III
COLONEL ELLIOT’S CHARGE AGAINST SIR WALTER SCOTT
Colonel Elliot believes generally in the historical character of the ballad as given in the Elliot version, but “is inclined to think that” the original poet “never wrote the stanza” (the stanza with Buccleuch’s refusal) “at all, and that it has been inserted at some later period.” 57 In that case Colonel Elliot is “inclined to think” that an Ettrick farmer, robbed by the English, never dreamed of going to his neighbour and potent chief, but went all the way to Martin Elliot, high up in Liddesdale, to seek redress! Surely few can share the Colonel’s inclination. Why should a farmer in Ettrick “choose to lord” a remote Elliot, when he had the Cock of the Border, the heroic Buccleuch, within eight miles of his home?
Holding these opinions, Colonel Elliot, with deep regret —
I wat the tear blinded his ee —
accuses Sir Walter Scott of having taken the Elliot version – till then the only version – and of having altered stanzas vii.–xi. (in which Jamie goes to Branksome, and is refused succour) into his own stanzas vii.–xi., in which Jamie goes to Stobs and is refused succour. This evil thing Scott did, thinks Colonel Elliot. Scott had no copy, he thinks, of the ballad except an Elliot copy, which he deliberately perverted.
We must look into the facts of the case. I know no older published copy of the ballad than that of Scott, in Border Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 91 et seqq. (1802). Professor Child quotes a letter from the Ettrick shepherd to Scott of “June 30, 1802” thus: “I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother’s; Jamie Telfer differs in many particulars.” 58 (This is an incomplete quotation. I give the MS. version later.)
Scott himself, before Hogg wrote thus, had said, in the prefatory note to his Jamie Telfer: “There is another ballad, under the same title as the following, in which nearly the same incidents are narrated, with little difference, except that the honour of rescuing the cattle is attributed to the Liddesdale Elliots, headed by a chief there called Martin Elliot of the Preakin Tower, whose son, Simm, is said to have fallen in the action. It is very possible that both the Teviotdale Scotts and the Elliots were engaged in the affair, and that each claimed the honour of the victory.”
Old Mrs. Hogg’s version, “differing in many particulars” from Scott’s, must have been the Elliot version, published by Professor Child, as “A*,” “Jamie Telfer in” (not “of”) “the Fair Dodhead,” “from a MS. written about the beginning of the nineteenth century, and now in the possession of Mr. William Macmath”; it had previously belonged to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. 59
There is one great point of difference between the two forms. In Sir Walter’s variant, verse 26 summons the Scotts of Teviotdale, including Wat of Harden. In his 28 the Scotts ride with the slogan “Rise for Branksome readily.” Scott’s verses 34, 36, and the two first lines of 38, are, if there be such a thing as internal evidence, from his own pen. Such lines as
The Dinlay snaw was ne’er mair white
Nor the lyart locks o’ Harden’s hair
are cryingly modern and “Scottesque.”
That Sir Walter knew the other version, as in Mr. Macmath’s MS. of the early nineteenth century, is certain; he describes that version in his preface. That he effected the whole transposition of Scotts for Elliots is Colonel Elliot’s opinion. 60
If Scott did, I am not the man to defend his conduct; I regret and condemn it; and shall try to prove that he found the matter in his copy. I shall first prove, beyond possibility of doubt, that the ballad is, from end to end, utterly unhistorical, though based on certain real incidents of 1596–97. I shall next show that the Elliot version is probably later than the Scott version. Finally, I shall make it certain (or so it seems to me) that Scott worked on an old copy which was not the copy that belonged to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, but contained points of difference, not those inserted by Sir Walter Scott about “Dinlay snaw,” and so forth.
IV
WHO WAS THE FARMER IN THE DODHEAD IN 1580–1609?
