If I have satisfied the reader on that point I need not touch on Colonel Elliot’s long and intricate argument to prove, or suggest, that Scott had before him no copy of the ballad except one supposed by the Colonel to have been taken by James Hogg from his mother’s recitation, while that copy, again, is supposed to be the Sharpe MS.—all sheer conjecture. [122a] Not that I fear to encounter Colonel Elliot on this ground, but argufying on it is dull, and apt to be inconclusive.
In the letter of Hogg to Scott (June 30, 1803) as given by Mr. Douglas in Familiar Letters, Hogg says, “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s . . . Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars.” [123a] The marks of omission were all filled up in Hogg’s MS. letter thus: “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine? I suspect it.” Then it runs on, “Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars.”
I owe this information to the kindness of Mr. Macmath. What does Hogg mean? Does “Is Mr. Herd’s MS. genuine?” mean all Herd’s MS. copies used by Scott? Or does it refer to Jamie Telfer in especial?
Mr. Macmath, who possesses C. K. Sharpe’s MS. copy of the Elliot version, believes that it is Herd’s hand as affected by age. Mr. Macmath and I independently reached the conclusion that by “Mr. Herd’s MS.” Hogg meant all Herd’s MSS., which Scott quoted in The Minstrelsy of 1803. Their readings varied from Mrs. Hogg’s; therefore Hogg misdoubted them. He adds that Jamie Telfer differs from his mother’s version, without meaning that, for Jamie, Scott used a Herd MS.
Conclusion
I have now proved, I hope, that the ballad of Jamie Telfer is entirely mythical except for a few suggestions derived from historical events of 1596–97. I have shown, and Colonel Elliot agrees, that refusal of aid by Buccleuch (or by Elliot of Stobs) is impossible, and that the ballad, if it existed without this incident, must have been a Scott, and could not be an Elliot ballad. No farmer in Ettrick would pay protection-money to an Elliot on Liddel, while he had a Scott at Branksome. I have also disproved the existence of a Jamie Telfer as farmer at “Dodhead or Dodbank” in the late sixteenth century.
As to the character of Sir Walter Scott, I have proved, I hope, that he worked on a copy of the ballad which was not the Elliot version, or the Sharpe copy; so that this copy may have represented the Scotts as taking the leading part; while for the reasons given, it is apparently earlier than the Elliot version—cannot, at least, be proved to be later—and is topographically the more correct of the two. I have given antique examples of the same sort of perversions in Otterburn. If I am right, Colonel Elliot’s charge against Scott lacks its base—that Scott knew none but the Sharpe copy, whence it is inferred that he not only decorated the song (as is undeniable), but perverted it in a way far from sportsmanlike.
I may have shaken Colonel Elliot’s belief in the historicity of the ballad. His suspicions of Scott I cannot hope to remove, and they are very natural suspicions, due to Scott’s method of editing ballads and habit of “giving them a cocked hat and a sword,” as he did to stories which he heard; and repeated, much improved.
Absolute proof that Scott did, or did not, pervert the ballad, and turn a false Elliot into a false Scott version, cannot be obtained unless new documents bearing on the matter are discovered.
But, I repeat, as may be read in the chapter on The Ballad of Otterburne, such inversions and perversions of ballads occurred freely in the sixteenth century, and, in the seventeenth, the process may have been applied to Jamie Telfer. [125a]