In a contemporary ballad, a kind of rhymed news-sheet, the facts would be known and reported. But at this point (at Buccleuch’s reception of the news of Kinmont), Scott is perhaps overmastered by his opportunity, and, I think, himself composes stanzas ix., x., xi., xii.
O is my basnet a widow’s curch?
Or my lance a wand o’ the willow tree?
and so on. Child and Mr. Henderson are of the same opinion; but it is only sense of style that guides us in such a matter, nor can I give other grounds for supposing that the original ballad appears again in stanza xiii.
O were there war between the lands,
As well I wot that there is none,
I would slight Carlisle castle high,
Tho’ it were built o’ marble stone!
Thence, I think, the original ballad (doubtless made “harmonious,” as Hogg put it) ran into stanza xxxi., where Scott probably introduced the Elliot tune (if it be ancient)—
O wha dare meddle wi’ me?
Satchells next, through a hundred and forty lines, describes Buccleuch’s correspondence with Scrope, his counsels with his clansmen, and gives all their names and estates, with remarks on their relationships. He thinks himself a historian and a genealogist. The stuff is partly in prose lines, partly in rhymed couplets of various lengths. There are two or three more or less ballad-like stanzas at the beginning, but they are too bad for any author but Satchells.
Scott’s ballad “cuts” all that, omits even what Satchells gives—mentions of Harden, and goes on (xv.)—
He has called him forty marchmen bauld,
I trow they were of his own name.
Except Sir Gilbert Elliot called
The Laird of Stubs, I mean the same.
Now I would stake a large sum that Sir Walter never wrote that “stall-copy” stanza! Colonel Elliot replies that I have said the ballad-faker should avoid being too poetical. The ballad-faker should shun being too poetical, as he would shun kippered sturgeon; but Scott did not know this, nor did Hogg. We can always track them by their too decorative, too literary interpolations. On this I lay much stress.