[54] Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. I, p. 284.
[55] Quarterly, May, 1810.
[56] Lockhart, Vol. III, p. 514.
[57] Still more striking evidence that Scott lacked an infallible sense of the difference between genuine and spurious ballad material is afforded by his comments on Peter Buchan's collection, which is now considered particularly untrustworthy. He thought that with two or three exceptions the pieces in the book were genuine, and said: "I scarce know anything so easily discovered as the piecing and patching of an old ballad; the darns in a silk stocking are not more manifest." (Correspondence of C.K. Sharpe, Vol. II, p. 424.)
[58] Scott's manuscript collections of ballads dropped partially out of sight after his death, and it was only about 1890 that their magnitude and importance became known. Professor Child and later editors have found them of very great service. (On Child's use of the Abbotsford materials, see the Advertisement to Part VIII of his collection, contained in Volume IV.) In 1880 appeared a reprint of the Ballad Book of C.K. Sharpe, "with notes and ballads from the unpublished manuscripts of C.K. Sharpe and Sir Walter Scott," but the contributions from Scott's papers did not amount to much. Scott's materials were at the service of his friend for use in the original edition of the Ballad Book, published in 1823. See Sharpe's Correspondence, Vol. II, pp. 264, 271 and 325, for letters from Scott on this subject.
[59] Note on The Raid of the Reidswire, in the Minstrelsy.
[60] Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. III, p. 232.
[61] Henderson's edition of the Minstrelsy, Vol. II, p. 57.
[62] Lockhart, Vol. I, p. 360.
[63] Ibid., Vol. I, p. 332.