From _The Border Minstrelsy_. The account in Satchells has either been
based on the ballad, or the ballad is based on Satchells. After a
meeting, on the Border of Salkeld of Corby, and Scott of Haining, Kinmont
Willie was seized by the English as he rode home from the tryst. Being
“wanted,” he was lodged in Carlisle Castle, and this was a breach of the
day’s truce. Buccleugh, as warder, tried to obtain Willie’s release by
peaceful means. These failing, Buccleugh did what the ballad reports,
April 13, 1596. Harden and Goudilands were with Buccleugh, being his
neighbours near Branxholme. Dicky of Dryhope, with others, Armstrongs,
was also true to the call of duty. A few verses in the ballad are
clearly by _aut Gualterus aut diabolus_, and none the worse for that.
Salkeld, of course, was not really slain; and, if the men were “left for
dead,” probably they were not long in that debatable condition. In the
rising of 1745 Prince Charlie’s men forded Eden as boldly as Buccleuch,
the Prince saving a drowning Highlander with his own hand.
JAMIE TELFER.—p. 52
Scott, for once, was wrong in his localities. The Dodhead of the poem is
_not_ that near Singlee, in Ettrick, but a place of the same name, near
Skelfhill, on the southern side of Teviot, within three miles of Stobs,
where Telfer vainly seeks help from Elliot. The other Dodhead is at a
great distance from Stobs, up Borthwick Water, over the tableland, past
Clearburn Loch and Buccleugh, and so down Ettrick, past Tushielaw. The
Catslockhill is not that on Yarrow, near Ladhope, but another near
Branxholme, whence it is no far cry to Branxholme Hall. Borthwick Water,
Goudilands (below Branxholme), Commonside (a little farther up Teviot),
Allanhaugh, and the other places of the Scotts, were all easily “warned.”
There are traces of a modern hand in this excellent ballad. The
topography is here corrected from MS. notes in a first edition of the
_Minstrelsy_, in the library of Mr. Charles Grieve at Branxholme’ Park, a
scion of “auld Jock Grieve” of the Coultart Cleugh. Names linger long in
pleasant Teviotdale.
THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY.—p. 59
The ballad has Norse analogues, but is here localized on the Douglas
Burn, a tributary of Yarrow on the left bank. The St. Mary’s Kirk would
be that now ruinous, on St. Mary’s Loch, the chapel burned by the Lady of
Branxholme when she
“gathered a band
Of the best that would ride at her command,”
in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. The ancient keep of Blackhouse on
Douglas Burn may have been the home of the heroine, if we are to
localize.
THE BONNY HIND.—p. 62
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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