all in Hogg's hand, is now at Abbotsford. We next have, through
Carruthers using Laidlaw's manuscript, an account of the arrival of
Scott and Leyden at Blackhouse, of Laidlaw's presentation of Hogg's
manuscript, which Scott read aloud, and of their surprise and
delight. Scott was excited, so that his burr became very
perceptible. {23a}

The time of year when Scott and Leyden visited Yarrow was not the
AUTUMN vacation of 1802, as Lockhart erroneously writes, {23b} but
the SPRING vacation of 1802. The spring vacation, Mr. Macmath
informs me, ran from 11th March to 12th May in 1802. In May,
apparently, Scott having obtained the Auld Maitland MS. in the vernal
vacation of the Court of Session, gave his account of his discovery
to his friend Ellis (Lockhart does not date the letter, but wrongly
puts it after the return to Edinburgh in November 1802).

Scott wrote thus: --"We" (John Leyden and himself) "have just
concluded an excursion of two or three weeks through my jurisdiction
of Selkirkshire, where, in defiance of mountains, rivers, and bogs,
damp and dry, we have penetrated the very recesses of Ettrick Forest
. . . I have . . . returned LOADED with the treasures of oral
tradition. The principal result of our inquiries has been a complete
and perfect copy of "Maitland with his Auld Berd Graie," referred to
by [Gawain] Douglas in his Palice of Honour (1503), along with John
the Reef and other popular characters, and celebrated in the poems
from the Maitland MS." (circ. 1575). You may guess the surprise of
Leyden and myself when this was presented to us, copied down from the
recitation of an old shepherd, by a country farmer . . . Many of the
old words are retained, which neither the reciter nor the copyer
understood. Such are the military engines, sowies, SPRINGWALLS