ABSTRACT
Around the middle of July 1802 a meeting took place between a young Edinburgh lawyer and a Border shepherd and his mother. The lawyer was Walter Scott, who was gathering material for the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. His host was a self-educated poet named James Hogg, who had been copying down ballads from the oral tradition of his family and community ever since coming across the first two volumes of the Minstrelsy in the spring of that year. In Hogg’s thatched cottage his mother, Margaret Laidlaw, recited to their guest the traditional ballad ‘Auld Maitland’. 1 Scott was delighted, and asked if it had ever been in print:
‘O na, na sir’, she replied, ‘it never was printed i’ the world, for my brothers an’ me learned it an’ many mae frae auld Andrew Moor and he learned it frae auld Baby Mettlin, wha was housekeeper to the first laird of Tushilaw. She was said to hae been another nor a gude ane, an’ there are many queer stories about hersel’, but O, she had been a grand singer o’ auld songs an’ ballads.’
‘The first laird of Tushilaw, Margaret?’ said Scott, ‘then that must be a very old story indeed.? 2
‘Ay, it is that sir! It is an auld story! But mair nor that, excepting George Warton an’ James Stewart, there war never ane o’ my sangs prentit till ye prentit them yoursel’, an’ ye hae spoilt them awthegither. They were made for singing an’ no for reading; but ye hae broken the charm now, an’ they’ll never be sung mair. An’ the worse thing of a’, they’re nouther right spell’d nor right setten down’. 3
