Hogg says, in Domestic Manners of Sir Walter Scott, that when his
mother met Scott she told him that her brother and she learned the
ballad from auld Andrew Muir, and he from "auld Babby Mettlin,"
housekeeper of the first ("Anderson") laird of Tushielaw. This first
Anderson, laird of Tushielaw, reigned from 1688 to 1721 (?) or 1724.
{48a} Hogg's mother was born in 1730, and was only one remove--filled
up by Andrew Muir--from Babby, who was "ither than a gude yin," and
knew many songs. Does any one think Hogg crafty enough to have
invented Babby Maitland as the source of a song about the Maitlands,
and to have introduced her into his narrative in 1834? I conjecture
that this Maitland woman knew a Maitland song, modernised in time, and
perhaps copied out and emended by one of the Maitland family, possibly
one of the descendants of Lethington. We know that, under James I.,
about 1620, Lethington's impoverished son, James, had several children;
and that Lauderdale was still supporting them (or THEIR children)
during the Restoration. Only a century before, ballads on the
Maitlands had certainly been popular, and there is nothing impossible
in the suggestion that one such ballad survived in the Lauderdale or
Lethington family, and came through Babby Maitland to Andrew Muir, then
to Hogg's mother, to Hogg, and to Scott.

If a manuscript copy ever existed, and was Babby's ultimate source, it
would be of the late seventeenth century. That is the ascertained date
of the oldest known MS. of The Outlaw Murray, as is proved from an
allusion in a note appended to a copy, referring to a Judge of Session,
Lord Philiphaugh, as then alive. The copy was of 1689-1702. {49a}

Granting a MS. of Auld Maitland existing in any branch of the Maitland
family in 1680-1700, Babby Mettlin's knowledge of the ballad, and its
few modernisms, are explained.