24 November 1894

Here Are the Sources

Crockett’s final response in The Academy opened with a gracious apology for his misapprehension about Wallace’s role. Then it delivered the most effective argument of the entire dispute.

He listed his Galloway sources openly: Nicholson’s Traditional Tales, Trotter’s Galloway Gossip, Mactaggart’s Galloway Encyclopædia, the Castle Douglas Miscellany, the Dumfries Magazine. He presented the list as “a present” to X. and his “industrious clan” — phrasing that implies he knew, or strongly suspected, the identity behind the initials, and chose with deliberate restraint not to say so in print.

Robertson Nicoll’s corroborating letter appeared in the same issue. Writing from Hampstead, Nicoll confirmed that in the Bookman for April 1894 — seven months before Wallace’s review — he had published, on information supplied by Crockett himself, a full account identifying Nicholson’s Traditional Tales as Crockett’s primary source. Crockett had declared his sources publicly before anyone accused him of concealing them. The moral force of the plagiarism charge — the implied concealment — was factually without foundation.

Then came the masterstroke. Crockett turned to the preface of Scott’s Guy Mannering. There, Scott uses material from the same Traditional Tales — concerning the Galloway smuggler Yawkins — in precisely the way Crockett had been accused of doing. “Here,” wrote Crockett, “is it not obvious that Sir Walter has also been plagiarising from the Traditions?”

The irony was deployed with evident pleasure. The argument beneath it was entirely serious. Drawing on Galloway folk tradition is what writers do. Scott did it. The charge had never been levelled at Scott — not for any literary reason, but because of where each writer stood in the critical hierarchy. Crockett named that double standard in print in November 1894. It has taken rather longer for anyone to formally correct it.