parody his own words, those who love to listen to Allan Ramsay and Burns
and Scott, and to the nameless Balladists who were their masters and
teachers, will 'never forget a'thegither the Ettrick Shepherd.'

More important, however, even than the materials gathered by Scott from
the lips of Mrs. Hogg and other Border ballad reciters, or from the
Glenriddell MSS., was the golden mine of old poetry, for the
preservation of which he and the nation were indebted to the taste and
retentive memory of Mrs. Brown, daughter of Professor Thomas Gordon, of
King's College, Aberdeen, and wife of a minister of Falkland, in the
beginning of the century. There are in existence three MSS. of the songs
and ballads this lady was able to remember as sung to her on Deeside;
and transcription of her father's account of this precious collection,
as the story is told by him in a letter to Mr. A. Fraser Tytler, and by
him communicated to Scott, may best and most authentically explain its
origin:--

'An aunt of my children, Mrs. Farquhar, now dead, who was
married to the proprietor of a small estate near the sources of
the Dee, in Braemar, a good old woman who spent the best part of
her life among flocks and herds, resided in her latter days in
the town of Aberdeen. She was possessed of a most tenacious
memory, which retained all the songs she had heard from nurses
and country-women in that sequestered part of the country. Being
maternally fond of my children when young, she had them much
about her, and delighted them with her songs and tales of
chivalry. My youngest daughter, Mrs. Brown, at Falkland, is
blessed with a memory as good as her aunt, and has almost the
whole of her songs by heart. In conversation, I mentioned them
to your father (William Tytler, the champion of Mary Stuart) at
whose request my grandson, Mr. Scott, wrote down a parcel of
them as her aunt sung them. Being then a mere novice in music,
he added, in the copy, such musical notes as, he supposed, would
give your father some notion of the airs, or rather lilts, to
which they were sung.'

To all those whose names are mentioned in the above extract, Scotland
and poetry owe a deep debt of gratitude. But here again, although men,
and men of learning, have borne their part in the salvage, it is to the
'spindle side,' and to simple country ears and memories, that the main
acknowledgment is due for saving w