I have cleared my conscience by confessing Scott’s literary sins. His interpolations, elsewhere mere stopgaps, are mainly to be found in _Kinmont Willie_ and _Jamie Telfer_. His duty was to say, in his preface to each ballad, “The editor has interpolated stanza” so and so; if he made up the last verses of _Kinmont Willie_ from the conclusion of a version of _Archie o’ Ca’field_, he should have said so; as he does acknowledge two stopgap interpolations by Hogg in _Auld Maitland_. But as to the conclusion of _Kinmont Willie_, he did, we shall see, make confession. Professor Kittredge, who edited Child’s last part (X.), says in his excellent abridged edition of Child (1905), “It was no doubt the feeling that the popular ballad is a fluid and unstable thing that has prompted so many editors—among them Sir Walter Scott, whom it is impossible to assail, however much the scholarly conscience may disapprove—to deal freely with the versions that came into their hands.” Twenty-five years after the appearance of _The Border Minstrelsy_, in 1827, appeared Motherwell’s _Minstrelsy_, _Ancient and Modern_. Motherwell was in favour of scientific methods of editing. Given two copies of a ballad, he says, “perhaps they may not have a single stanza which is mutual property, except certain commonplaces which seem an integral portion of the original mechanism of all our ancient ballads . . . ” By selecting the most beautiful and striking passages from each copy, and making those cohere, an editor, he says, may produce a more perfect and ornate version than any that exists in tradition. Of the originals “the individuality entirely disappears.” Motherwell disapproved of this method, which, as a rule, is Scott’s, and, scientifically, the method is not defensible. Thus, having three ballads of rescues, in similar circumstances, with a river to ford, Scott confessedly places that incident where he thinks it most “poetically appropriate”; and in all probability, by a single touch, he gives poetry in place of rough humour. Of all this Motherwell disapproved. (See _Kinmont Willie_, _infra._)