Colonel Elliot has made no attempt to prove that one Telfer was tenant of the Dodhead in 1580–1603, which must, we shall see, include the years in which the alleged incidents occur. On this question – was there a Telfer in the Dodhead in 1580–1603? – I consulted my friend, Mr. T. Craig Brown, author of an excellent History of Selkirkshire. In that work (vol. i. p. 356) the author writes: “Dodhead or Scotsbank; Dodhead was one of the four stedes of Redefurd in 1455. In 1609 Robert Scot of Satchells (ancestor of the poet-captain) obtained a Crown charter of the lands of Dodbank.” For the statement that Dodhead was one of the three stedes in 1455, Mr. Craig Brown quotes “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “an unimpeachable authority.” For the Crown charter of 1609, we have only to look up “Dodbank” in the Register of the Great Seal of 1609. The charter is of November 24, 1609, and gratifies “Robert Scott of Satscheillis” (father of the Captain Walter Scott who composed the Metrical History of the Scotts in 1688) with the lands, which have been occupied by him and his forefathers “from a time past human memory.” Thus, writes Mr. Craig Brown to me, “Scott of Satchells was undoubtedly Scott of Dodhead also in 1609.”
In “The Retoured Extent of 1628,” “Dodhead or Dodbank” appears as Harden’s property. Thus in 1628 the place was “Dodhead or Dodbank,” a farm that had been tenanted by Scotts “from beyond human memory.” But Mr. Craig Brown proves from record that one Simpson farmed it in 1510.
So where does Jamie Telfer come in?
The farmers were Scotts, it was to their chief, Buccleuch, that they went when they needed aid. 61
Thus vanishes the hero of the ballad, Jamie Telfer in the Fair Dodhead, and thus the ballad is pure fiction from end to end.
V
MORE IMPOSSIBILITIES IN THE BALLAD
This is only one of the impossibilities in the ballad. That the Captain of Bewcastle, an English hold, stated in a letter of the period to be distant three miles from the frontier, the Liddel water, should seek “to drive a prey” from the Ettrick, far through the bounds of his neighbours and foes, Grahams, Armstrongs, Scotts, and Elliots, is a ridiculously absurd circumstance.
Colonel Elliot attempts to meet this difficulty by his theory of the route taken by the Captain, which he illustrates by a map. 62 The ballad gives no details except that the Captain found his first guide “high up in Hardhaughswire,” which Colonel Elliot cannot identify. The second guide was “laigh down in Borthwick water.” If this means on the lower course of the Borthwick, the Captain was perilously near Branksome Hall and Harden, and his ride was foolhardy. But “laigh down,” I think, means merely “on lower ground than Hardhaughswire.”
The Captain, as soon as he crossed the Ritterford after leaving Bewcastle, was in hostile and very watchful Armstrong country. This initial difficulty Colonel Elliot meets by marking on his map, as Armstrong country, the north bank of the Liddel down to Kershope burn; and the Captain crosses Liddel below that burn at Ritterford. Thence he goes north by west, across Tarras water, up Ewes water, up Mickledale burn, by Merrylaw and Ramscleugh and so on to Howpasley, which is not on the lower but the upper Borthwick.
Looking at Colonel Elliot’s chart of the Captain’s route, all seems easy enough for the Captain. He does not try to ride into Teviotdale, for which he is making, up the Liddel water, and thence by the Hermitage tributary on his left. Colonel Elliot studs that region with names of Armstrong and Elliot strongholds. He makes the Captain, crossing Liddel by the Ritterford, bear to his left, through a space empty of hostile habitations, in his map. This seems prudent, but the region thus left blank was full of the fiercest and most warlike of the Armstrong name. That road was closed to the Captain!
