Whether Surtees' "Brown Man of the Muirs," to which Scott also gave
a place in his own poetry, was a true legend or not, the reader may
decide for himself.

Concerning another ballad in the "Minstrelsy"--"Auld Maitland"--
Professor Child has expressed a suspicion which most readers feel.
What Scott told Ellis about it (Autumn, 1802) was, that he got it
in the Forest, "copied down from the recitation of an old shepherd
by a country farmer." Who was the farmer? Will Laidlaw had
employed James Hogg, as shepherd. Hogg's mother chanted "Auld
Maitland." Hogg first met Scott in the summer of 1801. The
shepherd had already seen the first volume of the "Minstrelsy."
Did he, thereupon, write "Auld Maitland," teach his mother it, and
induce Laidlaw to take it down from her recitation? The old lady
said she got it from Andrew Moir, who had it "frae auld Baby
Mettlin, who was said to have been another nor a gude ane." But we
have Hogg's own statement that "aiblins ma gran'-mither was an unco
leear," and this quality may have been hereditary. On the other
side, Hogg could hardly have held his tongue about the forgery, if
forgery it was, when he wrote his "Domestic Manners and Private
Life of Sir Walter Scott" (1834). The whole investigation is a
little depressing, and makes one very shy of unauthenticated
ballads.



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