It must have been the more galling in that a few years earlier Scott had been lifted by the ballad from obscurity to fame.

Borrow did not in any case lack encouragement from Allan Cunningham: 'I like your Danish ballads much,' he writes.

'Get out of bed, George Borrow, and be sick or sleepy no longer.

A fellow who can give us such exquisite Danish ballads has no right to repose.'[64] Borrow, on his side, thanks Cunningham for his 'noble lines,' and tells him that he has got 'half of his _Songs of Scotland_ by heart.' Five hundred copies of the _Romantic Ballads_ were printed in Norwich by S.Wilkin, about two hundred being subscribed for, mainly in that city, the other three hundred being dispatched to London--to Taylor, whose name appears on the London title-page, although he seems to have passed on the book very quickly to Wightman and Cramp, for what reason we are not informed.

Borrow tells us that the two hundred subscriptions of half a guinea 'amply paid expenses,' but he must have been cruelly disappointed, as he was doomed to be more than once in his career, by the lack of public appreciation outside of Norwich.