But as we can never tell that Scott
did NOT know any rhyme, we ask, why did he "pitchfork in" the stanza,
where it was quite out of place? Child absolves him from this
absurdity.
Thus Scott had before him another than the Sharpe copy; had a copy
containing stanza xii. That copy presented the perversion--the
transposition of Scott's and Elliot's--and into that copy Scott wrote
the stanzas which bear his modern romantic mark. Colonel Elliot, we
saw, is uncertain whether to attribute stanza xii. to "another hand, an
artist of higher stamp than a Border ballad-maker," or to regard it as
belonging "to some other ballad," and as having been "accidentally
pitchforked into this one." The stanza is, in fact, an old floating
ballad stanza, attracted into the cantefable of Susie Pye, and the
ballad of Young Beichan (E), and partly into Jamie Douglas. Thus Scott
did not MAKE the stanza, and we cannot suppose that, if he knew the
stanza in any form, he either "accidentally pitchforked" or wilfully
inserted into Jamie Telfer anything so absurdly inappropriate.
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