"Laidlaw," says Lockhart, "took care that
Scott should see, without delay, James Hogg." {4a} These two men,
Hogg and Laidlaw, knowing the country people well, were Scott's chief
sources of recited balladry; and probably they sometimes improved, in
making their copies, the materials won from the failing memories of
the old. Thus Laidlaw, while tenant in Traquair Knowe, obtained from
recitation, The Daemon Lover. Scott does not tell us whether or not
he knew the fact that Laidlaw wrote in stanza 6 (half of it
traditional), stanza 12 (also a ballad formula), stanzas 17 and 18
(necessary to complete the sense; the last two lines of 18 are purely
and romantically modern).
We shall later quote Hogg's account of his own dealings with his raw
materials from recitation.
In January 1802 Scott published the two first volumes of The
Minstrelsy. Lockhart describes the enthusiasm of dukes, fine ladies,
and antiquarians. In the end of April 1803 the third volume
appeared, including ballads obtained through Hogg and Laidlaw in
spring 1802.
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