"
This is not in Sharpe's MS., and I attribute this redundant stanza to
Scott's copy. The Captain, remember, has a shot "through his head,"
and another which must have caused excruciating torture. In these
circumstances would a poet like Scott put in his mouth a speech which
merely reiterates the previous verse? No! But the verse was in
Scott's copy.
Colonel Elliot has himself noted a more important point than these: he
quotes Scott's stanza xii., which is absent from the Sharpe MS. -
My hounds may a' rin masterless,
My hawks may fly frae tree to tree,
My lord may grip my vassal lands,
For there again maun I never be!
"They are, doubtless, beautiful lines, but their very beauty jars like
a false note. One feels they were written by another hand, by an
artist of a higher stamp than a Border 'ballad-maker.' And not only is
it their beauty that jars, but so also does their inapplicability to
Jamie Telfer and to the circumstances in which he found himself--so
much so, indeed, that it may well occur to one that the stanza belongs
to some other ballad, and has accidentally been pitchforked into this
one.
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