Elliot's contrary opinions also fall far short of demonstration, or
are demonstrably erroneous.



AULD MAITLAND



The ballad of Auld Maitland holds in The Border Minstrelsy a place
like that of the Doloneia, or Tenth Book, in the Iliad. Every
professor of the Higher Criticism throws his stone at the Doloneia in
passing, and every ballad-editor does as much to Auld Maitland. {19a}
Professor Child excluded it from his monumental collection of
"English and Scottish Popular Ballads," fragments, and variants, for
which Mr. Child and his friends and helpers ransacked every
attainable collection of ballads in manuscript, and ballads in print,
as they listened to the last murmurings of ballad tradition from the
lips of old or young.

Mr. Child, says his friend and pupil, Professor Kittredge, "possessed
a kind of instinct" for distinguishing what is genuine and
traditional, or modern, or manipulated, or, if I may say so, "faked"
in a ballad.

"This instinct, trained by thirty years of study, had become
wonderfully swift in its operations, and almost infallible. A forged
or retouched piece could not escape him for a moment: he detected
the slightest jar in the ballad ring." {18a}