hast here

llad in print, a' life; for then we a

entury, and there are a few that deal with even later history. It may seem a bold thing, therefore, to claim for these traditional tales in verse the much more venerable antiquity implied in what has been said in the previous chapter. If we were

d may be older, by ages, than the hero and the deeds that it seems to celebrate. Like thistledown it has the property of floating from place to place, and even from kingdom to kingdom and from epoch to epoch, changing names and circumstances to suit the locality, and attaching itself to outstanding figures and fresh events without changing its

the contrary, a thing to raise suspicion as to its genuineness. The ballad, as has been said, is a living and growing organism; or at least it is this until it has been committed to print. However deep into the mould of the past its roots run down, its language

patches were not the true mosses of age. The ballad of true lineage, partly from its simplicity of thought and structure, partly from being kep

ossomed but often overran and smothered the court poetry of the day. Alliterative lines and verses appear frequently in the ballads, but always with good taste, often with exquisite effect. What phrases are more familiar, more infused with the magic of the ballad-spirit, than the 'wan water,' the 'bent sae brown,' the 'lee licht o' the mune'? When the knight rides f

reckless the

he game a

the 'artful aid' of this device as in Johnie o' Braidislee, the

n up, my go

and be

wa' to Bride'

e dun deer

he dun de

Hynde Horn, Kempion, furnish us with words, drawn from the language of Gothic and Norman chivalry, that must have dropped out of the common speech long before the ballads began to be regularly collected and printed. They recall the gentleness and courtesy, as well as the courage, that were supposed to be attributes of the 'most perfect goodly knight'-attributes in which, sooth to say, the typical knight of the Scottish ballad is not always a pattern. Kempion-'Kaempe' or Champion Owayne-is supposed to perpetuate the name of 'Owain-ap-Urien, King of Reged,' celebrated by Taliessin and the other early Welsh bards. And this is by no means the only instance in wh

r Harpers

Briton, G

drank deeply of knowledge and inspiration from the clear and hidden well of English poetry and romance even then existing in ballad lore. In fact, it seems as probable that the prose and metrical

anged in the hall, and the song of battle and the song of sorrow found eager listeners. All the while, the same tales, though perhaps in ruder and simpler guise, met with as warm a welcome in road and field and at country merrymaking. Trouvere and wandering minstrel, gleeman and eke gleemaiden, passed from place to place and from land to land repeating, altering, adapting the old stock of heroic or lovelorn ditties, or inventing new ones. They were a law unto themselves in other matters than metres; and had their own guilds, their own courts, and their own kings. The names of all but a few that chance, more than anything else, has preserved, hav

earn more gratitude from posterity by collecting ballad verses than by copying the Legends of the Saints-so little can we guess what will be deemed of value by future ages. But in Scotland, as elsewhere, we have reason to believe that every event that deeply moved the popular mind gave rise to its crop of ballads, either freshly invented or worked up out o

heir sails on a

he speed

ave landed

Woden

nd confirmation in the very calendar of the antiquity of this glorious old rhyme, one is disposed to suspect these dates to be a lucky hit;

Gordon had th

Margaret,

the Bruce were rewarded by the maidens singing and the harpers harping in their praise. This we learn from a surer source than the ballads of the Wallace and Bruce Cycle that have been preserved, and that are neither the best of their kind nor of unquestioned authenticity. Blind Harry was himself of the ancient guild of the Minstrels, and gathered his materials at a date when the 'gude Sir William Wallace' was nearer his day than Prince Charlie is to our own. His poem is n

riod of Chaucer-and nothing also could be more tantalising to the ballad-hunter-than Barbour's remark in his Brus,

a likis, th

, quhen th

ang thame

of them. Bannockburn set their quick brains working and their tongues wagging tunefully, in praise of their own heroes and in scorn of the English 'loons.' Aytoun quotes f

