"
The whole dream stanza occurs in a part of the ballad where Hogg
confesses to no alteration or interpolation, and I doubt if the
Shepherd of Ettrick had read a rare old book like Godscroft. If he had
not, this stanza is purely traditional; if he had, he showed great
genius in his use of Godscroft.
In Hogg's Ettrick copy, Douglas, after telling his dream, rushes into
battle, is wounded by Percy, and "backward flees." Scott (xx.),
following a historical version (Wyntoun's Cronykil), makes
Douglas forget the helmit good
That should have kept his brain.
Being wounded, in Hogg's version, and "backward fleeing," Douglas sends
his page to bring Montgomery (Hogg), and from stanza xxiv. to xxxiv.,
in Hogg, all is made up by himself, he says,--from facts given "in
plain prose" by his reciters, with here and there a line or two given
in verse. Scott omitted some verses here, amended others slightly, by
help of Herd's version, LEFT OUT A BROKEN LAST STANZA (xl.) and put in
Herd's concluding lines (stanza lxviii.
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