ballad perhaps no more poetical than Jock o' the Side. Scott says
that "some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to
render it intelligible." As it is now very intelligible, to say
"conjectural emendations" is a way of saying "interpolations."

But while thus confessing Scott's sins, I cannot believe that he,
like Pinkerton, palmed off on the world any ballad or ballads of his
own sole manufacture, or any ballad which he knew to be forged.

The truth is that Scott was easily deceived by a modern imitation, if
he liked the poetry. Surtees hoaxed him not only with Barthram's
Dirge and Anthony Featherstonhaugh, but with a long prose excerpt
from a non-existent manuscript about a phantom knight. Scott made
the plot of Marmion hinge on this myth, in the encounter of Marmion
with Wilfred as the phantasmal cavalier. He tells us that in The
Flowers of the Forest "the manner of the ancient minstrels is so
happily imitated, that it required the most positive evidence to
convince the editor that the song was of modern date." Really the
author was Miss Jane Elliot (1747-1805), daughter of Sir Gilbert
Elliot of Minto. Herd published a made-up copy in 1776. The tune,
Scott says, is old, and he has heard an imperfect verse of the
original ballad -


"I ride single on my saddle,
For the flowers o' the forest are a' wede awa'"


The CONSTANT use of double rhymes within the line -