The Balladists

not that

about yon f

the road to

nd I this d

the R

one that recognised the ballads as Mythological, Romantic, or Historical, this last class including the lays of the foray and the chase, that cannot be assigned to any particular date-that cannot, indeed, be proved to have any historical basis at all-but can yet, with more or less of probability, be assigned to some historical or quasi-historical character. Besides these, there are groups of ballads that cannot be wholly overlooked-ballads in which, contrary to the prevailin

e passion and tragedy of love. Romance, indeed, is the animating soul of the body of Scottish ballad poetry; the note that gives it unity and distinguishes it from mere versified history and folklore. There are few ballads on which some shadow out of the World Invisible is not cast; few where ill-happed love is not a master-string of the minstrel's harp; few into which there

titions grew up and became embodied in legend and custom, in m?rchen and ballad, and all through the Middle Ages, man's pilgrimage on earth was indeed through a Valley of the Shadow. It was a narrow way, between 'the Ditch and the Quag, and past the very mouth of the Pit,' full of frightful sights and dreadful noises, of hobgoblins, and dragons, and chimeras dire. Tales that have ceased to frighten the nursery, that we listen to with a smile or at most with a pleasant stirring of the blood and titillation of the nerves, once on a time were the terror of grown men. The ogres and dragons of old are dead, an

f the realms of science is as yet only in course of being surveyed, and from day to day fresh discoveries are announced by the eager explorers of the darkling provinces of myth and folktale. But this at least may be said, that not in

s have discovered in the vast jungle of popular legends and superstitions-the Supernatural Birth, the Life and Faith Tokens, the Dragon Slayer, the Mermaid and the Despised Sister, Bluebeard of the Many Wives, the Well of Healing, the Magic Mirror, the Enchanted Horn, the

airies, and in their relatives, the gnomes and brownies, is 'a complex matter, from which tradition, with its memory of earth-dwellers, is not wholly absent, while more is due to a survival of the pre-Christian Hades, and to the belief in local spirits-the Vius of Melanesia, the Nereids of ancient and modern Greece, the Lares of Rome, the fateful M?r? and Hathors-old imaginings of a world not yet dispeopled of its dreams.' The elfin-folk of the Scottish ballads have some few traits that are local and national; but, on the whole, they conform pretty closely

e the 'Men of Peace' and the 'Good Neighbours' for a reason not much different from that which caused the Devil's share in the churchyard to be known as the 'Guid Man's Croft,' lest by speaki

craggy

the rus

not go a

r of Li

lk, go

ng alt

erkin,

e owl's

by kiss or other spell, fall into their hands; and the penance or sacrifice which at every seven years' term they pay to powers still more dread, comes out in the tale of True Thomas's adventure with the Queen of Fa?ry, and in Fair Janet's ordeal to win back Young Tamlane to earth. Their prodigious

nds on yon hi

, ye cauld

ast baith lou

nd 's blawn

woven, the tongue can unloose; and the lady brings her unearthly lover first into captivity by s

di?val mind to dub Virgil a magician, and to recognise the wizard in Sir Michael Scott, the grave ambassador and counsellor of kings, and, at a later date, enabled the profane vulgar to discover a baronet of Gordonstoun to be a warlock, for no better reason than because, with the encouragement of that most indefatigable of ballad collectors, Samuel Pepys, he gave his attention to the

he spied w

he saw a l

down by the

the glimmer of an ancient allegory, of an old cosmogony, that may possibly be derived from the very infancy of the world, when human thought began to brood over the mysteries of life and time. There are the Broad Path of Wicked

mirk nicht and

through red blu

luid that 's

he springs o'

ere is a foretaste of Gilbertian humour in the dismay with which the Rhy

mine ain," Tr

gift you wo

dought to

tryst whe

her speak to

grace from

d like a day upon earth, he wakens up as from a dream, and a

f-way between the chief scenes of our Fairy Ballads-between the Rhymer's Tower and Carterhaugh? Fair Janet's conduct, when forbidden to come or go by Carterhaugh, wh

kilted her

abune h

braided he

abune h

awa' to C

as she c

have been an 'earthly knight'; and he tells her h

a wind out o

wind and

leep cam

my hors

d at midnight on Halloweve, 'when fairy folk do ride,' she may win back the father of her child to mortal shape. That

dead hour o

the brid

was as g

earthly

d by the blac

gaed by t

gripped the m

d the ri

'borrowed' him from the 'seely court,' and saved him from becoming the tri

wis in Hiawatha. The baffled magician or witch-often the mother-in-law or stepmother, the stock villain of the piece in these old tales-alters her shape rapidly to living creature or inanimate thing; but fast as she changes the ave

