Note 9 — 192 THE LOCHMABEN HARPER

The innocent comments of certain editors must not be lost. “The whole incident surely implies a very early and primitive system of manners, not to speak of the circumstance of the court being held at Carlisle, which never was the case in any late period of English history.” (Chambers’s Scottish Ballads, p. 306.) “In our version [E] the scene of the theft is laid at London, but Carlisle, we are inclined to think, is the true reading. The great distance between Scotland and London, and the nature of the roads in times of old, would render the event an improbable, if not altogether an impossible, one to have occurred; and we can easily imagine, when the court was at Carlisle, that such a good practical joke was planned and carried into execution by some waggish courtiers.” (Dixon, p. 93 f.)