306 REVIEWS THE BALLADS OF SCOTLAND. 



" Eeliques " bent on signalizing Mmself in the same field of literary ad- 

 venture in wbicti Percy, Scott, Eitson and otliers had already achieved 

 so much, visited Dumfries in 1809, found out a young Scottish stone- 

 mason, then earning some eighteen shillings a week by his handicraft, 

 but deeply versed in all the traditional and published poetry of his 

 country, and as patriotically enthusiastic on the theme as ever the 

 Ayrshire ploughman himself had been, , The stonemason — long after 

 familiar to all men as Allan Cuningham, — was himself a poet, and 

 ventured modestly to show to the London critic some of the productions 

 of his muse ; but they were put aside with such a patronising conde- 

 cension as sufficed to divert the disappointed poet's ingenuity into 

 another vein. Cromek, returning to London, maintained a frequent 

 correspondence with this Dumfrieshire peasant, and received from time 

 to time the most wonderful fragments of ballads and songs, all wel- 

 comed by the delighted critic as precious relics of antiquity snatched 

 from oblivion by his own sagacious skill, but every one of them the 

 product of his despised protegee : the unknown Dumfrieshire mason ! 

 The credulous editor at length issued the collection, in 1810, under 

 the title of " Eemains of Nithsdale and Gralloway Song ;" and, as the 

 son of the poet has since said : " No one suspected a cheat ; Cromek's 

 reputation, through the Reliques and the select Scottish songs, seemed 

 sufficient security against that ; and, as for the mason mentioned in 

 the Introduction, no one could suspect for a moment that he could 

 have written anything one-half so good." But the sport and the 

 knavery did not end here. Jacobite songs played a prominent part 

 in those wonderful fragments recovered from the recesses of Nithsdale 

 and Galloway. The Ettrick Shepherd by and by published his 

 Jacobite Relics, and took advantage of the treasures of Cromek's col- 

 lection to enrich his own. Here and there he betrayed his suspicions 

 of Allan's own genius discernible in the modern antiques ; but neither 

 Hogg's sagacity nor his honesty was proof against the clever decep- 

 tion, and, accordingly, we find him not only accepting some of them 

 as genuine antiques, but even recovering new readings from "an 

 older collection," or from other sources equally genuine with the 

 originals ! Allan Earn say had taken like liberties at an earlier date, 

 though with a less skilful hand, and in a far more artificial age ; but 

 the ablest critic must sometimes be at fault in sifting the grain of the 

 true poet of modern times from that of his elder brother. 



Some curious and exceedingly interesting notices regarding the 



