de on, and

e licht o

cam' to a

hey lichted

uglas

most ancient of the provinces of balladry, but it has some claim to be regarded as the central one in fame and in wealth-the one that yields the purest and richest ore

oicest of these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness, the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious, exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and

e on the spur of the moment, on the impulse of hot blood. Whether it be sin or sacrifice, the prompting is not that of convention, but of Nature herself. Love and hate, though they may burn and glow like a volcano, are not prodigal of words. It is one of the marks by which we may distinguish the characters in the ballads from those in later and

d forsaken; father and brethren are resisted at the sword's point when they cross, as is their wont, the course of true love. It is curious to note ho

each othe

erything

kesna the s

e the mo

dear Lad

Ether lo

ns, the genuine antiquity of th

uggle. But of struggle or indecision the ballad heroine knows, or at least says, nothing. A glance, a whispered word, a note of harp or horn, and she flings down her 'silken seam,'

pathos inwoven in the very names and scenes with which it is associated, as the type of a favourite story which under various titles-Earl Brand and the Child of Elle among the rest-has, time beyond knowledge, captivated the imagination and drawn the tea

e up, my seve

your armour

care of your y

st 's awa' th

ed blade of the lover, and all ends merry as a marriage bell. But in the Scottish ballads fathers and lovers are not given to the melting mood. In sympathy with the scenery and atmosphere, the ballad spirit is with us sterner and darker; and just as the materials of that tender little idyll of faithful love, The Three Ravens, are in Scottish hands transformed into the drear, wild dirge of The Twa Corbies, th

hoose, Lady Mar

will ye gan

ll gang, Lord Wi

left me no

r on a milk-

lf on a d

horn hung do

they both

e on, and

e licht o

cam' to a

hey lichted

up, Lord Will

r that ye

ut the shadow of

in the water

against the Ithuriel spear of Romance. He is not made of penet

s naturally ends the typical ballad as 'Once

was buried in

et in St. M

r grave there

the knigh

met and the

they wad

orld might k

twa love

just as the 'Black Douglas' of the Yarrow ballad-'Wow but he was rough!'-plucks up the brier, and 'flings it in St. Mary's Loch,' the King, in the Portuguese folk-song, cuts down the cypress and

d, William Laidlaw, the author of Lucy's Flittin', was born. Seven stones on the heights above, where the 'Ettrick Shepherd,' with his dog

of the 'winsome marrow,' and to have an undernote of sadness on the brightest day of summer; while with the fall of the red and yellow leaf the very spirit of 'pastoral melancholy' broods and sleeps in this enchanted valley. St. Mary's Kirk and Loch; Henderland Tower and the Dow Linn; Blackhouse and Douglas Craig; Yarrow Kirk and Deucharswire; Hangingshaw and Tinnis; Broadmeadows and Newark; Bowhill and Philiphaugh-what memories of love and death, of faith an

is body o

I gaed and

grave and l

im wi' the s

ae ye my he

e moul's on hi

e ye my he

ned about

man I 'll

y lovely kni

k o' his y

my heart f

e lament of Adam Fleming for Burd Helen, who dropped dead in his arms at their trysting-place i

ye my hea

rapt doun and

he swoon wi

Kirkconn

air, beyo

a garland

my heart

he day

e lilt of Willie Drowned in Yarrow, the theme

fair and Wi

e wondrou

e hecht t

he marri

wie Howms' as the scene of this fragment

m east, she so

him braid

e cleaving

im drowned

It is indeed the voice of Yarrow, chiding, imploring, lamenting; a voice 'most musical, most melancholy.' A ballad minstrel with a master-touch upon the chords of passion and pathos, with a feeling for dramatic intensity of e

t hame, my

t hame,

kin will

ie howms o

holds its own against nine, until the cruel brother comes behind that comeliest knight and 'runs his

dreamed a d

ere will

pu'ed the bi

ue love o

ind that b

e my love

iss frae hi

me how he

ed den by Deucharswire, near Whitehope farmhouse, she finds the 'ten s

s cheek, she k

his wounds

hem till her

ie howms o

ter Grizel the murdered man had, in 1616, contracted an irregular marriage, to the offence of her kin. On this showing, it is of the later crop of

ength o

rable streng

own among the Yarrow ballads; and Hogg has confirmed the claim by using the tale as the foundation of his Flower of Yarrow. Even here such happiness as the lovers find comes by a perilous way past the very gates of the grave. The feigning of death, as the one means of escape from kinsf

the burn

drap on her

f she be

apulets; for when he rent the shroud from the face the blood rushed back to the cheeks an

ive o' your b

lass o'

fasted for

ry lang d

only it were granted that there is but one 'St. Mary's Kirk.' In the former, the ballad

th with th

ke madness i

ken amiss sets division between

s spoke a w

et took

t robes, and at St. Mary's Kirk she casts the poor brown bride into the shade in dress as well as in looks. Small wonder if the bride speaks out with spite when her bridegroom reaches across her to lay a red rose on Annet's knee. The words between the two angry women are like rapier-thrusts, keen and aimed at the heart. 'Where did ye get the rose-water that maks your skin so white?' asks the bride; and when Annet

other days wi

hae m

e danced wi

a' ither

ing, she

in literary form of a type of woman's faithfulness and meek endurance of wrong that had floated long in medi?val tradition, might have shrunk from some of the cruel tasks which Lord Thomas-the 'Child Waters' of the favourite English variant-lays upon the mother of his unborn child-the woman whose self-su

