Colonel Elliot asks, "Can any one believe that these stanzas are really
ancient and have come down orally through many generations?" {70a}
Certainly not! But Colonel Elliot does not allow for the fact,
insisted on by Professor Child, that traditional ballads, from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, were often printed on broad-
sheets as edited by the cheapest broadside-vendors' hacks; that the
hacks interpolated and messed their originals; and that, after the
broadside was worn out, lost, or burned, oral memory kept it alive in
tradition. For examples of this process we have only to look at
William's Ghost in Herd's copy of 1776. This is a traditional ballad;
it is included in Scott's Clerk Saunders, but, as Hogg told him, is a
quite distinct song. In Herd's copy it ends thus -
"Oh, stay, my only true love, stay,"
The constant Marg'ret cry'd;
Wan grew her cheeks, she closed her eyes,
Stretched her soft limbs, and dy'd.
Let THIS get into tradition, and be taken down from recitation, and the
ballad will be denounced as modern.
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