Colonel Elliot’s argument has been that the Elliot version, the version of the Sharpe MS., is the earlier, for, among other reasons, its topography is correct. [112a] It makes Telfer run from Dodhead to Branksome for aid, because that was the comparatively near residence of the powerful Buccleuch. Told by Buccleuch to seek aid from Martin Elliot in Liddesdale, Telfer does so. He runs up Teviot four miles to his brother-in-law, Jock Grieve, who mounts him. He then rides off at a right angle, from Teviot to Catlockhill, says the Elliot ballad, where he is rehorsed by Martin’s Hab. The pair then take the fray to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on Liddel water, and Martin summons and leads the pursuers of the Captain.
This, to Colonel Elliot’s mind, is all plain sailing, all is feasible and natural. And so it is feasible and natural, if Colonel Elliot can find a Catlockhill anywhere between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. On that line, in Mr. Veitch’s words, Catlockhill “is to be sought.” But just as Mr. Veitch could find no Catslockhill between Coultartcleugh and Branksome, so Colonel Elliot can find no Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. He tells us [112b] indeed of “Catlockhill on Hermitage water.” But there is no such place known! Colonel Elliot’s method is to take a place which, he says, is given as “Catlie” Hill, “between Dinlay burn and Hermitage water, on Blaeu’s map of 1654.” We may murmur that Catlie Hill is one thing and Catlock another, but Colonel Elliot points out that “lock” means “the meeting of waters,” and that Catlie Hill is near the meeting of Dinlay burn and the Hermitage water. But then why does Blaeu call it, not Catlockhill, nor Catlie hill, nor “Catlie” even, but “Gatlie,” for so it is distinctly printed on my copy of the map? Really we cannot take a place called “Gatlie Hill” and pronounce that we have found “Catlockhill”! Would Colonel Elliot have permitted Mr. Veitch—if Mr. Veitch had found “Gatlie Hill” near Branksome, in Blaeu—to aver that he had found Catslockhill near Branksome?
Thus, till Colonel Elliot produces on good evidence a Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh, the topography of the Elliot ballad, of the Sharpe copy of the ballad, is nowhere, for neither Catliehill nor Gatliehill is Catlockhill. That does not look as if the Elliot were older than the Scott version. (There was a Sim Armstrong of the Cathill, slain by a Ridley of Hartswell in 1597. [113a])
We now take the Scott version where Telfer has arrived at Branksome. Scott’s stanza xxv. is Sharpe’s xxiv. In Scott, Buccleuch; in Sharpe, Martin Elliot bids his men “warn the waterside” (Sharpe), “warn the water braid and wide” (Scott). Scott’s stanza xxvi. is probably his own, or may be, for he bids them warn Wat o’ Harden, Borthwick water, and the Teviot Scotts, and Gilmanscleuch—which is remote. Then, in xxvii., Buccleuch says—
Ride by the gate of Priesthaughswire,
And warn the Currors o’ the Lee,
As ye come down the Hermitage slack
Warn doughty Wiliie o’ Gorrinberry.
All this is plain sailing, by the pass of Priesthaughswire the Scotts will ride from Teviot into Hermitage water, and, near the Slack, they will pass Gorrinberry, will call Will, and gallop down Hermitage water to the Liddel, where they will nick the returning Captain at the Ritterford.
The Sharpe version makes Martin order the warning of the waterside (xxiv.), and then Martin says (xxv.)—
When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack,
Warn doughty Will o’ Gorranherry.
Colonel Elliot [114a] supposes Martin (if I follow his meaning) to send Simmy with his command, back over all the course that Telfer and Martin’s Hab have already ridden: back past Shaws, near Braidley (a house of Martin’s), past “Catlockhill,” to Gorranberry, to “warn the waterside.” But surely Telfer, who passed Gorranberry gates, and with Hab passed the other places, had “taken the fray,” and warned the water quite sufficiently already. If this be granted, the Sharpe version is taking from the Scott version the stanza, so natural there, about the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry. But Colonel Elliot infers, from stanzas xxvi., xxx., xxxi., that Simmy has warned the water as far as Gorranberry (again), has come in touch with the Captain, “between the Frostily and the Ritterford,” and that this is “consistent only with his having moved up the Hermitage water.”
Meanwhile Martin, he thinks, rode with his men down Liddel water. But here we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the hypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the English to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they were met by Martin’s men on the Hermitage line of advance. I cannot find this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me hypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back up Hermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy’s path. Colonel Elliot himself writes: “It is certain that after the news of the raid reached Catlockhill” (and Gorranberry, Telfer passed it), “it must have spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most unlikely for the men of this district to have delayed taking action until they received instructions from their chief.” [115]