)--"You may
insert the two following lines anywhere you think it needs them, or
substitute two better -
And marching south with curst Dunbar
A ready welcome found."
II--WHAT IS AULD MAITLAND?
Is Auld Maitland a sheer forgery by Hogg, or is it in any sense, and if
so, in what sense, antique and traditional? That Hogg made the whole
of it is to me incredible. He had told Laidlaw on 20th July 1801, that
he would make no ballads on traditions without Scott's permission,
written in Scott's hand. Moreover, how could he have any traditions
about "Auld Maitland, his noble Sonnis three," personages of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries? Scott had read about them in
poems of about 1580, but these poems then lay in crabbed manuscripts.
Again, Hogg wrote in words ("springs, wall-stanes") of whose meaning he
had no idea; he took it as he heard it in recitation. Finally, the
style is not that of Hogg when he attempts the ballad. Scott observed
that "this ballad, notwithstanding its present appearance, has a claim
to very high antiquity.
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