Colonel Elliot does not agree with me. So be it.
Colonel Elliot writes that,—in place of my saying that Jamie Telfer “is a mere mythical perversion of carefully recorded facts,”—“it would surely be more correct to say that it is a fairly true, though jumbled, account of actual incidents, separated from each other by only short periods of time . . . ” [108b] If he means, or thinks that I mean, that the actual facts were the capture of Musgrave near Bewcastle in 1596 by the Armstrongs, with Buccleuch’s hot-trod, and Martin Elliot’s slaying in 1597, I entirely agree with him that the facts are “jumbled.” But as to the opinion that the ballad is “fairly true” about the raid to Ettrick (the Captain could not ride a mile beyond the Border without the Warden’s permission), about the non-existent Jamie Telfer, about the shooting, taking, and plundering of the Captain, about his loss of seventeen men wounded and slain (he lost about as many prisoners),—I have given reasons for my disbelief.
VI
IS THE SCOTT VERSION, WITH ELLIOTS AND SCOTTS TRANSPOSED, THE LATER VERSION?
We now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the ballad (apart from Sir Walter’s decorative stanzas) necessarily later than the Elliot version in Sharpe’s copy? The chief argument for the lateness of the Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of Stobs at a date when this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have already treated. If the ballad is no earlier than the date when Elliot was believed (as by Satchells) to have obtained Stobs before 1596, the argument falls to the ground.
Starting from that point, and granting that a minstrel fond of the Scotts wants to banter the Elliots, he may make Telfer ask aid at Stobs. After that, which version is better in its topography? Bidden by Stobs to seek Buccleuch, Telfer runs to Teviot, to Coultartcleugh, some four miles above Branksome. Branksome was nearer, but Telfer was shy, let us say, and did not know Buccleuch; while at Coultartcleugh, Jock Grieve was his brother-in-law. Jock gives him a mount, and takes him to “Catslockhill.”
Now, no Catslockhill is known anywhere, to me or to Colonel Elliot. Mr. Henderson, in a note to the ballad, [110a] speaks of “Catslack in Branxholm,” and cites the Register of the Privy Seal for 4th June 1554, and the Register of the Privy Council for 14th October 1592. The records are full of that Catslack, but it is not in Branksome. Blaeu’s map (1600–54) gives it, with its appurtenances, on the north side of St. Mary’s Loch. There is a Catslack on the north side of Yarrow, near Ladhope, on the southern side. Neither Catslack is the Catslockhill of the Scott ballad. But on evidence, “and it is good evidence,” says Colonel Elliot, [110b] I prove that, in 1802, a place called “Catlochill” existed between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The place (Mrs. Grieve, Branksome Park, informs me) is now called Branksome-braes. On his copy of The Minstrelsy of 1802, Mr. Grieve, then tenant of Branksome Park, made a marginal note. Catlochill was still known to him; it was in a commanding site, and had been strengthened by the art of man. His note I have seen and read.
Thus, on good evidence, there was a Catlochill, or Catlockhill, between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The Scott version is right in its topography.
This fact was unknown to Colonel Elliot. Not knowing a Catslackhill or Catslockhill in Teviot, he made Scott’s Telfer go to an apocryphal Catlockhill in Liddesdale. Professor Veitch had said that the Catslockhill of the ballad “is to be sought” in some locality between Coultartcleugh and Branxholm. Colonel Elliot calls this “a really preposterously cool suggestion.” [111a] Why “really preposterously cool”? Being sought, the place is found where it had always been. Jamie Telfer found it, and in it his friend “William’s Wat,” who took him to the laird of Buccleuch at Branksome.
In the Elliot version, when refused aid by Buccleuch, Jamie ran to Coultartcleugh,—as in Scott’s,—on his way to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on the Liddel. Jamie next “takes the fray” to “the Catlockhill,” and is there remounted by “Martin’s Hab,” an Elliot (not by William’s Wat), and they “take the fray” to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh in Liddesdale. This is very well, but where is this “Catlockhill” in Liddesdale? Is it even a real place?
Colonel Elliot has found no such place; nor can I find it in the Registrum Magni Sigilli, nor in Blaeu’s map of 1600–54.