, until the appointed time when the deliverer comes, and by like magic art, or by the pure force of courage and love, looses the spell. Kempion is a type of a class of story that runs, in many variations, through the romances of chivalry, and from these may have been passed down to the ballad-singer, although ruder forms of it are common to nearly all folk-my

st ladye e'e

escue

wehrwolf

mermaid

man, or

ove, that mis

a worse and a well-deserved weird. In King Henrie, too, it is the stepdame that has wrought the mischief. He is ly

isly

mping on t

when she had devoured his hounds, his hawks, and his steed. As in the Wife of Bath's Tale, and the Marriage of Sir Gawain and ot

s come and n

shone thro

ladye that e

en him an

he young husband, stricken to the heart by the baleful kiss given to him against his will by a wood-nymph, goes home to die, and his fair young wife follows him fast to the grave. Alison Gross is another of those Circes who, by incantation of horn and wand, seek to lower the shape and nature of her lovers to those of the beasts that crawl on their bellies. Sometimes the tempter

im right and

ear blind

have trodden

na been f

ature; the foul fiend is revealed. They are bound on a drearier voyage than that of Tr

mountain 's y

wi' frost

mountain of he

ou and I

he tapmast

mast wi'

the gallant

her in

d balladists. We hear of the compelling or sundering power of the bright red gold and the cold steel. Love

ring turns

n love wi'

ochryan, and in a host of others. The spells used by witchcraft to arrest birth do not differ greatly in Willie's Lady-the 'nine witch-knots,' the 'bush of woodbine,' the 'kaims o' care,' and the 'master goat'-from those mentioned in its prototypes in Scandinavian, Greek, and Eastern ballads and stories; and in more than one it is the sage counsels of 'Billy Blin''-the Brownie-that give the

isters, si

own, bow

maidens un

he birks

est kevil

own, bow

would to gr

he birks

h the mysterious process of restoring her plighted troth to Clerk Saunders; in other ballads it is done by passes of the hand, or of a crystal rod.

grew in sy

in ony

e gate of

grew gre

he knight wishes to send a message, he speaks in the ear of his 'gay goshawk that can baith speak and flee.' When May Colvin returns home after the fatal meeting at th

made o' the f

aed wi' y

ilt or fear from turret or tree. One remembers also 'Proud Maisie' walking ea

e, my bo

all I m

x braw g

shall car

d dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of bal

on his white

e oot his bon

k o' his y

our nest wh

ne for him

kens whaur

e banes when

all sigh fo

one' which pervades the folklore of the Aryan peoples, and is found also in China and among the negro tribes of West Africa. A harper finds the body of the drowned sister, and out of her 'breast-bane' he forms a harp which he

sister, f

Cruel Mother, we seem to see the workings of the guilty conscience, which at length 'visualised' the victi

d her mantle a

e, and a

e to do a

e greenwoo

are hid; but peace d

ed o'er her hi

ne and

nnie bairnies

n greenwoo

em all manner of gifts if they will only be hers. But the voi

her, when we

ne and

id our young

n greenwoo

ate as the middle of the seventeenth century-that of the Ordeal by Touch. In Young Benjie another test is applied to find the murderer; and

middle of

s began

dead hour o

e began t

on whose head justice, tempered with a strange streak of mer

Benjie head

na Benj

pyke oot his

e let hi

The Lady of the Kynast, of a haughty and cruel dame whose riddles are answered and whose heart is at length won by a stranger knight. She would fain rid

orms are m

clay is

rand, on Hallowe'en night, rides the betrayed and slain knight in Child Rowland, the first line of which,

d to the dark

as they tread the waste heath. And the sequel, as it has come

tirled a

ready as his

and let

fled from the scene of her treachery and guilt, are not surpassed in weird ima

ridden a mi

mile b

'ware o' a

owly o'er

her to the

e left tu

n her and the

knight did

e appealed to him, as from a 'saikless,' or guiltless, maid to 'a leal

did that ta

ing did

ly rade he

she rad

at a broad river-

r it is dee

is wond

ic as a sai

true knight

gether, and the fl

is waxing

it wax

e farther

f is the o

·

urned slowly

he middl

out his hand

ly she d

Hallow-mor

s your br

ld be that

groom and

ride on, pr

er comes o'e

maun ride deep

this for

plain that the tears which his betrothed sheds nightly fill his shroud with blood; when she smiles, it is filled with rose leaves. The mother steals from the grave to hap and comfort her orphan children; their harsh stepmother neglects and ill-treats them, and their exceeding bitter and d

the fire,

ter from

se shall feas

hree sons

he fireside, while the 'carline wife' ministers to their wants, and spreads h

th craw, the

rin' worm

issed out o

ain we m

e still a lit

l but if

should miss us

e mad, ere

e taen up their

ve hung it

e hing, my mo

hap us

ines; the coldness, the darkness, and the horror of death have never been painted

d Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle, where the dead returns to claim back a plighted word; and

y room at you

oom at y

at your si

hat I may

old Scottish tale,' as Sir Walter Scott calls it, in meretricious ornament, may be seen by comparing the original copies with that 'elegant' composition of David Mallet, William and Ma

rg'ret, O de

hee spea

ith and trot

e it to

the 'improv

cried, "thy tr

her midn

y pity hea

refused t

n among the customs of the race. We cannot find a time when this inheritance of legend was not old; when it was not sung, and committed to memory, and handed down to later generations in some rude rhyme. The leading 'types' were in the wallet of Autolycus; and he describes certain of them with a seasoning of his grotesque humour, to his simple country audience. There were the well-attested tale of the Usurer's Wife, a ballad sung, as ballads are wont, 'to a very doleful tune'-obviously a for