As Colonel Elliot points out, there was no inconsistency.
Scott had two copies. One was Hogg's MS.: the other was derived
from the recitation of Hogg's mother.
This trifle is addressed to lovers of Scott, of the Border, and of
ballads, et non aultres.
It is curious to see how facts make havoc of the conjectures of the
Higher Criticism in the case of Auld Maitland. If Hogg was the
forger of that ballad, I asked, how did he know the traditions about
Maitland and his three sons, which we only know from poems of about
1576 in the manuscripts of Sir Richard Maitland? These poems in 1802
were, as far as I am aware, still unpublished.
Colonel Elliot urged that Leyden would know the poems, and must have
known Hogg. From Leyden, then, Hogg would get the information. In
the text I have urged that Leyden did not know Hogg. I am able now
to prove that Hogg and Leyden never met till after Laidlaw gave the
manuscript of Auld Maitland to Hogg.
The fact is given in the original manuscript of Laidlaw's
Recollections of Sir Walter Scott (among the Laing MSS.
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