ABSTRACT
By far the most productive of ballad collectors in the Northeast during the transitional period was a vain and volatile printer and would-be gentleman from the Buchan area, Peter Buchan. His texts, particularly during the chauvinistic wars between Scots and English folksong collectors, have drawn much adverse comment, some of it as eccentric as the man himself. On occasion these texts have been used as pegs on which to hang weirdly diverse theories about ‘the’ ballad and ‘the’ folk. When, however, Buchan’s versions are placed in a specific context, that of the northeastern folk and their ballads, and not in the vaguely general context of ‘the’ ballad, then they can be seen in their true perspective. Although the work of Will Walker and Gavin Greig 1 has helped considerably, if not completely, to rehabilitate Buchan, it is only when his ballads are recognized as products of a particular tradition, subject to the mutabilities of regional social change, that the basic trustworthiness of his texts becomes fully apparent.
