making their copies, the materials won from the failing memories of
the old. Thus Laidlaw, while tenant in Traquair Knowe, obtained from
recitation, The Daemon Lover. Scott does not tell us whether or not
he knew the fact that Laidlaw wrote in stanza 6 (half of it
traditional), stanza 12 (also a ballad formula), stanzas 17 and 18
(necessary to complete the sense; the last two lines of 18 are purely
and romantically modern).

We shall later quote Hogg's account of his own dealings with his raw
materials from recitation.

In January 1802 Scott published the two first volumes of The
Minstrelsy. Lockhart describes the enthusiasm of dukes, fine ladies,
and antiquarians. In the end of April 1803 the third volume
appeared, including ballads obtained through Hogg and Laidlaw in
spring 1802. Scott, by his store of historic anecdote in his
introductions and notes, by his way of vivifying the past, and by his
method of editing, revived, but did not create, the interest in the
romance of ballad poetry.

It had always existed. We all know Sidney's words on "The Douglas
and the Percy"; Addison's on folk-poetry; Mr. Pepys' ballad
collection; the ballads in Tom Durfey's and other miscellanies; Allan
Ramsay's Evergreen; Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry; Herd's
ballad volumes of 1776; Evans' collections; Burns' remakings of old
songs; Ritson's publications, and so forth. But the genius of Burns,
while it transfigured many old songs, was not often exercised on old
narrative ballads, and when Scott produced The Minstrelsy, the taste
for ballads was confined to amateurs of early literature, and to
country folk.