The Ballad of Kinmont Willie. 29j> 



Souldier " used " Kinmont Willie " in an early form than that 

 the author of the ballad was indebted for his materials to 

 Satchells ! In his " True History," which he says was " gathered 

 out of ancient chronicles, histories, and traditions of our 

 fathers," Satchells certainly made use of ballads as well as of 

 formal histories ; and the part of his work which deals with the 

 assault on Carlisle Castle reads like a narrative largely due to 

 suggestions from some popular lay. Mr Andrew Lang, whose 

 book in reply to Colonel Elliot — " Sir Walter Scott and the 

 Border Minstrelsy " — should be in the hands of every lover of 

 ballads, has no doubt that Satchells had a memory of some 

 ballad about Kinmont. 



Colonel Elliot's theory is open to the grave preliminary 

 objection that we cannot accept it without accusing one of the 

 most honourable men in literary history of gross deception. 

 Scott's words were undoubtedly intended to convey the impression 

 that " Kinmont Willie ' ' was an old ballad rescued by him from 

 oblivion. There is nothing in the words themselves to excite 

 suspicion as to his good faith. A writer publishing as ancient 

 a production of his own would not be likely to assert gratuitously 

 that he had made "conjectural emendations " upon it; but one 

 who had altered and improved an old ballad, stanzas of which 

 might be known to a few of his readers, would be likely to offer 

 some apology for the freedom with which he had handled his 

 materials. Colonel Elliot thinks that Scott regarded the fabri- 

 cation of ballads as but a venial sin. It is true that Sir Walter 

 did not agree with Ritson that the " crime of literary imitation 

 is as great as that of commercial forgery, ' ' and that he defended 

 Bishop Percy's unscientific method of dealing with ancient pieces. 

 But there is no evidence to show that he ever regarded the fabri- 

 cation of an entire balled, with intent to deceive the public, as 

 an innocent ploy. He blamed Pinkerton for publi.shing, as 

 genuine relics of antiquity, ballads written by himself, and he 

 condemned such forgeries as " The Bedesman on Nidsyde ' ' and 

 ** Jock of Milk and Jean of Bonshaw ' ' as unsparingly as did 

 Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. 



If Scott wrote, and did not merelv improve, " Kinmont 

 Willie," he had a marvellous gift for the imitation of old ballads. 

 His contemporaries, William Motherwell and the Scottish Bor- 

 derer, Kirkpatrick Sharpe, both keen critics, did not impugn 



