Professor Child remarked on all this: "Stanza xii. is not only found
elsewhere (compare Young Beichan, E vi.), but could not be more
inappropriately brought in than here; Scott, however, is not
responsible for that." {120a}
The hawk that flies from tree to tree
is a formula; it comes in the Kinloch MS. copy of the ballad of Jamie
Douglas, date about 1690.
I know no proof that Scott was acquainted with variant E of Young
Beichan. {120a} If he had been, he could not have introduced into
Jamie Telfer lines so utterly out of keeping with Telfer's
circumstances, as Colonel Elliot himself says that stanza xii. is. It
may be argued, "if Scott DID find stanza xii. in his copy, it was in
his power to cut it out; he treated his copies as he pleased." This is
true, but my position is that, of the two, Scott is more likely to have
let the stanza abide where he found it (as he did with his MS. of
Tamlane, retaining its absurdities) in his copy, than to "pitchfork it
in," from an obscure variant of Young Beichan, which we cannot prove
that he had ever heard or read.
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