  Professor Francis James Child's edition of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, monumental in size, is still more monumental in the labor which it represents. It embodies not only diligent research for the most authentic and original versions of the ancient ballads in all the known sources in print or in manuscript, and the recovery of many from still living traditions in Great Britain and the United States, but a careful study and comparison of the folk-song of kindred European nations and of the world for resemblances in subject and story; thus making a most interesting and valuable addition to the knowledge of the common development of the human intellect in primitive thought and form of expression in diverse countries. How much study this has involved can only be appreciated by those who have seen its results in the concise introductions to each ballad, citing comparisons in every known literature, and yet further work in this direction will be left for later scholars, as the study and collection of folk-song is being pursued with more and more zeal and success in every quarter of the world, under the appreciation of its great literary as well as historical value. Professor Child has been governed by the strictest conscientiousness in giving his version of the popular ballads, not only going to the original sources like the Percy folio, the manuscript materials for The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border preserved at Abbotsford, Motherwell's note books, and other manuscripts and stall copies, but reprinting them with all their omissions and defects, not supplying the most obvious missing word or even letter without indicating it. He has not followed the example of the strictly faithful editors of the ancient ballads like Motherwell in presenting alone the most complete and perfect specimen, nor allowed himself like others, substantially faithful, like Scott and Jamieson, to collate a number of copies derived from different sources into a harmonious whole,-but gives each version distinct in itself, even to a solitary variant verse. It is one of the commonplaces of the history of English and Scottish ballad poetry that most of its collectors and editors from Bishop Percy downward have felt themselves entitled to amend and correct the imperfect fragments to a greater or less degree, supplying missing lines or stanzas to connect or complete the story, and that this has resulted sometimes in the most incongruous patchwork in which the sentiments and poetical fashions of one generation have been foisted upon those of another to the utter destruction of all verisimilitude, to say nothing of strength and genuineness of expression. Bishop Percy, with all his fine taste and genuine poetic power, was a conspicuous sinner in this respect, and patched the rough and strong frieze of the ancient ballads with pieces of the thin and sleazy silk of eighteenth century sentiment and diction. Even Scott, with all his sense of honesty and appreciation of the value of the integrity of the ancient ballads, could not always refrain from his possessing temptation "to give a hat and stick" to the stories which he heard, and, as Professor Child points out, there are some stanzas in the Border Minstrelsy which bear suspiciously his mark, and of which the originals have not been found in his manuscript materials. It is true enough that Scott's additions and emendations, as well as those of Allan Cunningham, who was wholly indifferent to the genuineness and integrity of his originals, were likely to be in the very spirit and turn of expression of the ancient ballads, and that the lover of poetry for its own sake will not be likely to find fault with them, but the real student of folk-song must repudiate them, and can be content only with the genuine expressions of the people, as they lived in tradition, however inchoate and imperfect they may he. The historical and ethnological value of the ancient ballads consists in their absolute genuineness, and even the imperfection of their utterances illustrates the condition of the popular mind and the characteristics of the individual intelligence which produced them, and are important geological evidences of the growth and development of the human intellect. At the same time this very imperfection of speech, and the struggle of primitive thought to express itself in language sometimes creates, as it were by accident, the very flower of strength and vividness in picturesque description, and the interpretation of emotion as the most skillful art has been unable to do. How strong these ballads were, and what a hold they had upon the minds and imaginations of the people, as the interpretation of their innate poetic spirit, is shown in the tenacity with which they have lived, and been reproduced in varying forms through generations down to the present day. Ballads like The Cruel Sister and Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, the production probably of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, have been recovered, with the essential burden of their verse and the subject of their story, from the mouths of English peasants and Irish servant girls, and in the folk-lore of the American nursery, to which they had been transmitted simply by the force of oral tradition, and without any assistance from print; and it is not likely that they will entirely disappear for generations to come, any more than the perennial nursery tales which were created by and appeal to the primitive and