Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy Part 12

We now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the ballad (apart from Sir Walter's decorative stanzas) necessarily LATER than the Elliot version in Sharpe's copy? The chief argument for the lateness of the Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of Stobs at a date when this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have already treated. If the ballad is no earlier than the date when Elliot was believed (as by Satch.e.l.ls) to have obtained Stobs before 1596, the argument falls to the ground.

Starting from that point, and granting that a minstrel fond of the Scotts wants to banter the Elliots, he may make Telfer ask aid at Stobs. After that, which version is better in its topography? Bidden by Stobs to seek Buccleuch, Telfer runs to Teviot, to Coultartcleugh, some four miles above Branksome. Branksome was nearer, but Telfer was shy, let us say, and did not know Buccleuch; while at Coultartcleugh, Jock Grieve was his brother-in-law. Jock gives him a mount, and takes him to "Catslockhill."

Now, no Catslockhill is known anywhere, to me or to Colonel Elliot.

Mr. Henderson, in a note to the ballad, {110a} speaks of "Catslack in Branxholm," and cites the Register of the Privy Seal for 4th June 1554, and the Register of the Privy Council for 14th October 1592. The records are full of THAT Catslack, but it is not in Branksome. Blaeu's map (1600-54) gives it, with its appurtenances, on the north side of St. Mary's Loch. There is a Catslack on the north side of Yarrow, near Ladhope, on the southern side. Neither Catslack is the Catslockhill of the Scott ballad. But on evidence, "and it is good evidence," says Colonel Elliot, {110b} I prove that, in 1802, a place called "Catlochill" existed between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The place (Mrs. Grieve, Branksome Park, informs me) is now called Branksome- braes. On his copy of The Minstrelsy of 1802, Mr. Grieve, then tenant of Branksome Park, made a marginal note. Catlochill was still known to him; it was in a commanding site, and had been strengthened by the art of man. His note I have seen and read.

Thus, on good evidence, there was a Catlochill, or Catlockhill, between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The Scott version is right in its topography.

This fact was unknown to Colonel Elliot. Not knowing a Catslackhill or Catslockhill in Teviot, he made Scott's Telfer go to an apocryphal Catlockhill in Liddesdale. Professor Veitch had said that the Catslockhill of the ballad "IS TO BE SOUGHT" in some locality between Coultartcleugh and Branxholm. Colonel Elliot calls this "a really preposterously cool suggestion." {111a} Why "really preposterously cool"? Being sought, the place is found where it had always been.

Jamie Telfer found it, and in it his friend "William's Wat," who took him to the laird of Buccleuch at Branksome.

In the Elliot version, when refused aid by Buccleuch, Jamie ran to Coultartcleugh,--as in Scott's,--on his way to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on the Liddel. Jamie next "takes the fray" to "the Catlockhill," and is there remounted by "Martin's Hab," an Elliot (not by William's Wat), and THEY "take the fray" to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh in Liddesdale. This is very well, but where IS this "Catlockhill" in Liddesdale? Is it even a real place?

Colonel Elliot has found no such place; nor can I find it in the Registrum Magni Sigilli, nor in Blaeu's map of 1600-54.

Colonel Elliot's argument has been that the Elliot version, the version of the Sharpe MS., is the earlier, for, among other reasons, its topography is correct. {112a} It makes Telfer run from Dodhead to Branksome for aid, because that was the comparatively near residence of the powerful Buccleuch. Told by Buccleuch to seek aid from Martin Elliot in Liddesdale, Telfer does so. He runs up Teviot four miles to his brother-in-law, Jock Grieve, who mounts him. He then rides off at a right angle, from Teviot to Catlockhill, says the Elliot ballad, where he is rehorsed by Martin's Hab. The pair then take the fray to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on Liddel water, and Martin summons and leads the pursuers of the Captain.

This, to Colonel Elliot's mind, is all plain sailing, all is feasible and natural. And so it IS feasible and natural, if Colonel Elliot can find a Catlockhill anywhere between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh.

On that line, in Mr. Veitch's words, Catlockhill "is to be sought."

