been obtained from the recitation of old persons residing at the head
of Ettrick Forest." {62a}

Colonel Elliot devotes a long digression to the trivial value of
recitations, so styled, {62b} and gives his suggestions about the copy
being made up from the Reliques. When Scott's copy of 1806 agrees with
the English version, Colonel Elliot surmises that a modern person,
familiar with the English, has written the coincident verses in WITH
DIFFERENCES. Percy and Douglas, for example, change speeches, each
saying what, in the English, the other said in substance, not in the
actual words. When Scott's version touches on an incident known in
history, but not given in the English version, the encounter between
Douglas and Percy at Newcastle (Scott, vii., viii.), Colonel Elliot
suspects the interpolator (and well he may, for the verses are mawkish
and modern, not earlier than the eighteenth century imitations or
remaniements which occur in many ballads traditional in essence).

So Colonel Elliot says, "We are not told, either in The Minstrelsy or
in any of Scott's works or writings, who the reciters were, and who the
transcribers were." {63a} We very seldom are told by Scott who the
reciters were and who the transcribers, but our critic's information is
here mournfully limited--by his own lack of study. Colonel Elliot goes
on to criticise a very curious feature in Scott's version of 1806, and
finds certain lines "beautiful" but "without a note of antiquity," that
he can detect, while the sentiment "is hardly of the kind met with in
old ballads."

To understand the position we must remember that, IN THE ENGLISH, Percy
and Douglas fight each other thus (1.) -