I cannot
find this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me
hypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back
up Hermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy's path.
Colonel Elliot himself writes: "It is certain that after the news of
the raid reached Catlockhill" (AND Gorranberry, Telfer passed it), "it
must have spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most
unlikely for the men of this district to have delayed taking action
until they received instructions from their chief."'
That is exactly what I say; but Martin says, "When ye come in at the
Hermitage Slack, warn doughty Will o' Gorranberry." Why go to warn
him, when, as Colonel Elliot says, the news is running through
Hermitage water, and the men are most probably acting on it,--as they
certainly would do?
Martin's orders, in Sharpe xxv., are taken, I think, from Buccleuch's,
in Scott's xxvii.
The point is that Martin had no need to warn men so far away as
Gorranberry,--they were roused already.
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