No copy of this ballad earlier than the last century is known to me. The Museum Catalogue gives a conjectural date of 1740 to #a# and of 1720 to #b#, and, conjecturally again, assigns both to Newcastle. #c#, #d#, #e# are also without date. #c# may be as old as #b#; #d#, #e# are at least not old, and #f# is of this century. The ballad was given under the title ‘Græme and Bewick,’ in Scott’s Minstrelsy, 1803, III, 93, “from the recitation of a gentleman” who remembered it but imperfectly. In a succeeding edition, III, 66, 1833, deficiencies were partly supplied and some different readings adopted “from a copy obtained by the recitation of an ostler in Carlisle.” The first copy (entitled ‘Chirstie Græme’) was sent Scott by William Laidlaw, January 3, 1803 (Letters, vol. i, No 78), as taken down by him from the singing of Mr Walter Grieve, in Craik, on Borthwick Water. It is preserved in “Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy,” No 89, Abbotsford (#h#); and in the same volume, No 145, is what is shown by internal evidence to be the ostler’s copy (#g#). Both copies were indisputably derived from print, though #h# may have passed through several mouths. #g# agrees with #b-f# closely as to minute points of phraseology which it is difficult to believe that a reciter would have retained. It looks more like an immediate, though faulty, transcript from print. Of many deviations, though most may be charge-able to a bad copyist, or, if one pleases, a bad memory, others indicate an original which differed in some particulars from #b-f#; and the same may perhaps be true of #h#, which is, however, of only very trifling value.[92] ‘The Brothers-in-Arms,’ Maidment, Scotish Ballads and Songs, 1868, II, 150, is Scott’s later copy.