I have cleared my conscience by confessing Scott's literary sins.
His interpolations, elsewhere mere stopgaps, are mainly to be found
in Kinmont Willie and Jamie Telfer. His duty was to say, in his
preface to each ballad, "The editor has interpolated stanza" so and
so; if he made up the last verses of Kinmont Willie from the
conclusion of a version of Archie o' Ca'field, he should have said
so; as he does acknowledge two stopgap interpolations by Hogg in Auld
Maitland. But as to the conclusion of Kinmont Willie, he did, we
shall see, make confession.
Professor Kittredge, who edited Child's last part (X.), says in his
excellent abridged edition of Child (1905), "It was no doubt the
feeling that the popular ballad is a fluid and unstable thing that
has prompted so many editors--among them Sir Walter Scott, whom it is
impossible to assail, however much the scholarly conscience may
disapprove--to deal freely with the versions that came into their
hands."
Twenty-five years after the appearance of The Border Minstrelsy, in
1827, appeared Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern.
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