During a visit to Kelso, before returning to Edinburgh for the winter, Scott renewed an acquaintance with a classfellow of his boyhood, Mr. James Ballantyne, who was now printer and editor of a weekly paper in his native town.  Scott showed him some of his poems, expressed his wonder that his old friend did not try to get some bookseller’s printing and suggested a collection of old Border ballads.  Ballantyne printed for him a few specimens to show to the booksellers; and thus began an experiment which changed the fortunes of both Scott and Ballantyne.

Soon after the commencement of the Winter Session, the office of Sheriff-depute of Selkirkshire became vacant, and the Duke of Buccleuch used his influence with Mr. Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville, to procure it for Scott.  The appointment to the Sheriff ship was made on December 16, 1799.  It brought him an annual salary of L300; the duties of the office were far from heavy; the small pastoral territory was largely the property of the Duke of Buccleuch; and Scott turned with redoubled zeal to his project of editing the ballads, many of which belong to this district.  In this design he found able assistants in Richard Heber and John Leyden.  During the years 1800 and 1801, the “Minstrelsy” formed his chief occupation.

The duties of the Sheriffship took him frequently to Ettrick Forest, and on such occasions he took up his lodging at the little inn at Clovenford, a favourite fishing station on the road from Edinburgh to Selkirk.  Here he was within a few miles of the values of Yarrow and Ettrick.  On one of his excursions here, penetrating beyond St Mary’s Lake, he found hospitality at the farmhouse of William Laidlaw, through whom he came to know James Hogg, a brother poet hardly conscious of his powers.

The first and second volumes of the “Minstrelsy” appeared in January, 1802, from the house of Cadell and Davies in the Strand, and formed Scott’s first introduction as an original writer to the English public.  Their reception greatly elated Ballantyne, the printer, who looked on his connection with them as the most fortunate event in his life.  The great bookseller, Longman, repaired to Scotland soon after this, and purchased the copyright of the “Minstrelsy,” including the third volume; and not long afterwards James Ballantyne set up as a printer in Edinburgh, assisted by a liberal loan from Scott.

Scott’s Chief Poems

The “Edinburgh Review” was begun in 1802, and Scott soon became a contributor of critical articles for his friend Mr. Jeffrey, the elder.  His chief work was now on “Sir Tristram,” a romance ascribed to Thomas of Ercildoune; but “The Lay of the Last Minstrel” was making progress in 1803, when Scott made the acquaintance of Wordsworth and his sister, under circumstances described by Dorothy Wordsworth in her Journal.  In the following May, he took a lease of the house of Ashestiel, with an adjoining farm, on the southern bank of the Tweed, a few miles from Selkirk; and in the same month “Sir Tristram” was published by Constable of Edinburgh.  Captain Robert Scott, his uncle, died in June, leaving him the house of Rosebank near Kelso, which Scott sold for L5000.