" The old ballad,
disregarding dates, may well have opened with this common formula.
Lord Scrope vowed vengence:-
Took Kinmont the self-same night.
If he had had but ten men more,
That had been as stout as he,
Lord Scroup had not the Kinmont ta'en
With all his company.
Scott's ballad (stanza i.) says that "fause Sakelde" and Scrope took
Willie (as in fact Salkeld of Corby DID), and
Had Willie had but twenty men,
But twenty men as stout as he,
Fause Sakelde had never the Kinmont ta'en,
Wi' eight score in his cumpanie.
Manifestly either Satchells is here "pirating" a verse of a ballad (as
Scott holds) or Scott, if he had NO ballad fragments before him, is
"pirating" a verse from Satchells, as Colonel Elliot must suppose.
In my opinion, Satchells had a memory of a Kinmont ballad beginning
like Jamie Telfer, "It fell about the Martinmas tyde," or, like
Otterburn, "It fell about the Lammas tide," and he opened with this
formula, broke away from it, and came back to the ballad in the stanza,
"If he had had but ten men more," which differs but slightly from
stanza ii.
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