The present edition is the most perfect which has yet appeared; being prepared from a collation of the printed copies, with a very accurate one in Glenriddell’s MSS., and with several recitals from tradition.  Some verses are omitted in this edition, being ascertained to belong to a separate ballad, which will be found in a subsequent part of the work.  In one recital only, the well known fragment of the Wee, wee Man, was introduced, in the same measure with the rest of the poem.  It was retained in the first edition, but is now omitted; as the editor has been favoured, by the learned Mr Ritson, with a copy of the original poem, of which it is a detached fragment.  The editor has been enabled to add several verses of beauty and interest to this edition of Tamlane, in consequence of a copy, obtained from a gentleman residing near Langholm, which is said to be very ancient, though the diction is somewhat of a modern cast.  The manners of the Fairies are detailed at considerable length, and in poetry of no common merit.

Carterhaugh is a plain, at the conflux of the Ettrick and Yarrow, in Selkirkshire, about a mile above Selkirk, and two miles below Newark Castle; a romantic ruin, which overhangs the Yarrow, and which is said to have been the habitation of our heroine’s father, though others place his residence in the tower of Oakwood.  The peasants point out, upon the plain, those electrical rings, which vulgar credulity supposes to be traces of the Fairy revels.  Here, they say, were placed the stands of milk, and of water, in which Tamlane was dipped, in order to effect the disenchantment; and upon these spots, according to their mode of expressing themselves, the grass will never grow.  Miles Cross (perhaps a corruption of Mary’s Cross), where fair Janet waited the arrival of the Fairy train, is said to have stood near the duke of Buccleuch’s seat of Bowhill, about half a mile from Carterhaugh.  In no part of Scotland, indeed, has the belief in Fairies maintained its ground with more pertinacity than in Selkirkshire.  The most sceptical among the lower ranks only venture to assert, that their appearances, and mischievous exploits, have ceased, or at least become infrequent, since the light of the Gospel was diffused in its purity.  One of their frolics is said to have happened late in the last century.  The victim of elfin sport was a poor man, who, being employed in pulling heather upon Peatlaw, a hill not far from Carterhaugh, had tired of his labour, and laid him down to sleep upon a Fairy ring.—­When he awakened, he was amazed to find himself in the midst of a populous city, to which, as well as to the means of his transportation, he was an utter stranger.  His coat was left upon the Peatlaw; and his bonnet, which had fallen off in the course of his aerial journey, was afterwards found hanging upon the steeple of the church of Lanark.  The distress of the poor man was, in some degree, relieved, by meeting a carrier, whom he had formerly known, and who conducted him back to Selkirk, by a slower conveyance than had whirled him to Glasgow.—­That he had been carried off by the Fairies, was implicitly believed by all, who did not reflect, that a man may have private reasons for leaving his own country, and for disguising his having intentionally done so.