" Who was the farmer? Will Laidlaw had
employed James Hogg, as shepherd. Hogg's mother chanted "Auld
Maitland." Hogg first met Scott in the summer of 1801. The
shepherd had already seen the first volume of the "Minstrelsy."
Did he, thereupon, write "Auld Maitland," teach his mother it, and
induce Laidlaw to take it down from her recitation? The old lady
said she got it from Andrew Moir, who had it "frae auld Baby
Mettlin, who was said to have been another nor a gude ane." But we
have Hogg's own statement that "aiblins ma gran'-mither was an unco
leear," and this quality may have been hereditary. On the other
side, Hogg could hardly have held his tongue about the forgery, if
forgery it was, when he wrote his "Domestic Manners and Private
Life of Sir Walter Scott" (1834). The whole investigation is a
little depressing, and makes one very shy of unauthenticated
ballads.
Footnotes:
{1} Who knows what may happen? I may die before he sees the
light; so I will add among my friends SKALAGRIM LAMB'S-TAIL.
{2} Can Mrs. Gamp mean "dial"?
{3} 1887.
{4} In his familiar correspondence, it will be observed, Herodotus
does not trouble himself to maintain the dignity of history.
{5} Mr. Flinders Petrie has just discovered and sent to Mr. Holly,
of Trinity, Cambridge, the well-known traveller, a wall-painting of
a beautiful woman, excavated by the Egypt Exploration Society, from
the ruined site of the Temple of Aphrodite in Naucratis.
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