But just as Mr. Veitch could find no Catslockhill between Coultartcleugh and Branksome, so Colonel Elliot can find no Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. He tells us {112b} indeed of "Catlockhill on Hermitage water." But there is no such place known!

Colonel Elliot's method is to take a place which, he says, is given as "Catlie" Hill, "between Dinlay burn and Hermitage water, on Blaeu's map of 1654." We may murmur that Catlie Hill is one thing and Catlock another, but Colonel Elliot points out that "lock" means "the meeting of waters," and that Catlie Hill is near the meeting of Dinlay burn and the Hermitage water. But then why does Blaeu call it, not Catlockhill, nor Catlie hill, nor "Catlie" even, but "Gatlie," for so it is distinctly printed on my copy of the map? Really we cannot take a place called "Gatlie Hill" and p.r.o.nounce that we have found "Catlockhill"! Would Colonel Elliot have permitted Mr. Veitch--if Mr.

Veitch had found "Gatlie Hill" near Branksome, in Blaeu--to aver that he had found Catslockhill near Branksome?

Thus, till Colonel Elliot produces on good evidence a Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh, the topography of the Elliot ballad, of the Sharpe copy of the ballad, is nowhere, for neither Catliehill nor Gatliehill is Catlockhill. That does not look as if the Elliot were older than the Scott version. (There was a Sim ARMSTRONG of the CATHILL, slain by a Ridley of Hartswell in 1597. {113a})

We now take the Scott version where Telfer has arrived at Branksome.

Scott's stanza xxv. is Sharpe's xxiv. In Scott, Buccleuch; in Sharpe, Martin Elliot bids his men "warn the waterside" (Sharpe), "warn the water braid and wide" (Scott). Scott's stanza xxvi. is probably his own, or may be, for he bids them warn Wat o' Harden, Borthwick water, and the Teviot Scotts, and Gilmanscleuch--which is remote. Then, in xxvii., Buccleuch says -

Ride by the gate of Priesthaughswire, And warn the Currors o' the Lee, As ye come down the Hermitage slack Warn doughty Wiliie o' Gorrinberry.

All this is plain sailing, by the pa.s.s of Priesthaughswire the Scotts will ride from Teviot into Hermitage water, and, near the Slack, they will pa.s.s Gorrinberry, will call Will, and gallop down Hermitage water to the Liddel, where they will nick the returning Captain at the Ritterford.

The Sharpe version makes Martin order the warning of the waterside (xxiv.), and then Martin says (xxv.) -

When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack, Warn doughty Will o' Gorranherry.

Colonel Elliot {114a} supposes Martin (if I follow his meaning) to send Simmy with his command, BACK OVER ALL THE COURSE THAT TELFER AND MARTIN'S HAB HAVE ALREADY RIDDEN: back past Shaws, near Braidley (a house of Martin's), past "Catlockhill," to Gorranberry, to "warn the waterside." But surely Telfer, who pa.s.sed Gorranberry gates, and with Hab pa.s.sed the other places, had "taken the fray," and warned the water quite sufficiently already. If this be granted, the Sharpe version is taking from the Scott version the stanza, so natural there, about the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry. But Colonel Elliot infers, from stanzas xxvi., x.x.x., x.x.xi., that Simmy has warned the water as far as Gorranberry (AGAIN), has come in touch with the Captain, "between the Frostily and the Ritterford," and that this is "consistent only with his having moved up the Hermitage water."

Meanwhile Martin, he thinks, rode with his men down Liddel water. But here we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the hypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the English to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they were met by Martin's men on the Hermitage line of advance. I cannot find this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me hypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back up Hermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy's path.

Colonel Elliot himself writes: "It is certain that after the news of the raid reached Catlockhill" (AND Gorranberry, Telfer pa.s.sed it), "it must have spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most unlikely for the men of this district to have delayed taking action until they received instructions from their chief."'

That is exactly what I say; but Martin says, "When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack, warn doughty Will o' Gorranberry." Why go to warn him, when, as Colonel Elliot says, the news is running through Hermitage water, and the men are most probably acting on it,--as they certainly would do?

Martin's orders, in Sharpe xxv., are taken, I think, from Buccleuch's, in Scott's xxvii.