Colonel Elliot has failed to observe this fact, which I go on to prove, from a memoir addressed in 1583 to Burleigh, by Thomas Musgrave, the active son of the aged Captain of Bewcastle, Sir Simon Musgrave. Thomas describes the topography of the Middle Marches. He says that the Armstrongs hold both banks of Liddel as far south as “Kershope foot” (the junction of the Kershope with the Liddel), and hold the north side of the Liddel as far as its junction with the Esk. 63 Thus on crossing Liddel by the Ritterford, the Captain had at once to pass through the hostile Armstrongs. Thereby also were Grahams with whom the Musgraves of Bewcastle were in deadly feud. Farther down Esk, west of Esk, dwelt Kinmont Willie, an Armstrong, “at a place called Morton.” If he did pass so far through Armstrongs, the Captain met them again, farther north, on Tarras side, where Runyen Armstrong lived at Thornythaite. Near him was Armstrong of Hollhouse, Musgrave’s great enemy. North of Tarras the Captain rode through Ewesdale; there he had to deal with three hundred Armstrong men of the spear. 64 When he reached Ramscleuch (which he never could have done), the Colonel’s map makes the Captain ride past Ramscleuch, then farmed by the Grieves, retainers of Buccleuch, who would warn Branksome. When the Captain reached Howpasley on Borthwick water, he would be observed by the men of Scott of Howpasley, the Grieves, who could send a rider some six miles to warn Branksome.
We get the same information as to the perils of the Captain’s path from the places marked on Blaeu’s map of 1600–54. There are Hollhouse and Thornythaite, Armstrong towers, and the active John Armstrong of Langholm can come at a summons.
It seems to be a great error to suppose that the route chosen for the Captain by Colonel Elliot could lead him into anything better than a death-trap. I must insist that it would have been madness for a Captain of Bewcastle to ride far through Armstrong country, deep into Buccleuch’s country, and return on another line through Scott, and near Elliot, and through Armstrong country – and all for no purpose but to steal ten cows in remote Selkirkshire!
Here I may save the reader trouble, by omitting a great mass of detail as to the deplorable condition of Bewcastle itself in 1580–96. Sir Simon, the Captain, declares himself old and weary. The hold is “utterly decayed,” the riders are only thirty-seven men fairly equipped. Soldiers are asked for, sometimes fifty are sent from the garrison of Berwick, then they are withdrawn. Bewcastle is forayed almost daily; “March Bills” minutely describe the cattle, horses, and personal property taken from the Captain and the people by the Armstrongs and Elliots.
Once, in 1582, Thomas Musgrave slew Arthur Graham, a near neighbour, and took one hundred and sixty kye, but this only caused such a feud that the Musgraves could not stir safely from home. From 1586 onwards, Thomas Musgrave, officially or unofficially, was acting Captain of Bewcastle. He had no strength to justify him in raiding to remote Ettrick, through enemies who penned him in at Bewcastle.
I look on Musgrave as the Captain whose existence is known to the ballad-maker, and I find the origin of the tale of his defeat and capture in the ballad, in a distorted memory of his actual capture.
On 3rd July 1596, Thomas (having got Scrope’s permission, without which he dared not cross the Border on affairs of war) attempted a retaliatory raid on Armstrongs within seven miles of the Border, the Armstrongs of Hollace, or Hollhouse. “He found only empty houses;” he “sought a prey” in vain; he let his men straggle, and returning homeward, with some fifteen companions, he was ambushed by the Armstrongs near Bewcastle, was refused shelter by a Graham, was taken prisoner, and was sent to Buccleuch at Branksome. On 15th July he came home under a bond of £200 for ransom. 65 As every one did, in his circumstances, the Captain made out his Bill for Damages. It was indented on 28th April 1597. We learn that John (Armstrong) of Langholm, Will of Kinmont (not Liddesdale men), and others, who took him, are in the Captain’s debt for “24 horses and mares, himself prisoner, and ransomed to £200, and 16 other prisoners, and slaughter.” The charges are admitted by the accused; the Captain is to get £400. 66
In my opinion this capture of the Captain of Bewcastle and others, poetically handled, is, with other incidents, the basis of the ballad. Colonel Elliot says that the incident “is no proof that a Captain of Bewcastle was not also taken or killed at some other place or at some other time.” But what Captain, and when? Sir Simon, in 1586, had been Captain, he says, for thirty years. Thenceforth till near the Union of the Crowns, Thomas was Captain, or acting Captain.
