Notes and Queries

It is now just ten years since Mr. J. H. Dixon,
then a member of the Council of the Percy So-
ciety, became the editor of a book published for
that body, entitled Scottish traditional Versions of
Ancient Ballads, London, 1845. From the pre-
face we learn that the materials of this work are to

be found in two MS. volumes, then in possession
of the Percy Society, containing ballad versions
taken from oral tradition in the North of Scot-
land by (? the late) Mr. Peter Buchan of Peter-
head. In the same preface we are farther in-
formed that

"Mr. Peter Buchan's manuscripts were compiled solely
for his own amusement; but at one time, in consequence
of the solicitations of several of his antiquarian and
literary friends, it was certainly Mr. Buchan's intention
to have published a portion, at least, of the matériel which

he had so industriously collected. Causes, however, over
which he had no control, compelled an abandonment of
the design, and the volumes were laid aside till the esta-
blishment of the Percy Society, when they were handed
over to a member of the council, who made a careful in-

burgh, 1828, contains no less than 145 ballad
texts, all of them from oral tradition, or from fly-
sheets (stall copies, broadsides), and only a very
few of them of doubtful antiquity.

That Mr. Buchan has not published his ballads
with that scrupulous accuracy, that strict and
verbal adherence to the popular tradition, as
might be wished, and which may now be de-
manded, we are ready to confess; but he cer-
tainly has done no worse in that respect than all
the ballad editors of England and Scotland, with
the exceptions of Mr. Ritson, Mr. Jamieson, and
perhaps one or two more.
His merits in pre-
servation of the old Scottish folk lore are so great,
that he certainly ought to be treated in a less
slighting manner than has been the case; and
nobody had a better reason to point out his ser-
vices than the gentleman who owed to him the
whole of the collection which he brought before
the public.

When we leave the preface and come to the
inspection of the contents of Mr. Dixon's volume,

which contains no more than seventeen ballad
versions, we find that out of these two-thirds have
been published already by Mr. Buchan himself.
But this fact is not hinted at by Mr. Dixon, ex-

vestigation of their contents. They were subsequently cept in two instances, in the notes; the one when,

inspected by other members of the Society, and finally,
by a vote of the Council, were placed in the hands of the
editor and his friend W. Jerdan, Esq., for them to decide
on the authenticity and general merit of the ballad
portion of the volumes."

Now every reader of this preface, who does
not know better, must necessarily get the im-
pression, that Mr. Buchan himself never pub-
lished any part of his ballad collection; while the
reader who knows better must be strongly puz-
zled by the question, why it is not even men-
tioned, that this same Mr. Buchan has published
three different collections of traditionary songs,
and, in fact, is the man who has rescued, and for
the first time published, more traditionary ballad
versions than any other antiquary in Great
Britain that we know of? His published col-
lections are, taken together, and compared with
the contributions of any other single collector, the
richest source in this branch of folk lore out of all
that up to this day have appeared before the
British public. Neither Percy, nor Ritson, nor
Herd, nor Scott, nor Jamieson, nor Motherwell,
have brought so great a number of traditionary
versions of old folk ballads before the public as
Mr. Peter Buchan of Peterhead. His first and
second publications (viz. Scarce Ancient Ballads,
Peterhead, 1819; Gleanings of Scotch, English,
and Irish scarce old Ballads, chiefly tragical and
historical, Peterhead, 1825) were but small and of
a more private nature; but his chief work, the
Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scot-
land, hitherto unpublished, two vols. 8vo., Edin-

in No. X., the editor says (p. 99.) that "Versions
may be seen in the works of Herd, Scott, Jamie-
son, Buchan, and Chambers," but it is not stated
that Mr. Dixon's version of this ballad is word for
word the same with that published by Mr. Buchan
in his last collection, vol. ii. p. 198. The other
instance is when Mr. Dixon, in the note (p. 104.) on
"The Waters of Gamery," informs us that "there
are many versions of this story, the most complete
being the one called 'Willie's drowned in Ga-
mery' see Buchan's Ballads of the North." And
here the editor farther deigns to quote Mr. Bu-
chan's notes on the occasion. In this last instance
the version published by Mr. Dixon is another
than that published by Mr. Buchan himself
(vol. i. p. 245.). But in none of the other in-
stances, even where Mr. Dixon only gives a re-
print from the same text that has been printed
once before in Mr. Buchan's large collection, is
any mention made of this fact. We shall point
out the rest of the communia bona of Mr. Buchan's
published ballad books and Mr. Dixon's Ancient
Ballads.

The first piece in the Dixon collection is
"Young Bondwell." This is not in Mr. Buchan's
Ballads of the North; but we are informed by
Motherwell (Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern,
p. lxxxvi.) that a version of this ballad has ap-
peared in Mr. Buchan's Scarce Ancient Ballads.
Whether that is the same text as given by Mr.
Dixon, we are unable to decide, because the
Scarce Ballads are extremely scarce, and no copy
of it within our reach. Of No. V. in the Dixon