Scott wrote thus: --"We" (John Leyden and himself) "have just
concluded an excursion of two or three weeks through my jurisdiction
of Selkirkshire, where, in defiance of mountains, rivers, and bogs,
damp and dry, we have penetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest
. . . I have . . . returned LOADED with the treasures of oral
tradition. The principal result of our inquiries has been a complete
and perfect copy of "Maitland with his Auld Berd Graie," referred to
by [Gawain] Douglas in his Palice of Honour (1503), along with John
the Reef and other popular characters, and celebrated in the poems
from the Maitland MS." (circ. 1575). You may guess the surprise of
Leyden and myself when this was presented to us, copied down from the
recitation of an old shepherd, by a country farmer . . . Many of the
old words are retained, which neither the reciter nor the copyer
understood. Such are the military engines, sowies, SPRINGWALLS
(springalds), and many others . . . " {24a}
That Scott got the ballad in spring 1802 is easily proved.
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