So considerable an event as the taking of a Captain of Bewcastle, who, in the ballad, was shot through the head and elsewhere, could not escape record in dispatches, and the periodical “March Bills,” or statements of wrongs to be redressed. Colonel Elliot’s reply takes the shape of the argument that the ballad may speak of some other Captain, at some other time; and that, in one way or another, the sufferings and losses of that Captain may have escaped mention in the English dispatches from the Border. These dispatches are full of minute details, down to the theft of a single mare. I am content to let historians familiar with the dispatches decide as to whether the Captain’s mad ride into Ettrick, with his dangerous wounds, loss of property, and loss of seventeen men killed and wounded (as in the ballad), could escape mention.
The capture of Thomas Musgrave, I think, and two other incidents, – confused in course of tradition, and handled by the poet with poetic freedom, – are the materials of Jamie Telfer. One of the other incidents is of April 1597. 67 Here Buccleuch in person, on the Sabbath, burned twenty houses in Tynedale, and “slew fourteen men who had been in Scotland and brought away their booty.” Here we have Buccleuch “on the hot trod,” pursuing English reivers, recovering the spoils probably, and slaying as many of the raiders as the Captain lost, in the ballad. Again, not a son of Elliot of Preakinhaugh (as I had erroneously said), but a nephew named Martin, was slain in a Tynedale raid into Liddesdale. 68 Soldiers aided the English raiders. A confused memory of this death of Elliot’s nephew in 1597 may be the source of the story of the death of his son, Simmy, in the ballad.
Our traditional ballads all arise out of some germs of history, all handle the facts romantically, and all appear to have been composed, in their extant shapes, at a considerable time after the events. I may cite Mary Hamilton; The Laird of Logie is another case in point; there are many others.
Colonel Elliot does not agree with me. So be it.
Colonel Elliot writes that, – in place of my saying that Jamie Telfer “is a mere mythical perversion of carefully recorded facts,” – “it would surely be more correct to say that it is a fairly true, though jumbled, account of actual incidents, separated from each other by only short periods of time.. ” 69 If he means, or thinks that I mean, that the actual facts were the capture of Musgrave near Bewcastle in 1596 by the Armstrongs, with Buccleuch’s hot-trod, and Martin Elliot’s slaying in 1597, I entirely agree with him that the facts are “jumbled.” But as to the opinion that the ballad is “fairly true” about the raid to Ettrick (the Captain could not ride a mile beyond the Border without the Warden’s permission), about the non-existent Jamie Telfer, about the shooting, taking, and plundering of the Captain, about his loss of seventeen men wounded and slain (he lost about as many prisoners), – I have given reasons for my disbelief.
VI
IS THE SCOTT VERSION, WITH ELLIOTS AND SCOTTS TRANSPOSED, THE LATER VERSION?
We now come to the important question, Is the Scott version of the ballad (apart from Sir Walter’s decorative stanzas) necessarily later than the Elliot version in Sharpe’s copy? The chief argument for the lateness of the Scott version, the presence of a Gilbert Elliot of Stobs at a date when this gentleman had not yet acquired Stobs, I have already treated. If the ballad is no earlier than the date when Elliot was believed (as by Satchells) to have obtained Stobs before 1596, the argument falls to the ground.
Starting from that point, and granting that a minstrel fond of the Scotts wants to banter the Elliots, he may make Telfer ask aid at Stobs. After that, which version is better in its topography? Bidden by Stobs to seek Buccleuch, Telfer runs to Teviot, to Coultartcleugh, some four miles above Branksome. Branksome was nearer, but Telfer was shy, let us say, and did not know Buccleuch; while at Coultartcleugh, Jock Grieve was his brother-in-law. Jock gives him a mount, and takes him to “Catslockhill.”
