For reasons connected with the study of ballad poetry I have made some imitations of the traditional ballads, and find that, though the stories I tell are new, yet they abound in ballad formulae: indeed, a ballad, if it is to resemble the traditional sort, cannot be made on other principles. Ancient Greek epic poetry, intended, like the ballads, to be recited, not to be read, preserved the old popular and traditional convention. Critics quarrel as to the parts of the epic in which the lines are "original" and the parts in which they are "borrowed." Of many of them we may say that they are neither borrowed nor original, but are parcels of the common epic stock. I lately met with a curious example of the critical method of treating Homer applied in certain criticisms of Scottish ballads. One ballad, "Auld Maitland," was distributed, by the critic, between Hogg and Scott. In certain stanzas he found _Wiederholungen_ of lines in the English ballad of "Chevy Chase," and of others in Herd's version of "Otterburne" (1776). The verses in "Auld Maitland" which presented _these Wiederholungen_ were speculatively assigned to the Ettrick Shepherd; because, in a confessed interpolation by him of two lines, where only half a stanza was received from the recitation of "Auld Maitland," the words "Remember Percy" occur. In "Chevy Chase" we have "But trust me, Percy." Hogg was following "Chevy Chase." But in "Auld Maitland" we read, "King Edward rode, King Edward ran"; while in "Jamie Telfer" we have "The Scotts they rode, the Scotts they ran." Now _that_ line occurs in Scott's, and did not occur in Hogg's version of "Jamie Telfer." Moreover, Scott himself, the critic believes, wrote the part of "Jamie Telfer" where the Scotts ride and run. "If Hogg is responsible for the insertion of this line" ("King Edward rode, King Edward ran"), "he must have borrowed it from "Edom of Gordon," where we have "Sum they rode, and sum they ran." _He must have borrowed it_! How like is all this to the higher criticism of Homeric _Wiederholungen_! In fact, ballad poetry and Homeric poetry have stocks of formulae open to every maker. Not to use them would be not to play the game. Thus the criticism went on, and Scott's hand was detected exactly as Hogg's had been, by the occurrence, in "Auld Maitland," of ballad-formulae which also appear in ballads edited by Scott. Enfin, "Auld Maitland" was declared to be, in the critic's opinion, in origin a composition of Hogg's, which he tried to palm off on Scott as traditional. Scott detected Hogg, entered into the plot, wrote stanzas and lines into the ballad, and palmed it off on the public.[6]