childish imagination. These traditional versions have been altered to suit the localities, and weakened in their coherence and vigor of expression from the time when they were the literature of the main body of the people instead of the lowest class, as the stall copies of the ballads of the ancient minstrels, when they were the attendants of kings and nobles and shared the inspiration of chivalry, have been degraded to the level of the intelligence of the audience of the street singers or the gatherings in the taprooms of the village alehouses; but they retain the essential characteristics of simple emotion, inherent melody, and primitive language, and have still something of the fine and penetrating flavor of popular romance. It is almost needless to say to the student of literature that the art of popular ballad writing is extinct, or is successful only in the rarest instances. Poets of genuine power and inspiration, imbued and saturated with the spirit of the ancient ballads, have attempted to re-create them in the telling of an ancient or modern story, but, whatever their original power or imitative skill, they have failed to reproduce that native strength and peculiar flavor of expression which gives the ancient ballads such a hold upon the mind. The modern ballads are admired by the intellect rather than felt by the heart, and are recognized as the product of skillful art rather than as the expression of original emotion. Even Scott, whose literary genius was so saturated with their spirit, and Wordsworth, who sought his inspiration in the simple emotions of the peasant heart and interpreted them so perfectly in a literary form of glowing simplicity, could not produce a popular ballad, and even Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, with all its powerful and naked mystery and natural archaism of thought and language, appeals to the literary rather than to the popular imagination. All the more absolute imitations of ancient literature, like those of Rossetti and Morris, have still more the air of unreality, in spite of what is oftentimes their very great power and skill, and Sir Samuel Ferguson's Lays of the Western Gael, perfect as they are in the reproduction of the Celtic spirit and expression, are for the admiration of scholars rather than the feeling of the people. It is hardly too much to say that in modern English literature there are but two poems which fulfill the conditions of the ancient ballads in their simplicity, directness, and originality of language, their power upon the mind and heart through the ear, and the indefinable flavor of primitive emotion, and those very different in style, subject, and form of expression. These are Cowper's Loss of the Royal George, and Rudyard Kipling's Danny Deever. Every one who has heard it or read it can repeat,— Toll for the brave, The brave that are no more, Sunk beneath the wave Fast by their native shore; and the burden and the measure, the simplicity and strength of diction, of Danny Deever are equally calculated to take a possessing hold upon the ear. These ballads are not imitations derived from study of the ancient popular ballads, but obtaining their inspiration from the same original source in strong and primitive emotion interpreted in the simplest language possible, and speaking through the ear by the chanted rather than through the eye by the printed line. It is this appeal to the ear which is the strongest characteristic of the form of the ancient ballads. They were made to be sung or chanted rather than read, and therefore they have a felicity of sound as an interpreter of meaning which is often perfect in its expression; and when imperfect, that is, when the meaning is not clear, but is only vaguely and dimly attached to the sound, as in the refrains and burdens, there is a flavor or an atmosphere of meaning which pervades it and adds to the effect. There is a touch of the plaintiveness of natural sounds which no literary art could give in the opening of The Queen of Elphan's Nourrice:— I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low, An' a cow low down in yon fauld. Long, long will my young son greet Or his mother take him from cauld. Even when the burden is still more arbitrary, and without any direct reflection of the meaning whatever, it is never felt to be incongruous or artificial, and has a mystic and intensifying effect, as in the painful ballad of The Sheath and Knife:— He has made a grave that was long and deep, The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair, And he's buried his sister, with her babe at her feet, And they 'll never gang down to the broom any mair. And even when the refrain might be called simply a meaningless chant, it makes a part of the ballad which could not be taken away without a loss of the quality which gives it a living voice, as in the chorus, which sings of itself to The Elfin Knight: My plaid awa, my plaid awa, And o'er the hills and far awa, And far awa to Norowa. My plaid shall not be blawn awa. As to these stanzas and lines, which give a perfect marriage of sound and meaning either in the interpretation of emotion or description, and in which the ear is the interpreter of the eye and the heart with a skill which no art could give, they are numberless, and of the very substance of the genius of the old ballad singers. There is nothing in the cultivated skill of trochee and spondee to equal such untaught perfections of the human voice as these:— O, we were sisters, sisters seven; We were the fairest under heaven.