The point is that Martin had no need to warn men so far away as Gorranberry,--they were roused already. Yet he orders them to be warned, and about a combined movement of Martin and Simmy on different lines the ballad says not a word. All this is inference merely, inference not from historical facts, but from what may be guessed to have been in the mind of the poet.

Thus the Elliot or Sharpe version has topography that will not hold water, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song seems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a form of the Scott version. This being the case, the original version on which Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version. In the Scott version the rescuers must come down the Hermitage Slack: in the Elliot they have no reason for riding BACK to that place.

VII--SCOTT HAD A COPY OF THE BALLAD WHICH WAS NOT THE SHARPE COPY

Did Scott know no other version than that of the Sharpe MS.? In Scott's version, stanza xlix., the last, is absent from the Elliot version, which concludes triumphantly, thus -

Now on they came to the fair Dodhead, They were a welcome sight to see, And instead of his ain ten milk-kye Jamie Telfer's gotten thirty and three.

Scott too gives this, but ends with a verse not in Sharpe -

And he has paid the rescue shot Baith wi' goud and white money, And at the burial o' Willie Scott I wat was mony a weeping ee.

Did Scott add this? Proof is impossible; but the verse is so prosaic, and so injurious to the triumphant preceding verse, that I think Scott found it in his copy: in which case he had another copy than Sharpe's.

Scott (stanza xviii.) reads "Catslockhill" where the Sharpe MS. reads "Catlockhill." In Scott's time it was a mound, but the name was then known to Mr. Grieve, the tenant of Branksome Park. To-day I cannot find the mound; is it likely that Scott, before making the change, sought diligently for the mound and its name? If so, he found "CATLOCHILL," for so Mr. Grieve writes it, not Catslockhill.

Meanwhile Colonel Elliot, we know, has no Catlockhill where he wants it; he has only Gatliehill, unless his Blaeu varies from my copy, and Gatliehill is not Catlockhill.

Scott gives (xlviii.) the speech of the Captain after he is shot through the head and in another dangerous part of his frame -

"Hae back thy kye!" the Captain said, "Dear kye, I trow, to some they be, For gin I suld live a hundred years, There will ne'er fair lady smile on me."

This is not in Sharpe's MS., and I attribute this redundant stanza to Scott's copy. The Captain, remember, has a shot "through his head,"

and another which must have caused excruciating torture. In these circ.u.mstances would a poet like Scott put in his mouth a speech which merely reiterates the previous verse? No! But the verse was in Scott's copy.

Colonel Elliot has himself noted a more important point than these: he quotes Scott's stanza xii., which is absent from the Sharpe MS. -

My hounds may a' rin masterless, My hawks may fly frae tree to tree, My lord may grip my va.s.sal lands, For there again maun I never be!

"They are, doubtless, beautiful lines, but their very beauty jars like a false note. One feels they were written by another hand, by an artist of a higher stamp than a Border 'ballad-maker.' And not only is it their beauty that jars, but so also does their inapplicability to Jamie Telfer and to the circ.u.mstances in which he found himself--so much so, indeed, that it may well occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has accidentally been pitchforked into this one. It would not have been out of place in the ballad of The Battle of Otterbourne, and, indeed, it bears some resemblance to a stanza in that ballad." Here the Colonel says that the lines "one feels were written by another hand, by an artist of a higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker." But "it may also occur to one that the stanza belongs to some other ballad, and has ACCIDENTALLY" (my italics) "been pitchforked into this": a very sound inference.

Now if Scott had only the Sharpe version, he was the last man to "pitchfork" into it, "accidentally," a stanza from "some other ballad,"

that stanza being as Colonel Elliot says "inapplicable" to Telfer and his circ.u.mstances. Poor Jamie, a small tenant-farmer, with ten cows, and, as far as we learn, not one horse, had no hawks and hounds; no "va.s.sal lands," and no reason to say that at the Dodhead he "maun never be again." He could return from his long run! Scott certainly did not compose these lines; and he could not have pitchforked them into Jamie Telfer, either by accident or design.

Professor Child remarked on all this: "Stanza xii. is not only found elsewhere (compare Young Beichan, E vi.), but could not be more inappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not responsible for that." {120a}