Scott's Border Minstrelsy Exhibition

“The Fray of Support”, one of three manuscripts bound in a collection of ballads, letters, etc., [18 th century] ‘The Fray of Support’ is a rare example of a ballad for which Scott collected a version from a live performance by a ballad singer. Scott, and his ballad collecting friend Robert Shortreed, visited the Liddesdale antiquarian Dr John Elliot in his house frequently during the 1790s to collect ballads from manuscripts. However on one visit Scott was not presented with a manuscript, but with a live performance by the eighty year old Jonathan Graham. Shortreed said ‘… he made the awfuest and uncoest howling sound I ever heard. It was a mixture o’ a sort o’ horrible and eldritch cries…’ Graham passed out in mid-performance due to his ‘animated’ rendition and an excess of brandy! The Abbotsford library has 3 manuscripts for this ballad one of which is not in Scott’s handwriting. The manuscript shown is one of the two copies in Scott’s handwriting.