As for Jamie Rankin, I'm happy to accept that he was responsible for the basic texts of Secret Songs, though I doubt it was him who touched them up. Some of them have Peter's fingerprints all over them.

Quote from Hustvedt.
'As for the wholesale manufacture with which he and James Rankin have been charged, William Walker makes a good case in showing that Rankin's materials did not enter very largely into that first manuscript from which the collection of 1828 was printed'. (Ancient Ballads of the North of Scotland proof). My brackets.

Indeed he had only met Jamie about a year before.

An interesting aside: A superb early (the earliest) version of The Herring's Head appears in the mss and Secret Songs. So praise where praise is due.