" {62a}
Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of
recitations, so styled, {62b} and gives his suggestions about the copy
being made up from the Reliques. When Scott's copy of 1806 agrees with
the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person,
familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in WITH
DIFFERENCES. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each
saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the
actual words. When Scott's version touches on an incident known in
history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between
Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot
suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish
and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or
remaniements which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).
So Colonel Elliot says, "We are not told, either in The Minstrelsy or
in any of Scott's works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the
transcribers were.
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