Note 120b — THE MYSTERY OF THE BALLAD OF JAMIE TELFER
Reading edition
Variant E is a patched-up thing from five or six MS. sources and a printed “stall copy.” Jamieson published it in 1817. Motherwell had heard a cantefable, or version in alternate prose and verse, which contained the stanza. It is not identical with stanza xxxii. in Scott’s Jamie Telfer, but runs thus—