I could not have produced the facts, about Auld Maitland especially,
and in some other cases, without the kind and ungrudging aid, freely
given to a stranger, of Mr. William Macmath, whose knowledge of
ballad-lore, and especially of the ballad manuscripts at Abbotsford,
is unrivalled. As to Auld Maitland, Mr. T. F. Henderson, in his
edition of the Minstrelsy (Blackwood, 1892), also made due use of
Hogg's MS., and his edition is most valuable to every student of
Scott's method of editing, being based on the Abbotsford MSS. Mr.
Henderson suspects, more than I do, the veracity of the Shepherd.

I am under obligations to Colonel Elliot's book, as it has drawn my
attention anew to Auld Maitland, a topic which I had studied
"somewhat lazily," like Quintus Smyrnaeus. I supposed that there was
an inconsistency in two of Scott's accounts as to how he obtained the
ballad. As Colonel Elliot points out, there was no inconsistency.
Scott had two copies. One was Hogg's MS.: the other was derived
from the recitation of Hogg's mother.

This trifle is addressed to lovers of Scott, of the Border, and of
ballads, et non aultres.

It is curious to see how facts make havoc of the conjectures of the
Higher Criticism in the case of Auld Maitland. If Hogg was the
forger of that ballad, I asked, how did he know the traditions about
Maitland and his three sons, which we only know from poems of about
1576 in the manuscripts of Sir Richard Maitland? These poems in 1802
were, as far as I am aware, still unpublished.

Colonel Elliot urged that Leyden would know the poems, and must have
known Hogg. From Leyden, then, Hogg would get the information. In