A Thomas de Ercildoun is named in charters from between 1260 and 1280 and again in 1294, so the man was real. Everything else about him is legend. In the story that Scott gave in the notes to his Minstrelsy, Thomas was taken young into Fairyland, learned there whatever made him famous as a prophet, and after seven years was let back to the earth to astonish his neighbours. He remained bound to return when the Queen called him.
The call came while he was feasting with friends in his tower at Ercildoun. A messenger ran in, frightened, to say that a hart and a hind had left the nearby forest and were walking calmly down the village street. Thomas rose, followed the two animals into the forest and was never seen again. Scott adds that, by popular belief, he still "drees his weird" in Fairyland and is expected to come back one day.
The Eildon Tree itself is long gone. Scott says the spot was marked by the Eildon Tree Stone and that a neighbouring burn was called the Bogle Burn, the goblin brook, because of Thomas's supernatural visitors. The best known ballad versions (Child ballad 37) were shaped over centuries. Scott's own text combined traditional material with his own additions, so the ballad as usually printed is partly his work and not purely a record of local belief.
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