And a lightsome bugle then heard he blowe, Over the bents sae browne.
It was a sad and rainy night, As ever rained from town to town.
But't was wind and weet and fire and sleet When we came to the castle wa.
O, he has ridden o'er field and fell Through ruins and moss and many a mire, He spurs a steed that was sair to ride, And frae her forefeet flew the fire.
And this, in which the very gallop of the horse's feet runs along the lines:— It's twenty lang miles to Sillerton toun, The langest that ever were gane, But the steed it was wight and the lady was light, And she rade linkin in.
The element of poetry of the highest kind in these ballads is the strength as well as the simplicity of passion interpreted in language of naked directness and dramatic power. Their stories are mainly those of the bloody tragedies and the violent events and emotions in the lives of a people to whom strife and adventure were an integral part of existence, and whose passions were strong and vigorous, although a proportion of the ballads have an element of rustic humor, and the cycle of those relating to Robin Hood is mainly of this kind. There is an element of the supernatural in the English and Scottish ballads, more particularly in the latter, which, if not so marked and pervading as in those of the Celtic nations, shows that the mysterious terrors of nature were still embodied in the visible forms of the imagination, and that the woods were still haunted by elfin knights, the green braes by fairies, while human beings were still liable to be transformed into laidly worms and foul toads by the enchantment of witches, in at least a pervading shadow of popular belief. But for the most part they were singularly free from the tincture of the marvelous, and mainly the simple chronicles of stirring events or the tragedies of passion. This gives them an element of strength, which is wanting to the phantasmagorial figures of more imaginative nations, whatever glow of misty glory shines about them as in the creations of the early Celtic bards. The impression of the soul of nature is strong but not overpowering as in these latter, and the influence of the landscape and the sky in storm or calm illuminates but does not interfere with the dramatic action. As has been said, strength of thought and strength of language are their prevailing characteristics. Their strength of language is that which belongs to the speech of a people when it is fresh and new, and before it has been overlaid with words created for literary purposes and by the introduction of foreign words to give niceties of meaning, and no cultivated language has the same power and directness as that which is the simple expression of the thoughts of the people. Goethe, with his sound critical insight, noted this when he said, "The unsophisticated man is the more master of direct, effective expression than he who has had a regular training," and a language may often lose in strength what it gains in ornament and flexibility. This strength of expression is written large over all the English and Scottish ballads, and specimens are merely arbitrary and may be taken almost at random:— Aye she waukened at the dead man, And aye she waukened him to and fro.
And when she came out of the Kirk, She shimmered like the sun.
The Lindsays flew like fire about, Till all the fray was done.
One spak slow, and another whispered out, She's gone wi' Gipsy Davy.
Twice it lifted its bonnie blue ee, Thae looks gae through the saul o' me.
There was no maen made for that lady, In bower where she lay dead, But a' was for the bonnie babe, That lay blabbering in her bleed.
O, then she stood and better she stood, And never did shed a tear, Till once she saw lier seven brethren slain, And her father she loved sae dear.
And when he came to her bower she was pale and wan, But she grew red and ruddy, when Glenlogie came in.
The dramatic power of expression, that which illumines it with a touch of action, is not less remarkable than that of direct phraseology:— "Hold up, hold up, Lord William," she says, "I fear that you are slain." "It's nothing but the shadow of my scarlet cloak, That shines in the water sae plain."
And aye she served the lang table, With white bread and with brown, And aye she turned her round about, Sae fast the tears fell down.
She turned her head ou her left shoulder, Saw her girdle hang on a tree, O, God bless those that gave me that, They 'll never give more to me.
When I rose up in the morn, My goodly palace for to lea, I knocked at my lord's chamber door, But never a word wad he speak to me.
The King looked over his left shoulder, And a grim look looked he, Earl Martial an' 't were na for my oath Or hanged thou shouldst be.
