Scott's Border Minstrelsy Exhibition

“The Fray of Support”, contained in ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border” Vol.1 1802 ed. The printed version of the ballad is a composite version of four manuscripts, three of which are held in the Abbotsford Library. Scott thought by selecting elements from different versions of a ballad he was restoring the ballad to something like its original form when it was composed by a ‘minstrel’. Scott’s belief that ballads had a unique composer was controversial even in his lifetime. The ballad scholar and friend of Scott, Joseph Ritson (1752-1803), denied this, arguing instead that ballads developed organically as different communities added and subtracted compositional elements to the storyline. Modern scholars now agree that Ritson was correct in this assumption. Ritson none-the-less was full of praise for the ‘Minstrelsy’ when it finally appeared in 1802. “The Fray of Support” describes a ‘hot trod’ when an English resident from Solport attempts to regain his property stolen by Scottish border reivers. The ‘hot trod’ was the raising of the countryside to come armed for the fray to reclaim the reivers’ spoil before it could cross the border into Scotland.