Yet he orders them to be
warned, and about a combined movement of Martin and Simmy on different
lines the ballad says not a word. All this is inference merely,
inference not from historical facts, but from what may be guessed to
have been in the mind of the poet.
Thus the Elliot or Sharpe version has topography that will not hold
water, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song
seems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a
form of the Scott version. This being the case, the original version
on which Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version. In the Scott
version the rescuers must come down the Hermitage Slack: in the Elliot
they have no reason for riding BACK to that place.
VII--SCOTT HAD A COPY OF THE BALLAD WHICH WAS NOT THE SHARPE COPY
Did Scott know no other version than that of the Sharpe MS.? In
Scott's version, stanza xlix., the last, is absent from the Elliot
version, which concludes triumphantly, thus -
Now on they came to the fair Dodhead,
They were a welcome sight to see,
And instead of his ain ten milk-kye
Jamie Telfer's gotten thirty and three.
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