Scottish Text Society publications > New series > Kingis quair; together with A ballad of good counsel

INTRODUCTION.
XXXV
all previous editions, and to obtain an accurate copy of the
MS. itself, which has been far too much neglected. It is an
amazing fact that it has taken a whole century to set the
text right, and nothing can be more extraordinary than the
history of the text up to the present time. The previous
editions are described more particularly below; but the net
result is that Tytler, who first printed the text in 1783, was
provided with a transcript of the unique MS. made by “an
ingenious young gentleman, a student of Oxford” ; it does
not appear that he ever saw the MS. himself. Sibbald,
when reprinting a large portion of the poem, tells us that
his “ is the first corrected copy.” His notion of correcting
it was to make just a few alterations here and there, accord¬
ing to his own fancy. It does not appear that he ever saw
the MS., but some one must have consulted it for him, as
he attained to the correct reading of list for lefe in st. 178.
The Glasgow edition of 1825 is a reprint of Tytler. Chal¬
mers, after severely censuring Tytler for his numerous errors,
actually sends Tytier’s book to press, and copies text,1 notes,
and all; but he never saw the MS., and scarcely paid the
slightest heed to the collation made for him by Mr Ruding,
which, though not always correct, was better than nothing.
The Rev. C. Rogers, in 1873, merely collated the texts of
Tytler and Chalmers, which amounted to no more than
collating Tytler with Chalmers’s parody of the same. The
only editor who ever saw the MS. himself, or paid any
regard to it, was Mr Ebenezer Thomson of Ayr; but he
did not make his collation till after his text had been printed
off, and all that he really discovered was the superiority of
the MS. to the printed texts. His ignorance of the lan¬
guage of the poem, even after very careful study of it, is
1 In a sort of parody; see below.