Only a century before, ballads on the
Maitlands had certainly been popular, and there is nothing impossible
in the suggestion that one such ballad survived in the Lauderdale or
Lethington family, and came through Babby Maitland to Andrew Muir, then
to Hogg's mother, to Hogg, and to Scott.
If a manuscript copy ever existed, and was Babby's ultimate source, it
would be of the late seventeenth century. That is the ascertained date
of the oldest known MS. of The Outlaw Murray, as is proved from an
allusion in a note appended to a copy, referring to a Judge of Session,
Lord Philiphaugh, as then alive. The copy was of 1689-1702. {49a}
Granting a MS. of Auld Maitland existing in any branch of the Maitland
family in 1680-1700, Babby Mettlin's knowledge of the ballad, and its
few modernisms, are explained.
As Lockhart truly says, Hogg "was the most extraordinary man that ever
wore the maud of a shepherd." He had none of Burns' education. In
1802 he was young, and ignorant of cities, and always was innocent of
research in the crabbed MSS.
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