Does Satchells’ version, then, show traces of a memory of such a lay? Undoubtedly it does.
Satchells’ prolix narrative occasionally drops or rises into ballad lines, as in the opening about Kinmont Willie—
It fell about the Martinmas
When kine was in the prime
that Willie “brought a prey out of Northumberland.” The old ballad, disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula. Lord Scrope vowed vengence:—
Took Kinmont the self-same night.
If he had had but ten men more,
That had been as stout as he,
Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta’en
With all his company.
Scott’s ballad (stanza i.) says that “fause Sakelde” and Scrope took Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby did), and
Had Willie had but twenty men,
But twenty men as stout as he,
Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta’en,
Wi’ eight score in his cumpanie.
Manifestly either Satchells is here “pirating” a verse of a ballad (as Scott holds) or Scott, if he had no ballad fragments before him, is “pirating” a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.
In my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning like Jamie Telfer, “It fell about the Martinmas tyde,” or, like Otterburn, “It fell about the Lammas tide,” and he opened with this formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza, “If he had had but ten men more,” which differs but slightly from stanza ii. of Scott’s ballad. That this is so, and that, later, Satchells is again reminiscent of a ballad, is no improbable opinion.
In the ballad (iii.–viii.) we learn how Willie is brought a prisoner across Liddel to Carlisle; we have his altercation with Lord Scrope, and the arrival of the news at Branksome, where Buccleuch is at table. Satchells also gives the altercation. In both versions Willie promises to “take his leave” of Scrope before he quits the Castle.