott of “June 30, 1802” thus: “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s; Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars.” [98a] (This is an incomplete quotation. I give the MS. version later.)
Scott himself, before Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to his Jamie Telfer: “There is another ballad, under the same title as the following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little difference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed to the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief there called Martin Elliot of the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simm, is said to have fallen in the action. It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the Elliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honour of the victory.”
Old Mrs. Hogg’s version, “differing in many particulars” from Scott’s, must have been the Elliot version, published by Professor Child, as “A*,” “Jamie Telfer in” (not “of”) “the Fair Dodhead,” “from a MS. written about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now in the possession of Mr. William Macmath”; it had previously belonged to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. [98b]
There is one great point of difference between the two forms. In Sir Walter’s variant, verse 26 summons the Scotts of Teviotdale, including Wat of Harden. In his 28 the Scotts ride with the slogan “Rise for Branksome readily.” Scott’s verses 34, 36, and the two first lines of 38, are, if there be such a thing as internal evidence, from his own pen. Such lines as
The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white
Nor the lyart locks o’ Harden’s hair
are cryingly modern and “Scottesque.”
That Sir Walter knew the other version, as in Mr. Macmath’s MS. of the early nineteenth century, is certain; he describes that version in his preface. That he effected the whole transposition of Scotts for Elliots is Colonel Elliot’s opinion. [99a]
If Scott did, I am not the man to defend his conduct; I regret and condemn it; and shall try to prove that he found the matter in his copy. I shall first prove, beyond possibility of doubt, that the ballad is, from end to end, utterly unhistorical, though based on certain real incidents of 1596–97. I shall next show that the Elliot version is probably later than the Scott version. Finally, I shall make it certain (or so it seems to me) that Scott worked on an old copy which was not the copy that belonged to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, but contained points of difference, not those inserted by Sir Walter Scott about “Dinlay snaw,” and so forth.
IV
WHO WAS THE FARMER IN THE DODHEAD IN 1580–1609?
Colonel Elliot has made no attempt to prove that one Telfer was tenant of the Dodhead in 1580–1603, which must, we shall see, include the years in which the alleged incidents occur. On this question—was there a Telfer in the Dodhead in 1580–1603?—I consulted my friend, Mr. T. Craig Brown, author of an excellent History of Selkirkshire. In that work (vol. i. p. 356) the author writes: “Dodhead or Scotsbank; Dodhead was one of the four stedes of Redefurd in 1455. In 1609 Robert Scot of Satchells (ancestor of the poet-captain) obtained a Crown charter of the lands of Dodbank.” For the statement that Dodhead was one of the three stedes in 1455, Mr. Craig Brown quotes “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “an unimpeachable authority.” For the Crown charter of 1609, we have only to look up “Dodbank” in the Register of the Great Seal of 1609. The charter is of November 24, 1609, and gratifies “Robert Scott of Satscheillis” (father of the Captain Walter Scott who composed the Metrical History of the Scotts in 1688) with the lands, which have been occupied by him and his forefathers “from a time past human memory.” Thus, writes Mr. Craig Brown to me, “Scott of Satchells was undoubtedly Scott of Dodhead also in 1609.”