Now, no Catslockhill is known anywhere, to me or to Colonel Elliot. Mr. Henderson, in a note to the ballad, 70 speaks of “Catslack in Branxholm,” and cites the Register of the Privy Seal for 4th June 1554, and the Register of the Privy Council for 14th October 1592. The records are full of that Catslack, but it is not in Branksome. Blaeu’s map (1600–54) gives it, with its appurtenances, on the north side of St. Mary’s Loch. There is a Catslack on the north side of Yarrow, near Ladhope, on the southern side. Neither Catslack is the Catslockhill of the Scott ballad. But on evidence, “and it is good evidence,” says Colonel Elliot, 71 I prove that, in 1802, a place called “Catlochill” existed between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The place (Mrs. Grieve, Branksome Park, informs me) is now called Branksome-braes. On his copy of The Minstrelsy of 1802, Mr. Grieve, then tenant of Branksome Park, made a marginal note. Catlochill was still known to him; it was in a commanding site, and had been strengthened by the art of man. His note I have seen and read.
Thus, on good evidence, there was a Catlochill, or Catlockhill, between Coultartcleugh and Branksome. The Scott version is right in its topography.
This fact was unknown to Colonel Elliot. Not knowing a Catslackhill or Catslockhill in Teviot, he made Scott’s Telfer go to an apocryphal Catlockhill in Liddesdale. Professor Veitch had said that the Catslockhill of the ballad “is to be sought” in some locality between Coultartcleugh and Branxholm. Colonel Elliot calls this “a really preposterously cool suggestion.” 72 Why “really preposterously cool”? Being sought, the place is found where it had always been. Jamie Telfer found it, and in it his friend “William’s Wat,” who took him to the laird of Buccleuch at Branksome.
In the Elliot version, when refused aid by Buccleuch, Jamie ran to Coultartcleugh, – as in Scott’s, – on his way to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on the Liddel. Jamie next “takes the fray” to “the Catlockhill,” and is there remounted by “Martin’s Hab,” an Elliot (not by William’s Wat), and they “take the fray” to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh in Liddesdale. This is very well, but where is this “Catlockhill” in Liddesdale? Is it even a real place?
Colonel Elliot has found no such place; nor can I find it in the Registrum Magni Sigilli, nor in Blaeu’s map of 1600–54.
Colonel Elliot’s argument has been that the Elliot version, the version of the Sharpe MS., is the earlier, for, among other reasons, its topography is correct. 73 It makes Telfer run from Dodhead to Branksome for aid, because that was the comparatively near residence of the powerful Buccleuch. Told by Buccleuch to seek aid from Martin Elliot in Liddesdale, Telfer does so. He runs up Teviot four miles to his brother-in-law, Jock Grieve, who mounts him. He then rides off at a right angle, from Teviot to Catlockhill, says the Elliot ballad, where he is rehorsed by Martin’s Hab. The pair then take the fray to Martin Elliot at Preakinhaugh on Liddel water, and Martin summons and leads the pursuers of the Captain.
This, to Colonel Elliot’s mind, is all plain sailing, all is feasible and natural. And so it is feasible and natural, if Colonel Elliot can find a Catlockhill anywhere between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. On that line, in Mr. Veitch’s words, Catlockhill “is to be sought.” But just as Mr. Veitch could find no Catslockhill between Coultartcleugh and Branksome, so Colonel Elliot can find no Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh. He tells us 74 indeed of “Catlockhill on Hermitage water.” But there is no such place known! Colonel Elliot’s method is to take a place which, he says, is given as “Catlie” Hill, “between Dinlay burn and Hermitage water, on Blaeu’s map of 1654.” We may murmur that Catlie Hill is one thing and Catlock another, but Colonel Elliot points out that “lock” means “the meeting of waters,” and that Catlie Hill is near the meeting of Dinlay burn and the Hermitage water. But then why does Blaeu call it, not Catlockhill, nor Catlie hill, nor “Catlie” even, but “Gatlie,” for so it is distinctly printed on my copy of the map? Really we cannot take a place called “Gatlie Hill” and pronounce that we have found “Catlockhill”! Would Colonel Elliot have permitted Mr. Veitch – if Mr. Veitch had found “Gatlie Hill” near Branksome, in Blaeu – to aver that he had found Catslockhill near Branksome?
