This imposture, professing to be taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years old, was accompanied with some explanatory notes, characteristic of the dry antiquary, thus: "Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat of another family of that name, which, in the time of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o' the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its situation on the great Roman wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumberland. It is near the wall, and takes its name from the rampart having been thirled—that is, pierced or breached—in its vicinity."
In the Life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime is thus dryly set forth, in following up a statement of the transmission of the manuscript, and of its publication: "Yet all this was a mere figment of Surtees's imagination, originating probably in some whim of ascertaining how far he could identify himself with the stirring times, scenes, and poetical compositions which his fancy delighted to dwell on. This is proved by more than one copy among his papers of this ballad, corrected and interlined, in order to mould it to the language, the manners, and the feelings of the period and of the district to which it refers. Mr Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject; and the result must have been gratifying to him."
In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution, printed also in the Life of Surtees, there are some words that must have brought misgivings and fear of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott, without apparently allowing doubts to enter his mind, yet marked some peculiarities in the piece, in which it differed from others. "Your notes upon the parties concerned give it all the interest of authority, and it must rank, I suppose, among those half-serious, half-ludicrous songs, in which the poets of the Border delighted to describe what they considered as the sport of swords. It is perhaps remarkable, though it may be difficult to guess a reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a different stanza and character, and obviously sung to a different kind of music, from those on the northern Border. The gentleman who collected the words may perhaps be able to describe the tune."
There is perhaps no system of ethics which lays down with perfect precision the moral code on literary forgeries, or enables us to judge of the exact enormity of such offences. The world looks leniently on them, and sometimes sympathises with them as good jokes. Allan Cunningham, who, like Ramsay, was called "honest Allan," did not lose that character by the tremendous "rises" which he took out of Cromek about those remains of Nithsdale and Galloway song—a case in point so far as principle goes, but differing somewhat in the intellectual rank of the victim to the hoax. The temptation to commit such offences is often extremely strong, and the injury seems slight, while the offender probably consoles himself with the reflection that he can immediately counteract it by confession. Vanity, indeed, often joins conscientiousness in hastening on a revelation. Surtees, however, remained in obdurate silence, and I am not aware that any edition of the Minstrelsy draws attention to his handiwork. Lockhart seems not only to have been ignorant of it, but to have been totally unconscious of the risk of such a thing, since he always speaks of its author as a respectable local antiquary, useful to Scott as a harmless drudge. Perhaps Surtees was afraid of what he had done, like that teller in the House of Commons who is said by tradition to have attempted to make a bad joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by counting a fat man as ten, and, seeing that the trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the measure, became afraid to confess it.
The literary history of "The Death of Featherstonhaugh" naturally excited uneasiness about the touching ballad of "Barthram's Dirge," also contributed to the Minstrelsy as the fruit of the industrious investigations of Surtees. Most readers will remember this:—
"They shot him dead at the Nine-Stone Rig,
Beside the headless cross,
And they left him lying in his blood,
Upon the moor and moss."
After this stanza, often admired for its clearness as a picture, there is a judicious break, and then come stanzas originally deficient of certain words, which, as hypothetically supplied by Surtees, were good-naturedly allowed to remain within brackets, as ingenious suggestions:—
"They made a bier of the broken bough,
The sauch and the aspine grey,
And they bore him to the Lady Chapel,
And waked him there all day.
A lady came to that lonely bower,
And threw her robes aside;
She tore her ling [long] yellow hair,
And knelt at Barthram's side.
She bathed him in the Lady Well,
His wounds sae deep and sair,
And she plaited a garland for his breast,
And a garland for his hair."