Note 5 — ABBOTSFORD NOTANDA.
Reading edition
MS. notes by W. Laidlaw. Professor Aytoun says that one cause of his doubts as to the antiquity of Auld Maitland was that it wanted a clear intelligible story and main plot, so that it could not be retained in memory for a couple of months. If the Professor (alas, now no more!) had chanced, in any of his angling excursions on the Tweed, to have fallen in with a brother of the rod, Mr Stirling, Depute Sheriff-clerk of Peebles (also now gone), he would have found at least one gentleman who could repeat the whole ballad without a break, though he had not read a line of it for more than twenty years. Hogg states explicitly that when the sheriff visited his cottage at Ettrick, his mother recited or chanted the ballad; and in a poetical address to Scott congratulating him on his elevation to the baronetcy, the Shepherd says:
‘When Maitland’s song first met your ear, How the furled visage up did clear, Beaming delight! though now a shade Of doubt would darken into dread, That some unskilled presumptuous arm Had marred tradition’s mighty charm. Scarce drew thy lurking dread the less Till she, the ancient Minstreless, With fervid voice and kindling eye, And withered arms waving on high, Sung forth these words in eldritch shriek, While tears stood on thy nut-brown cheek: “Na, we are nane o’ the lads o’ France, Nor e’er pretend to be; We be three lads of fair Scotland, Auld Maitland’s sons a’ three!” Thy fist made all the table ring— “By ——, sir, but that is the thing!”’