text, of the ballads which he published. Ballad lovers, who are not
specialists, go to The Minstrelsy for their favourite fare, and for
historical elucidation and anecdote.

Scott often mentions his sources of all kinds, such as MSS. of Herd
and Mrs. Brown; "an old person"; "an old woman at Kirkhill, West
Lothian"; "an ostler at Carlisle"; Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table
Miscellany; Surtees of Mainsforth (these ballads are by Surtees
himself: Scott never suspected him); Caw's Hawick Museum (1774);
Ritson's copies, others from Leyden; the Glenriddell MSS. (collected
by the friend of Burns); on several occasions copies from recitations
procured by James Hogg or Will Laidlaw, and possibly or probably each
of these men emended the copy he obtained; while Scott combined and
emended all in his published text.

Sometimes Scott gives no source at all, and in these cases research
finds variants in old broadsides, or elsewhere.

In thirteen cases he gives no source, or "from tradition," which is
the same thing; though "tradition in Ettrick Forest" may sometimes
imply, once certainly does, the intermediary Hogg, or Will Laidlaw.

We now understand Scott's methods as editor. They are not
scientific; they are literary. We also acknowledge (on internal
evidence) his interpolation of his own stanzas in Kinmont Willie and
Jamie Telfer, where he exalts his chief and ancestor. We cannot do
otherwise (as scholars) than regret and condemn Scott's
interpolations, never confessed. As lovers of poetry we acknowledge
that, without Scott's interpolation, we could have no more of Kinmont
Willie than verses, "much mangled by reciters," as Scott says, of a