PLAGIARISM OR COINCIDENCE ?
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR...1 SIR, —If your correspondent will turn to Hogg's Jacobite Relies he will find the ballad, "It was a' for our rightfu King," in every respect identical with the poem by Burns from which he quotes. The authorship of this song is traditionally ascribed to Captain Ogilvie (a son of Sir David Ogilvie, second Baronet, of Inverquharity), who accompanied King James on his Irish expeditions, was present at the battle of the Boyne. followed his Royal master into exile, and was subsequently killed in an engagement on the banks of the Rhine in 1695. (See Hogg's note to Song XV.; also The Scottish Nation, vol. iii., p. 261.) New turn to Lockhart'a edition of Scott's Poetical Works (Appendix to Rokeby, Note 2, I.), and your correspondent will find Sir Walter's own note as follows :— "The last verse of this song. is taken from the fragment of an old Scottish ballad, of which I only recollected two verses when the first edition of Rokeby was published. Mr. Thomas Sheridan kindly pointed out to me an entire copy of this beautiful song, which seems to express the fortunes of some follower of the Stuart family."
Scott Douglass, in his edition of Burns (Edinburgh, 1877), records his belief that the ballad was wholly the composition of Burns; Allan Cunningham, on the other hand, says of it :---
"It is, nevertheless, probable that the Poet rather beautified or amended some ancient strain which he had discovered, than wrote it wholly from his own heart and fancy."
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