Sheriff a full account of his mode of handling his materials, and Scott
could get more minute details by questioning him.

To this text of Otterburne, freely attacked by Colonel Elliot, in
apparent ignorance, as before, of the published facts of the case, and
of the manuscript, we next turn our attention. In the meantime, Scott
no more conspired to forge Auld Maitland than he conspired to forge the
Pentateuch. That Hogg did not forge Auld Maitland I think I have made
as nearly certain as anything in this region can be. I think that the
results are a lesson to professors of the Higher Criticism of Homer.



THE BALLAD OF OTTERBURNE



Scott's version of the Ballad of Otterburne, as given first in The
Minstrelsy of 1806, comes under Colonel Elliot's most severe censure.
He concludes in favour of "the view that it consists partly of stanzas
from Percy's Reliques, which have undergone emendations calculated to
disguise the source from which they came, partly of stanzas of modern
fabrication, and partly of a very few stanzas and lines from Herd's
version" (1776). {53a}

As a matter of fact we know, though Colonel Elliot does not, the whole
process of construction of the Otterburne in The Minstrelsy of 1806.
Professor Child published all the texts with a letter. {53b} It is a
pity that Colonel Elliot overlooks facts in favour of conjecture.
Concerning historical facts he is not more thorough in research. The