The look cast over the shoulder is a very fa-miliar action in the ballads, as is also that where an angry man strikes the table with his hand and "keps" it with his knee. Every one who receives the letter is described as first smiling and then having his eyes filled with tears, as in Sir Patrick Spence, and almost in an exact repetition of the language, and there are numerous actions and phases which are the common stock of the ballad poets. The idea of the exclusive rights to poetical property and of the sin of plagiarism does not seem to have occurred to them, and they took a striking image or an effective phrase wherever they found it as a part of the common stock of poetry. These familiar and striking phrases doubt-less added to the effect, being recognized as old friends by the audience, and, like the repetitions of words and action by a number of persons in the same ballad, such as by the members of a family in succession denying the prayer of an unfortunate, emphasizing and deepening the impression. Certain adjectives also became attached to words as a part of their property, such as red to gold and wan to water, and are essential parts of the ballad language, which add to its effect by constant repetition. One of the charms of these ancient ballads is the appreciation of the effects of nature, given sometimes with a magical effect of suddenness and originality. What can be more effective, for instance, than the touch of beauty and charm in the tragedy of Babylon:— He's killed the maid and he's laid her by To bear the red rose company. And can we not feel the magic of the note of elfin horn, touching the heart with irresistible call through the summer air, in the opening to Hind Etin?— Lady Margaret sits at her bower door, Sewing her silken seam; She heard a note in Elmond wood, And wished she there had been. The voice of the unseen sea gives a note of deep solemnity and terror to the supernatural landscape through which Thomas, the Rhymer, journeys with the elfin queen:— And they rode on and farther on, And they waded the river above the knee, And they saw neither sun nor moon, But they heard the roaring of the sea. How the strength of a lover's thought is illuminated by the touch of nature itself in Willie and Alison:— When he was in his saddle set, And slowly ridin' on his way, He had more mind o' Alison Than he had o' the light o' day. These touches of the power of nature upon human action, and revealing human thought, are scattered throughout the ballads, and have the effect of perfect naturalness and simplicity, as though the heart and not the mind spoke in them. A specimen of the ancient ballad in its most perfect strength, absolute and concise in its construction, without wandering into irrelevancies and incongruities, as many of them do, and in which the appalling tragedy strikes with a sudden blow upon the heart at its close, is Edward. It has all the characteristic features of the ballads, in the vivid colors of nature illuminating and intensifying his dramatic dialogue, while it has the mist of blood in the witchlike questions of its opening, and the passion of hatred and despair in its close. Ballads of similar form and subject are to be found in Scandinavian literature, and counterparts to its methods of revelation in various English and Scottish ballads, but none have so pure a construction and so perfect an effect as this:— "Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, Edward, Edward? Why does your brand sae drap wi' bluid, And why sae sad gang yee, O?" "O, I hae killed my hauke sae guid, Mither, mither. O, I hae killed my hauke sae guid, And I had nae mair but hee, O." "Your hauke's bluid was nevir sae reid, Edward, Edward. Your hauke's bluid was nevir sae reid, My deir son, I tell thee, O." O, I hae killed my red roan steed, Mither, mither. O, I hae killed my red roan steed That was sae fair and free, O." "Your steed was auld and ye hae gat mair, Edward, Edward. Your steed was auld and ye hae got mair. Sum other dule ye drie, O." "O, I hae killed my fadir deir, Mither, mither. O, I hae killed my fadir deir. Alas! and wae is mee, O." "And whatten penance will ye drie for that, Edward, Edward? And whatten penance will ye drie for that, My deir son? Now tell mee, O." "I 'll set my feit in yonder boat, Mither, mither. I 'll set my feit in yonder boat, And I 'll fare ovir the sea, O." "And what will you doe wi' your towirs and your ha', Edward, Edward? And what will you doe wi' your towirs and your ha', That were sae fair and free, O?" "I 'll let them stand tul they down fa', Mither, mither. I 'll let them stand tul they down fa', For here nevir mair maun I bee, O." "And what wul ye leave to your bairns and your wife, Edward, Edward? And what wul ye leave to your bairns and your wife, When ye gang ovir the sea, O?" "The warlde's room, late them beg thrae life, Mither, mither. The warlde's room, late them bag thrae life, For them nevir mair wul I see, O." "And what wul ye leave to your