The bonnie forest thorough?"
In the seventeenth stanza he changes,
"A better rose will never spring
Than him I've lost on Yarrow?" to
"A fairer rose did never bloom
Than now lies cropp'd on Yarrow."
In Jellon Grame (Vol. III, p. 203), Mr. Henderson notes changes in 15 different lines, and points out 2 whole stanzas, out of the 21, that are interpolated. In the Gay Goss-hawk (Vol. III, p. 187) 6 stanzas out of 39 are noted as probably wholly or mainly by Scott, and 30 stanzas were changed by him. Sometimes his alterations occurred in every line of a stanza. It is probable that Scott changed Jamie Telfer enough to make the Scotts take the place of prominence that had been held by the Elliotts in the original form of the story. See The Trustworthiness of Border Ballads as Exemplified by 'Jamie Telfer i' the Fair Dodhead' and other Ballads; by Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Fitzwilliam Elliott. Reviewed in Edinburgh Review, No. 418, p. 306 (October, 1906).
[51] See the examples given in the preceding note. Most of the changes there spoken of were made without annotation.
[52] This extraordinary young man was poet and scholar on his own account by 1800, though he was four years younger than Scott. His erudition in many fields was remarkable, and he was as enthusiastic as Scott himself about Scotch poetry, and was the chief assistant in gathering ballads for the Minstrelsy. He also collected the material for the essay on Fairies in the second volume, which was especially praised by the reviewer in the Edinburgh Review (January, 1803). Leyden's chief fame was derived from his wonderfully varied activities in India, from 1803 to his early death in 1811. Any reader of Lockhart's Life of Scott or of Scott's delightful little memoir, published first in the Edinburgh Annual Register for 1811, and included in the Miscellaneous Prose Works, must feel that the uncouth young genius is a familiar acquaintance.
[53] The Ettrick Shepherd, who, after reading the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy, sought an acquaintance with Scott, and offered assistance which was gladly made use of in the preparation of the third volume. Scott in his turn provided much of the material for Hogg's Jacobite Relics, published in 1819. The following note on one of the songs in that work adds to the reader's doubts concerning the accuracy of Scott's texts: "I have not altered a word from the manuscript, which is in the handwriting of an amanuensis of Mr. Scott's, the most incorrect transcriber, perhaps, that ever tried the business." (Jacobite Relics, Vol. I, p. 282. Note on song lxiii.)