Englande, sor

t your lemans a

rombe

but having ears open to the din of the camp and the 'song of the maydens,' r

old and

and the knitte

s that weave thei

unt it; it is

with the inn

he old

f the North; and, in the South, Graemes, Scotts, Armstrongs, Douglases, are among the races that figure most prominently in ballad poetry. The great house of Douglas, in particular, is in the eyes and lips of romance and legend more honoured than the Stewarts themselves. The Douglas is the hero of both the Scottish and English versions of Chevy Chase. Hume of Godscroft, in his History of the House of Angus, written in 1644, has saved for us several scraps of traditional song celebrating the wrongs or the exploits of the Douglases, some of which must have

Castle, tow

thou sink

en for the

las gat

rlier fragment, recording how William Douglas the 'Knight of Liddesdale,' was met and slain by his kinsman, the Earl of Douglas, at the spot now known as Williamshope in Ettrick Forest, after the Countess had writte

the side of the freebooter rather than of the king and the law that our sympathies are enlisted. Indeed your balladist, like Allan Breck Stewart, was never a bigoted partisan of the law. There is ample proof in the writings of Sir David Lyndsay and other

ing and court, like Taillefer or Blondel. 'King's Minstrels' there were on both sides of Tweed, as is found from Exchequer and other records. But we suspect that these were players and singers of courtly and artificial lays. True, a poet of such genuine gifts as Dunbar had gone to London as the 'King's singer,' and had recited verses at a Lord Mayor's banquet that had tickled the ears of the worshipful aldermen and livery. But these could

ays M. Jusserand, who escape the touch of decadence, are 'those unknown singers, chiefly in the region of the Scottish border, who derive their inspiration directly from the people'; who leave books alone and 'remodel ballads that w

sic entered into the lives of the country people on the eve of the Reformation troubles. At the gatherings of the shepherds, old tales would be told, with or without stringed accompaniment-of Gil Quheskher and Sir Walter, the Bauld Leslye, pieces now probably lost to us irrecoverably; of the familiar Tayl of Yong Tamlane; of Robene Hude and Litel Ihone, whose fame, like that of the prophecies of Thomas of Ercildoune, had already been firmly established for a couple of centuries; of the Red Etin, whose place in folklore is well ascertained; and of the Tayl of the Thre Vierd

dering ballad-singer could no longer count on a welcome, either in the castles of the nobles or with the shepherds of the hills. Instead of getting, like Henry the Minstrel, his deserts in 'food and clothing,' these were apt to come to him in the shape of the stocks or the repentance-stool. He had lost caste and character, from causes for which he was not altogether responsible. An ill name had been given to him; and doubtless he often managed to merit it. His type, as it was found on both sides of the Border, is Autolycus, whom S

ander here

do go mo

llet, are full of snatches of ballads

he Borders and in the North. It may be called, indeed, the Moss-trooping Age, and the chief members of the Moss-trooping Cycle date from the latter years of the sixteenth century. The Raid of the Reidswire happed in 1575; the expedition of Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead is conjecturally set down for 1582; The Lads of Wamphray commemorates a Dumfriesshire feud of the year 1593; while the more famous incident sung with immortal fire and vigour in Kinmont Willie took place in

on thief. But even the Reformation and the Union did not wipe out original sin or alter human nature. The kingdoms might have outwardly composed their quarrels; but private feuds remained, and even the Martyrs and the Covenanters had their relapses, and loved and sang an

Adam of Auchindoun-did his ruthless work in 1571. It was in one of their interminable quarrels, begun on the farther side of Spey, that, in the year 1592, the Bonnie Earl o' Moray fell so far away as Donibristle, in Fife. The mystery of the Burning of Frendraught took place in 1630; the tragedy of Mill o' Tiftie's Annie-one of the few dramas in which the balladist is content to take his characters from humble life-is dated, from the tombstone in Fyvie churchyard, in the

nt was the end also of the ballad. There was an outburst of national feeling, expressed in song and music, over the Jacobite risings of last century; Allan Ramsay rose like a star at its beginning, and Burns shone out gloriously towards its close. But the expression w