ain mither, deir, Edward, Edward? And what wul ye leave to your ain mither, deir, My deir son? Now tell mee, O." "The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir, Mither, mither. The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir, Sic counseils ye gave to me, O." Edward was communicated to Bishop Percy from Scotland by Lord Hailes, and there is some affectation in the ancient spelling, but it is undoubtedly genuine, and, as Professor Child remarks, "as spelling will not make an old ballad, so it will not unmake one." One of the most famous and best known of the ancient Scottish ballads is that entitled Waly, Waly, gin Love be Bony, or, as it is sometimes called, Lady Anne Bothwell's Lament, which was first published in Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany. It has numerous variants embodying the language of the lament in stories of a more dramatic character, founded on a tradition of the Douglas family, but this has the strength and simplicity of an original:— O, waly, waly, up the bank, And waly, waly, down the brae; And waly, waly, yon burn-side, Where I and my love wont to gae. I leaned my back unto an aik, I thought it was a trusty tree; But first it bowed, and syne it brak, Sae my true love did lightly me. O, waly, waly, but love be bony, A little time, while it is new; But when it's auld it waxeth cauld, And fades away like morning dew. O, wherefore should I brush my head? O, wherefore should I kaim my hair, For my true love has me forsook, And says he 'll never love me mair. Now, Arthur's seat shall be my bed, The sheets shall ne'er be fyld by me; Saint Anton's well shall be my drink Since my true love's forsaken me. Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blow, And shake the green leaves off the tree O, gentle death, when wilt thou come, For of my life I am weary. 'T is not the frost that freezes fell, Nor blawing snaw's inclemency; 'T is not the cauld as makes me cry, But my love's heart grown cauld to me. When we came in by Glasgow town, We were a comelie sight to see; My love was clad in black velvet, And I myself in cramoisie. But had I wist before I kist That love had been sae ill to win; I'd locked my heart in a case of gold, And pinned it with a silver pin. Oh, oh, if my young babe was born, And set upon the nurse's knee; And I mysell were dead and gone, For a maid again I 'll never be. The burden of this lament, its simple passion appealing to the popular heart and its melody holding the ear, has been perpetuated through the generations since it was first sung. It has been printed in all forms and variations in the broadsides and penny song books, as well as in the critical collections of poetry, solaced the sentimental feeling of the dairy maid as well as haunted the vision of Charles Lamb, and its refrain may be heard to-day in the burlesque choruses of the negro minstrel stage. A very interesting example is given by Professor Child of the way in which an old ballad of perfect form and construction may be made incoherent and shapeless in a broadside copy, mere matter of "silly sooth" for old age or primitive ignorance, without losing the fine flower of pathos and feeling, or the grace of expression, in its disconnected and ejaculatory stanzas. It is also interesting as an example, of which many others could be given, of the effect of oral tradition passing from minds of native strength, if without education, down to and through those of a lower order of intelligence, from whom now only the debris of the ancient songs and ballads can be obtained. It is from a broadside printed in Edinburgh, without date, but of considerable antiquity, and entitled Arthur's Seat shall be My Bed, etc., or Love in Despair. Come lay me soft and draw me near, And lay thy white hand over me; For I am starving in the cold, And thou art bound to cover me. O, cover me in my distress, And help me in my miserie; For I do wake, when I should sleep, All for the love of my dearie. My rents they are but very small, For to maintain my love withall; But with my labour and my pain, I will maintain my love with them. O, Arthur's seat shall be my bed, And the sheets shall never be filed by me, St. Anthony's well shall be my drink, Since my true love's forsaken me. Should I be bound, that may go free? Should I love them that love not me? I 'll rather travel into Spain, Where I 'll get love for love again. And I 'll cast off my robes of black, And will put on the robes of blue; And I will come to some other land To see if my love will on me rue. It is not the cold that makes me cry, It is not the weet that wearies me; Nor is it the frost that freezes fell, But I love a lad, and I dare not tell. Oh, faith is gone, and truth is past, And my true love's forsaken me; If all be true that I hear say, I 'll mourn until the day I die. Oh, if I had nere been born, That to have died, when I was young; Then I had never wet my cheeks For the love of any woman's son. Oh, oh, if my young babe was