Scott also corresponded with the aged Percy, Bishop of Dromore,
editor of the Reliques, and with Joseph Ritson, the precise
collector, Percy's bitter foe. Unfortunately the correspondence on
ballads with Ritson, who died in 1803, is but scanty; nor has most of
the correspondence with another student, George Ellis, been
published. Even in Mr. Douglas's edition of Scott's Familiar
Letters, the portion of an important letter of Hogg's which deals
with ballad-lore is omitted. I shall give the letter in full.
In 1800-01, "The Minstrelsy formed the editor's chief occupation,"
says Lockhart; but later, up to April 1801, the Forest and Liddesdale
had yielded little material. In fact, I do not know that Scott ever
procured much in Liddesdale, where he had no Hogg or Laidlaw always
on the spot, and in touch with the old people. It was in spring,
1802, that Scott first met his lifelong friend, William Laidlaw,
farmer in Blackhouse, on Douglasburn, in Yarrow. Laidlaw, as is
later proved completely, introduced Scott to Hogg, then a very
unsophisticated shepherd.
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