Laidlaw's Recollections, edited from the MS. by Mr. James Sinton, as
reprinted from the Transactions of the Hawick Archaeological Society,
1905.



SCOTT AND THE BALLADS



It was through his collecting and editing of The Border Minstrelsy
that Sir Walter Scott glided from law into literature. The history
of the conception and completion of his task, "a labour of love
truly, if ever such there was," says Lockhart, is well known, but the
tale must be briefly told if we are to understand the following
essays in defence of Scott's literary morality.

Late in 1799 Scott wrote to James Ballantyne, then a printer in
Kelso, "I have been for years collecting Border ballads," and he
thought that he could put together "such a selection as might make a
neat little volume, to sell for four or five shillings." In December
1799 Scott received the office of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, or, as he
preferred to say, of Ettrick Forest. In the Forest, as was natural,
he found much of his materials. The people at the head of Ettrick
were still, says Hogg, {1a} like many of the Highlanders even now, in
that they cheered the long winter nights with the telling of old
tales; and some aged people still remembered, no doubt in a defective
and corrupted state, many old ballads. Some of these, especially the
ballads of Border raids and rescues, may never even have been written
down by the original authors. The Borderers, says Lesley, Bishop of