P. 4 a. James Hogg, writing to Scott, June 30, [1802 ?], says: "I am surprised to find that the songs in your collection differ so widely from my mother's... 'Jamie Telfer' differs in many particulars." (Letters, I, No. 44.) Scott's remarks should have been cited from the edition of 1802, I, 91.
5. Mr. Andrew Lang has obligingly called, my attention to difficulties which attend the assumption that the Dodhead of the ballad is the place of that name in Selkirkshire. Jamie Telfer, st. 7, runs ten miles between Dodhead and Stobs, and this is far enough if help is to be timely; but he would have to run thirty if his Dodhead were in Selkirkshire. With succor not nearer than that, Telfer would soon have been harried out of existence. The distances are too great both for the English and the Scots. But there is a Dod south of the Teviot, not far from Skelfhill, which is some seven miles only from Stobs. (Dodhead is not entered here on the Ordnance map, "but Dodburn is just under Dodrig, and where there is a Dodburn there is 'tied' to be a Dodhead in this country.") Turning from Stobs to Teviot, Telfer would come in due order to Coltherdscleugh, Branxholm, and Borthwick Water, without the loss of time which he would, on the other supposition, incur in passing and returning. (See a note, by Mr. Lang, in Mrs. G.R. Tomson's Ballads of the North Countrie, 1888, p. 435.)
Several other matters are not quite clear. Catslockhill, for instance, seems to be misplaced. Mr. Lang, a native of Ettrick valley, knows of no Catslack but that in Yarrow. Of this, Mr. T. Craig-Brown (Selkirkshire, I, 21), who accepts Scott's Dodhead, says, "A long ride, if Catslack is in Yarrow."
6 a, 81. Read whan. (101. Gar seek in the early editions, Gae in ed. 1833.)
7 b, 411. Read thy kye.
8 a, 463. Read dare.
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