The poem was originally intended to be included in
the _Border Minstrelsy_, as one of the studies in the antique style,
but soon outgrew the limits of such a study both in length and in the
freedom of its manner. Both the poorest and the best parts of _The
Lay_ were in a special manner due to Lady Dalkeith (afterwards Duchess
of Buccleugh), who suggested it, and in whose honour the poem was
written. It was she who requested Scott to write a poem on the legend
of the goblin page, Gilpin Horner, and this Scott attempted,--and, so
far as the goblin himself was concerned, conspicuously failed. He
himself clearly saw that the story of this unmanageable imp was both
confused and uninteresting, and that in fact he had to extricate
himself from the original groundwork of the tale, as from a regular
literary scrape, in the best way he could. In a letter to Miss Seward,
Scott says,--"At length the story appeared so uncouth that I was fain
to put it into the mouth of my old minstrel, lest the nature of it
should be misunderstood, and I should be suspected of setting up a new
school of poetry, instead of a feeble attempt to imitate the old.
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