ever so court

and bid

s never so

im for t

sister's na?ve questions. But never, until the supreme moment of her distress, does she draw one sign of pity or relenting from her harsh lord. Then, in

iage and

h held on

us believe that the twai

heme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Ski?n Annie' of Danish folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the bridal bed for her sup

my babe, lie

as lang

er rides on h

na for u

ag

sons were sev

pon the c

e a grey

I worry an

mance and the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doub

strained out the gnats and swallowed the camels of the law as given to Moses; perhaps if they could look into modern society and the modern novel they would charge the same against our own times and literature. If they broke, as they were too ready to do, the Sixth Commandment, or the Seventh, they made no attempt to glose the sin; they dealt not in innuendo or double entendre. Beside the page of modern real

seen her lover 'since late yestreen'; she carries him across the threshold of her bower, that she may be able to say that his foot had never been there. The story of the sleeping twain-the excus

ake the fir

they are l

spake the se

n in love thi

spake the th

had nae ma

' speak for him. What follows rises to the extreme height of the balladist's art; literature might be

e started and Mar

rms as asl

d silent w

atween

still and s

day bega

y unto hi

true love, yo

still and s

sun began

atween her

d drumlie w

nds his way through 'steekit yetts'; and he is assisted by the 'fause nourice.' In other ballads it is the 'kitchen-boy,' the 'little foot-page,' the 'churlish carle,' or the bower-woman who plays the spy and tale-bearer. In Glenkindie, 'Gib, his man,' is the vile betrayer of the noble harper and his lady. Sometimes, as in Gude Wallace, Earl Richard, and Sir James the Rose, it is the 'light leman' who plays traitor. But she quickly repents, and meets her fate in th

stampéd wi

kéd wi'

that she co

en he w

, meets and slays the youth who is waiting in gude gr

ential fact, the food with which, in the version Burns recovered for Johnson's Museum, Lord Randal is poisoned-'eels boiled in broo'-is identical with that given to his prototype in the folk-ballads of Italy and other countries. The structure of this ballad, like the beautiful old air to which it is sung, bears marks of antiquity, and its wide diffusion militates against Scott's not very convincing suggestion that it refers to the

leave to your bai

d, Ed

leave to your bai

ng over th

oom, let them b

r, Mi

om, let them be

ver mair wi

e leave to your

d, Ed

e leave to your

on, now t

hell from me

r, Mi

hell from me

els ye ga

of Nicol Burne, the 'Last Minstrel' who wandered and sang in the Borderland, has linked indissolubly with Yarrow braes, know of ballad strains well-nigh as sweet as those of the neighbour water. But cheerfulness rather than sadness is their prevailing note. Auld Maitland, the lay which James Hogg's mother repeated to

father, he to

a ane o'

red the bonni

her favo

rode to the bridal at the eleventh hour, w

here to fig

na here

dance wi' th

t and go

holm and Dryburgh, and Huntly Bank and Mellerstain, and Rhymer's Tower and the Broom o' the Cowdenknowes. According to Mr. Ford, the ballad which takes its name from this last-mentioned spot is traditionally assigned to a Mellerstain maid named Crosbie, whose words were set to music by no less famou

were high o

t i' the lir

he sang her

he head o'

a troop o

y ridi

them rade o

ht to the

ingered longer than by Eden and Leader and Whitadder. Lad

s a may and sh

er bonnie bower

ung of The Bonnie Bounds of Cheviot as if the ma

ricts have in this way been despoiled to some extent of their proper meed of honour. Fortune as well as merit has favoured the Border Minstrelsy in the race for survival and for precedence in the popular memory. But Galloway, a land pervaded with romance, claims at least one ballad that can rank

e boat, my

g me to

I see my lo

he salt se

at seems that of Lord Gregory, bids her go hence as 'a witch or a wil' warlock, or a mermaid o' the flood'; and with a woful heart she turns back to the sea and the storm. And when he wakes up from b

Annie, and

winna y

mair that he

der grew

Annie, and

ie, spea

louder he

r roared

h some, eager for the honour of the North, have claimed that it is Aberdour in Buchan that is spoken of in the ballad. By the powerful spell of this old rhyme, the king still sits and drinks the blood-red wine in roofless Dunfermline tower; the ladies still haunt the windy headland-Kinghorn or Elie Ness-with 'their kaims intil their hands' waiting in vain t

the ballad bard. Mary Hamilton, of the Queen's Marie

he Queen had

she 'll ha

ie Seton, and

Carmichael

red disconsolate on Arthur's Sea

waly, love

ime while

's auld it

awa' like

wist befor

ad been so

my heart w

d it wi' a

owhere else has the wail of forsaken love found s

ar love, and ag

never lov

loving y

not me

o follow her Lord Ronald Macdonald the weary way to the Highland Border; a

die, O m

I bear my

ry ground

ess I lo'e

doing justice to the Northern Ballads, some of them simple strains, made familiar by sweet airs, like Hunting Tower, or Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, or the Banks of the Lomond; others, and these chiefly from th

four-and-t

ugh Banch

nnie G

er o' th

ry and the family trees of the great houses-the Gordons for choice-planted by Dee and Don and Ythan, where Gadie runs at the 'back o' Benachie,' and in the Bog o' Gicht