born, And set upon the nurse's knee; And I myself were dead and gone, For a maid again I shall never be. Martinmas wind, when wilt thou blow, And blow the green leefs off the tree; O gentle Death, when wilt thou come, For of my life I am wearie. As in all single hearts and primitive natures, the visible features of death, the white shroud and the grave, "hap'd with the sods sae green," make a deep impression, and the imagination concerning the loved one lost is not lifted to spiritual forms, but dwells upon the painful figures of the charnel house. The ghosts that visit the living have the fatal breath of decaying mortality, and are summoned back by the cock to the winding sheet and the worm. The ballads that deal with this subject are all in the same strain, and repeat the same phrases. The lady asks her dead lover if there is any room at his head or any room at his feet in his new bed, and he answers that there is none, it is made so narrow, and that the worms are his only bedfellows; and warns her that he cannot give the kiss she craves, for his breath would be fatal. Sometimes the images of mortality are extremely powerful as well as grotesque, as in the ballad of Sweet William's Ghost:— My meikle toe is my gavil post, My nose is my roof tree, My ribs are kebars to my house; There is no room for thee. Sometimes they have a touch of homely pathos, which relieves them from the conventional note of sorrow, as when the three sons of The Wife of Usher's Well are called back to the grave by the crowing cock, and the youngest says:— Fare ye weel, my mother, dear; Farewell to barn and byre, And fare ye weel, the bonny lass, That kindles my mother's fire. One of the most interesting specimens of the ballads of this kind, as they exist to-day, borrowed in a modified form from the ancient, but embodying a still popular superstition, is The Unquiet Grave, recently taken down from the lips of a young girl in Sussex. It is founded on the belief, common to many primitive peoples, that excessive weeping disturbs the repose of the departed, and has a touch of that natural originality of description and that abruptness which presupposes a quickness of appreciation, which does not require an elaborate story to make the connection intelligible, characteristic of popular poetry, and which shows that the elements of mind to which it is addressed are always the same:— The wind doth blow to-day, my love, And a few small drops of rain. I never had but one true love— In the cold grave she was lain. I 'll do as much for my true love As any young man may, I 'll sit and mourn all at her grave For a twelvemonth and a day. The twelvemonth and a day being up, The dead began to speak: "O, who sits weeping on my grave And will not let me sleep?" "'T is I, my love, sits on your grave And will not let you sleep; For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips, And that is all I seek." "You crave one kiss of my clay-cold lips, But your breath smells earthly strong; If you have one kiss of my clay-cold lips Your time will not be long." 'T is down in yonder garden green, Love, where we used to walk: The finest flower that e'er was seen Is withered on the stalk. The stalk is withered dry, my love, So will our hearts decay: So make yourself content, my love, Till God calls you away. By far the larger number of the popular ballads had their origin in Scotland, and they are also of much finer quality than those of England. Even if the question of the origin of the ballad of Chevy Chace should be decided in favor of the latter, it would simply be localized upon the Border within the limit of Scottish influence. The English ballads are mostly heavy and dull, imperfect in form and expression, in comparison with the Scottish, and show few signs of the depth and glow of feeling in the burning words of the latter. The English ballads relating to King Arthur are greatly inferior in strength and spirit to the prose chronicles, and their dealing with the marvelous is coarse and commonplace in comparison with the spiritual and majestic mystery of the Welsh cycle of Arthurian romance. And the English ballads continued to degenerate, rather than improve, from the rude vigor of some of the Arthurian ballads, and took on the element of coarse humor which is characteristic of the Robin Hood cycle, from which nearly every gleam of poetry is eliminated. It may be said that the degeneracy of the English popular ballad was due to the spread of education among the people, and the development of their genius in more strictly literary forms under the influence of Chaucer and his associates. But the spread of education and the increase of literary production among the English people was by no means so general as to affect the quality of the popular ballad at this period, and certainly less than that which prevailed in Scotland at a later time, when the production of popular poetry was in its fullest flower. The adventures of the English outlaws, of whom Robin