521. score for core.
C.
14. Displaced. James Boyd should of course come in before James Pringle.
FOOTNOTES:
[103] That the four copies of a are transcripts from writing, and not from oral recitation, will be obvious when we observe their correspondence. The first thirty stanzas of a, b, have the same lines in the same order, and with an approach to verbal agreement. There is not so close a concurrence after 30, but still a virtual concurrence, excepting that b inserts sixteen lines between 52 and 53 which the other copies lack. c has throughout the same lines as a, in the same order (with verbal differences), excepting that c introduces two lines after 504 (which are a repetition, with corruption, of 81,2), and that a repeats 43 at 60, which c does not. d has only a few verbal variations from c.
[104] Plummer’s letter follows the ballad in the second volume, but is not given in the first.
[105] Rather 1708. Sir James Murray was appointed an ordinary Lord of Session October 28, 1689, and took his seat as Lord Philiphaugh November 1. In 1702 he was appointed Lord Clerk Register, and this place he held, except a short interval, till his death, July 1, 1708. (T. Craig-Brown, History of Selkirkshire, II, 345 f.)
[106] I mean Soldan Turk, c 223, for Soudron, a, b, d, and Soldanie, c 332, for Soudronie, Southronie, a, b. (Soudan Turk, also B 263, Souden Turk, C 33, 53.) Nothing is easier than the corruption of Soudron into Soudan, upon which change the addition of Turk would be all but inevitable. The corruption would be likely to be made by one who had heard of an irruption of Saracens (or, if you please, Moors) into Galloway. (See note, p. 190.) The winning of Ettrick Forest by and from the Southron is historical, and this pretends to be an historical poem.
[107] “The feud betwixt the Outlaw and the Scots may serve to explain the asperity with which the chieftain of that clan is handled in the ballad.” Were it not for these words in Scott’s preface, I should have been inclined to think that this humorous episode came from the hand of the editor of ‘Kinmont Willie.’ It is quite in Scott’s way, and also in contrast with the tone of the rest of the narrative. If the author of the ballad was capable of this smartness, he ought to have been aware that the Outlaw (not to say the king), after all his bluster, cuts a ridiculously tame figure in the conclusion. I now observe that the line ‘Wi fire and sword we’ll follow thee’ is in A a, 522, and nearly the same in c; which suggests that something may have been lost in the MS.
[108] A 223,4 might be a reminiscence of ‘Johnie Armstrong,’ C 273,4, III, 371. C 33,4 (from recitation) agrees strikingly with the stanza cited III, 363, note *; but this fact is of not the least importance. Mr Macmath notes that A a 13, ‘The hart, the hynd, the dae, the rac,’ occurs in Alexander Montgomerie’s Cherrie and the Slae, Edinburgh, 1597.