Why should a farmer in Ettrick "choose to lord" a remote
Elliot, when he had the Cock of the Border, the heroic Buccleuch,
within eight miles of his home?
Holding these opinions, Colonel Elliot, with deep regret -
I wat the tear blinded his ee -
accuses Sir Walter Scott of having taken the Elliot version--till then
the only version--and of having altered stanzas vii.-xi. (in which
Jamie goes to Branksome, and is refused succour) into his own stanzas
vii.-xi., in which Jamie goes to Stobs and is refused succour. This
evil thing Scott did, thinks Colonel Elliot. Scott had no copy, he
thinks, of the ballad except an Elliot copy, which he deliberately
perverted.
We must look into the facts of the case. I know no older published
copy of the ballad than that of Scott, in Border Minstrelsy, vol. i. p.
91 et seqq. (1802). Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick
shepherd to Scott of "June 30, 1802" thus: "I am surprised to find
that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother's;
Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars.
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