Thus, till Colonel Elliot produces on good evidence a Catlockhill between Coultartcleugh and Preakinhaugh, the topography of the Elliot ballad, of the Sharpe copy of the ballad, is nowhere, for neither Catliehill nor Gatliehill is Catlockhill. That does not look as if the Elliot were older than the Scott version. (There was a Sim Armstrong of the Cathill, slain by a Ridley of Hartswell in 1597. 75)
We now take the Scott version where Telfer has arrived at Branksome. Scott’s stanza xxv. is Sharpe’s xxiv. In Scott, Buccleuch; in Sharpe, Martin Elliot bids his men “warn the waterside” (Sharpe), “warn the water braid and wide” (Scott). Scott’s stanza xxvi. is probably his own, or may be, for he bids them warn Wat o’ Harden, Borthwick water, and the Teviot Scotts, and Gilmanscleuch – which is remote. Then, in xxvii., Buccleuch says —
Ride by the gate of Priesthaughswire,
And warn the Currors o’ the Lee,
As ye come down the Hermitage slack
Warn doughty Wiliie o’ Gorrinberry.
All this is plain sailing, by the pass of Priesthaughswire the Scotts will ride from Teviot into Hermitage water, and, near the Slack, they will pass Gorrinberry, will call Will, and gallop down Hermitage water to the Liddel, where they will nick the returning Captain at the Ritterford.
The Sharpe version makes Martin order the warning of the waterside (xxiv.), and then Martin says (xxv.) —
When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack,
Warn doughty Will o’ Gorranherry.
Colonel Elliot 76 supposes Martin (if I follow his meaning) to send Simmy with his command, back over all the course that Telfer and Martin’s Hab have already ridden: back past Shaws, near Braidley (a house of Martin’s), past “Catlockhill,” to Gorranberry, to “warn the waterside.” But surely Telfer, who passed Gorranberry gates, and with Hab passed the other places, had “taken the fray,” and warned the water quite sufficiently already. If this be granted, the Sharpe version is taking from the Scott version the stanza, so natural there, about the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry. But Colonel Elliot infers, from stanzas xxvi., xxx., xxxi., that Simmy has warned the water as far as Gorranberry (again), has come in touch with the Captain, “between the Frostily and the Ritterford,” and that this is “consistent only with his having moved up the Hermitage water.”
Meanwhile Martin, he thinks, rode with his men down Liddel water. But here we get into a maze of topographical conjecture, including the hypothesis that perhaps the Liddel came down in flood, and caused the English to make for Kershope ford instead of Ritterford, and here they were met by Martin’s men on the Hermitage line of advance. I cannot find this elegant combined movement in the ballad; all this seems to me hypothesis upon hypothesis, even granting that Martin sent Simmy back up Hermitage that he might thence cut sooner across the enemy’s path. Colonel Elliot himself writes: “It is certain that after the news of the raid reached Catlockhill” (and Gorranberry, Telfer passed it), “it must have spread rapidly through Hermitage water, and it is most unlikely for the men of this district to have delayed taking action until they received instructions from their chief.” 77
That is exactly what I say; but Martin says, “When ye come in at the Hermitage Slack, warn doughty Will o’ Gorranberry.” Why go to warn him, when, as Colonel Elliot says, the news is running through Hermitage water, and the men are most probably acting on it, – as they certainly would do?
Martin’s orders, in Sharpe xxv., are taken, I think, from Buccleuch’s, in Scott’s xxvii.
The point is that Martin had no need to warn men so far away as Gorranberry, – they were roused already. Yet he orders them to be warned, and about a combined movement of Martin and Simmy on different lines the ballad says not a word. All this is inference merely, inference not from historical facts, but from what may be guessed to have been in the mind of the poet.
Thus the Elliot or Sharpe version has topography that will not hold water, while the Scott topography does hold water; and the Elliot song seems to borrow the lines on the Hermitage Slack and Gorranberry from a form of the Scott version. This being the case, the original version on which Scott worked is earlier than the Elliot version. In the Scott version the rescuers must come down the Hermitage Slack: in the Elliot they have no reason for riding back to that place.