Any
one may discover the facts from Professor Kittredge's useful
abbreviation of Child's collection into a single volume (Nutt. London,
1905). Colonel Elliot quotes Professor Kittredge's book three or four
times, but in place of looking at the facts he abounds in the Higher
Criticism. Colonel Elliot says that Scott does not tell us of a single
line having been borrowed from Percy's version. {84a} Scott has only
"a single line" to tell of, the fourth line in his stanza xxii., "Till
he fell to the ground."
For the rest, the old English version and Herd's have many inter-
borrowings of stanzas, but we do not know whether a Scot borrowed from
an Englishman, or vice versa. Thus, in another and longer traditional
version--Hogg's--more correspondence must be expected than in Herd's
fourteen stanzas. It is, of course, open to scepticism to allege that
Hogg merely made his text, invented the two crazy old reciters, and the
whole story about them, and his second "pumping of their memories,"
invented "Almonshire," which he could not understand, and invented his
last broken stanza on the death of Montgomery, to give the idea that
The Huntiss of Chevets was mingled in the recollections of the reciters
with The Battle of Otterburn.
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