As noted, there is no definitive evidence re the reliability of Buchan's texts. My own opinion, however, is that Buchan was certainly guilty of collation and amendment (as were many other collectors), but there is no evidence that he fabricated whole songs. Stylistically, the songs that we know were composed by Buchan (eg, those marked as such in the Gleanings) are quite dictinct. Adopting, this approach, my view is that only one song in the Secret Songs seems to bear the hallmark of Buchan's own style. Therefore, I suspect that Legman is mistaken when he takes the evidence of Buchan's tangential remark to Laing to suggest that Buchan himself composed some of the Secret Songs. The sources of the songs in the Secret Songs are various, including many broadsides. Some, but by no means all, of the north-east pieces, I suspect, came from Jamie Rankin.

Re Walker, a remarkable man (as a perusal of his library catalogue which I have in my collection, will testify) but his opinion of Buchan was ambivalent and not uncritical. Despite cataloguing the Secret Songs he did not care for them: 'without a spark of wit or decency in their unrelieved grossness'!