So be it.
Colonel Elliot writes that,--in place of my saying that Jamie Telfer
"is a mere mythical perversion of carefully recorded facts,"--"it would
surely be more correct to say that it is a fairly true, though jumbled,
account of actual incidents, separated from each other by only short
periods of time . . . " {108b} If he means, or thinks that I mean,
that the actual facts were the capture of Musgrave near Bewcastle in
1596 by the Armstrongs, with Buccleuch's hot-trod, and Martin Elliot's
slaying in 1597, I entirely agree with him that the facts are
''jumbled." But as to the opinion that the ballad is "fairly true"
about the raid to Ettrick (the Captain could not ride a mile beyond the
Border without the Warden's permission), about the nonexistent Jamie
Telfer, about the shooting, taking, and plundering of the Captain,
about his loss of seventeen men wounded and slain (he lost about as
many prisoners),--I have given reasons for my disbelief.
VI--IS THE SCOTT VERSION, WITH ELLIOTS AND SCOTTS TRANSPOSED, THE LATER
VERSION?
We now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the
ballad (apart from Sir Walter's decorative stanzas) necessarily LATER
than the Elliot version in Sharpe's copy? The chief argument for the
lateness of the Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of
Stobs at a date when this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have
already treated.
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