And, of course, Scott himself was fooled by The Raid of Featherstonehaugh, which Robert Surtees wrote in the style of the old border ballads and then presented to Scott as the genuine article.

It was so convincing that Scott accepted it as authentic, and printed it alongside Surtees' fabricated explanation that it had been "taken down from the recitation of a woman 80 years of age, mother of one of the miners in Alston Moor".