Hood, however mythical his actual existence, was the type, were not less stirring and full of the natural elements of poetry than those of the reivers and cattle thieves of the Scottish Border, but the ballads of the former cycle are only full of a vulgar peasant humor, while the latter are illuminated with the light of battle, and have the quarter staff and broken pate in place of the spear and the bleeding breast. Of Robin Hood it is said:— Then Robin took them both by the hand, And danced about the oke tree; For three merry men and three merry men And three merry men are we. While the Lord of Branxholm cries: Gae warn the water broad and wide, Gae warn it sune and hastilie; He that winna ride for Telfer's Kyle Let him neer look in the face o' me. and the difference in the spirit is reflected in the quality of the verse, the one dull and commonplace, suited to an audience of heavy-faced rustics in an alehouse, and the other full of fire and vigor, fit to be chanted in the dining hall of a Border chief. It is impossible to analyze ethnologically the causes of the great superiority of the Scottish popular poetry, or to define how much of the elevation of feeling and appreciation of the magic of nature came from the greater admixture of the Celtic element, which in its turn was given force and vigor, directness of expression and coherence of construction by the stronger nature of the invading element, which, for the want of a more definite term, is called Saxon. The effect of these influences is merely conjectural, as is also that of the country itself, its natural scenery, the disturbed life of the people, and the ferment of the popular mind. It can only be said that there was something in the national genius of the Lowland Scotch different from that of their more stolid neighbors at the south and their more mystical neighbors at the north, and which fitted them for the production of popular poetry in song and ballad at once elevated and impassioned, and which has resulted in a quantity and quality which no other province of the world has rivaled. It is known over the world, and has been translated into almost every literary language of Europe. To the English reader it is only necessary to give the titles to recall the verses that cling to the memory, and express the deepest glow of passion and pathos in words whose magic melody is beyond the reach of art, and which are winged with a force above the powers of uninspired speech. The Border Widow tells how she buried her slain husband:— I took his body on my back, And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat, I digged a grave and laid him in, And happd him with sod sae green. Lord Randal comes home to his mother from his false love's poisoned banquet:— O, where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son, O, where hae ye been, my handsome young man; I have been to the greenwood; mither, mak my bed soon, For I'm wearie wi hunting and fain wald lie down." The lady of the House of Airlie cries out from the burning reek to the cruel Edom o' Gordon:— "Were my good lord but here this day, As he's awa wi Charlie; The dearest blood o' a' thy men Wad sloken the lowe o' Airlie." Johnnie Armstrong gives his last "Good Night" in defiance:— O, how John looked over his left shoulder, And to his merry men thus spoke he; "I have asked grace of a graceless face, No pardon here for you and me." Mary Hamilton cries from the gallows-tree in a burst of anguish:— O, little did my mother ken, The day she cradled me, The land I was to travel in, The death I was to dee. These verses, and many like them, cling to the tongues and have sunk deep into the hearts of men, and will live until the speech in which they were created has passed away. The Flower of Yarrow will always utter her melodious lament so long as there is English poetry, and the Border moss-troopers will ride with spear in hand and "splent on spauld" until the valleys of the Tweed and the Tyne are inhabited by an alien race, and the songs in which they are sung have perished like those of the Assyrian shepherds. The collection and study of folk-song is being pursued with a vigor and a scholarly diligence which promises to leave no corner of the world unransacked, and no people, however simple and savage, neglected, and very valuable treasures of poetry have been and are being collected, which speak to the heart with the native eloquence of unsophisticated feeling and thought, and which give a more accurate knowledge of national temperament and of the stages of the development of the human intellect than any material remains or any historical records. But none have as yet been discovered, or are likely to be, which have a stronger power of original poetry, passion, and pathos, or which reveal a more vigorous and noble native genius than the ballads and songs which were produced within the limits of the little province between the Grampians and the Border.
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