On what could Willie "ride off," except on Red
Rowan? {142c}
Stanzas xxxv., xxxvi. and xliv. are related, we have seen, to passages
in Jock o' the Side and Archie o' Cafield, but ballads, like Homer,
employ the same formulae to describe the same circumstances: a note of
archaism, as in Gaelic poetic passages in Marchen.
I do not pretend always to know how far Scott kept and emended old
stanzas mangled by reciters: there are places in which I am quite at a
loss to tell whether he is "making" or copying.
I incline to hold that Satchells was occasionally reminiscent of a
ballad for the reasons and traces given, and I think that Scott when
his and Satchells' versions coincide, did not borrow direct from
Satchells, but that both men had a ballad source.
That ballad was later than the popular belief, held by Satchells, that
Gilbert Elliot was at the time (1596) laird of Stobs, which he did not
acquire till after the Union (1603), and that he (the only man not a
Scot, says Satchells, wrongly) rode with Buccleuch.
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