204 The Ballad of Kinmont Willie. 



were issued againe oiite of the posterne before they were descried 

 bv the watch of th' inerwarde, and er resistance coude be made."'' 

 Before sunrise Willie and his brave rescuers were safe on Scottish 

 ground. 



The Origin of the Ballad. 



As Bishop Lesley testifies, the Scottish Borderers in the 

 sixteenth century had a marked taste for music and for ballad 

 poetry commemorative of exploits by soldiers or thieves of their 

 race.^ In the early seventeenth century, and perhaps even in 

 the later seventeenth century, they still possessed that taste. It 

 may, therefore, almost be taken for granted that Buccleuch's 

 successful attack on Carlisle Castle, a feat which recalled the 

 achievements of Wallace and Bruce, gave rise to a ballad. Is 

 the " Kinmont Willie ' ' published in the " Minstrelsy of the 

 Scottish Border" — though clearly not a traditional ballad as 

 little altered as "Johnny Cock " — essentially ancient? Scott, in 

 his introduction to the piece, says it " is preser\'ed, by tradition, 

 on the West Borders, but much mangled by reciters ; so that 

 some conjectural emendations have been absolutely necessary to 

 render it intelligible. In particular, the Eden has been substi- 

 tuted for the Eske, the latter name being inconsistent with 

 geography." That Scott really possessed fragments of an old 

 ballad taken down from the mouth of some Eskdale or Liddes- 

 dale reciter, few readers of the " Minstrelsy " have ever doubted. 

 Last year, however, Colonel Elliot, in an interesting book, 

 entitled " Further Essays on Border Ballads, ' ' tried to prove that 

 the whole ballad was made by Scott out of Satchells' rhyming 

 history of the Scotts, published in 1688, as " Gude Wallace" 

 was, by some unknown writer, made out of Blind Harry's 

 "Wallace." The two old poetical accounts of the rescue of 

 Willie have resemblances which cannot be purely fortuitous, a 

 fact which Colonel Elliot was not the first writer to notice. But 

 though we may agree with him that the two accounts are not 

 independent, we need not yield assent to his hypothesis of the 

 origin of the ballad. Surely it is more likely that the " old 



7. Calendar of Border Papers, II., 121. 



8. " De Origine, Moribus, et Rebus Gestis Sootonim," edit. 

 1578, p. 60. 



