10 November 1894
“I Have Said It Thrice”
Crockett’s public reply opened with a quotation. He reached for Lewis Carroll’s Bellman from The Hunting of the Snark: “I have said it thrice: / What I tell you three times is true!” The same accusation had now appeared in the Glasgow Herald, the Literary World, and The Academy. Repetition, he implied, can confer an authority that evidence does not.
His demolition of the Dugald Graham charge was methodical and precise. He had never seen or heard of Graham. Both the chapbook and his own chapter drew independently on a common anonymous source — a fireside tale “told in every farm-kitchen in Galloway,” both traceable to the Scots Magazine for February 1757. A shared source is not a theft.
He noted in passing that an identical charge had once been levelled at Thomas Hardy — who declined to dignify it with continued attention — and announced his intention to follow the same course.
Andrew Lang, writing separately in the same issue, dealt with Wallace’s secondary claim: that Covenanters in Mad Sir Uchtred implausibly claimed miraculous powers. Lang’s response was brisk. Such miracles were “as common as blackberries in Covenanting literature.” The literary-historical objection was simply wrong.
And then there is “X.”: In this reply Crockett acknowledged an earlier parallel-column attack on The Raiders without naming its author. The circumstantial evidence pointing toward W.E. Henley is substantial — his anonymous review of March 17th in the National Observer had already broadcast his hostility; he was actively shaping critical opinion about Scottish fiction throughout this period; and when Millar’s “Kailyard” article appeared in the New Review in April 1895, Henley was his editor. Whether “X.” was Henley himself or a figure in his orbit, the question of identity is not trivial.