The Balladists

Time's dark w

saved; the b

rick Sh

ttish character-the sombre and the bright; the prose and the poetry. The one or the other has predominated in the expression of the genius of the nation in verse, according to the circumstances and mood of the time. But neither has ever been really absent; they are the opposite sides of the same shield. It is not proposed to enter her

ude of superiority and even of disapproval. The verse of those self-taught rhymers was rude and simple, and wanting in those conventional ornaments, borrowed from classic or other sources, which for the time being were the recognised hallmarks of poesy; the moral lessons it taug

ontrary, those of such men as live 'lawlessly and licentiously upon stealths and spoyles,' whom they praise to the people, and set up as an example to young men. A poetaster of the beginning of the seventeenth century prays his printer that his book 'be not with your Ballads mixt,' and that 'it come

he heresies, and the follies of the period, lacks entirely that air of simplicity and spontaneity-that 'wild-warlock' lilt, that 'wild happiness of thought and expression'-which, in the phrase of Robert Burns, marks 'our native manner and language' in ballad poetry certainly not less than in lyrical song. The laureated bard, honoure

early broadsheets at least-could be gross on occasion; although, it must be owned, not more gross than the dramatists of Elizabethan and Restoration times, and even the novelists of last century, sometimes deigned to be. In particular, they made the mistake, of venerable date and not quite unknown to this day, of confounding humour with coarseness. A humorous ballad is usually a thing to be fingered gingerly. Yet, although (partly for the reason hinted at) humour has been said not to be a strongly

s, disguised in beggar's duds, keeps on the hook the deluded and disgusted knight, who has unwillingly taken her up behind him, and with wilful and

ood-e'en, ye

grow at

carline my m

's she wa

d stap ye

he wadn

in her aul

e mak' g

·

wa', ye

speech g

sae little

de far le

de-e'en, ye he

row on

rline and her

would ge

t night I kn

-and-twe

morn, at br

the keys o'

·

are a carl

ake yo

ou get the

wood was

she 's a

ed earl's ch

t from a fo

such sparks

ys or Moralities were played on the open sward in such places of resort for gentle and simple as Falkland and Stirling and Peebles and Cupar; and the strain of the more solemn mumming was relieved for the benefit of the common folks, by rough jests, horse-play, and dancing, in which their betters freely joined. No doubt it was a piece

onal popularity which the piece long enjoyed. Pope declared that a Scot would fight in his day for its superiority over English ballads; and the author of Tullochgorum, in a letter to Robert Burns, tells us that at the age of twelve he had it by heart, and had even tried to turn it into Latin verse. In Peblis to the Play, the fun is not less nimble although it is a whit more restrained; t

zie, and

out th

and how

folk were

blew, and t

he towni

a shout was

i were ow

ir

is to t

e thing that the monarch who wrote the King's Quair, and whose daughter kissed the lips of Alain Chartier as the reward of France for his sweet singing, should have written these strains descriptive of rural jollity in localities where the court and sovereign are known to have often resorted for hunting and other diversion.

sing the word in the Elizabethan as well as in the ordinary sense-of the wandering 'Red Tod'; who has also been held to be the inspirer, if not t

granted. But the balladist carries everything before him by the verve and good humour and pawky wit of his song. There are touches worthy of the comedy spirit of Molière in the de

he bed whair t

as cauld, h

hands, cry'd

our gear w

coffer and s

s stown that

lane, cry'd, "P

g'd a lea

ng awa, as w

o kirn, and m

use, lass, and

r come qui

aed where the

ere cauld, s

o the good

wi' the gabe

ride, and

find these t

burnt, and h

u' gaberlu

ight rovings of the 'Guidman o' Ballengeich,' with the same vigour and live

is horn fr

aith loud

d-twenty be

ping o'er

out his li

his dudd

d the brawe

amang t

nth century priest, who loved a merry jest, and of whom we know barely more than the name. With so many other precious fragments of our national poetry, it is preserved in the collection of George Bannatyne, the namefather of the Bannatyne Club, who beguiled the tedium of his retirement in time of plague by copying down the popular verse of his day. It is the progenitor of John Grumlie, and gives us a lively series

kirn that h

d at it ti

jumblit an

crap of but

butter he

cumbered wi

het the mi

spark o' i

o' Maut, an allegorical account of the genesis of 'barley bree.' Of this last, also, Bannatyne has noted a version which was probably in vogue in the first half of the sixteenth century. Even the hand of B

w green, syne

thocht that

t gullies and

d him down, r

·

uples, that w

y loundert,

ll, and baf

lew round his l

the Dutch-like breadth and fidelity of its pictures of the character and humours of common folk, over the period from the Scottish Reformation to the Revolution; an

r a time to exercise their spell over the fancy of the people. The open-air gatherings and junketings on feast and saints' days, with their attendant mirth and music, were too closely associated with the old ecclesiastical rule, and had too many scandals and excesses connected with them, to escape censure from the new Mentors and conscience-keepers of the nation. When, a little later

nuisance, to be put down by the relentless arm of the law, before the Union of the Crowns. Half a century or more before that event, this opinion had been formed of the reiving clans by their quieter and more thoughtful neighbours, as is manifest from the biting allusions of Sir David Lyndsay and Sir Richard Maitland. But after King James's going to Englan

thout a struggle. On the Borders and in the Highlands, the Original Adam asserted himself, in deed and in song, long after the more sober mind of Fife, Lanark, and the West Country had given itself up to the solution of the new theological and ecclesiastical problems which time and change had brought to the nation. The Reformers complained that the fighting clans of the Western Marches could only with difficulty be induced to turn their thoughts from the hereditary business of the quarrel of the Kingdoms to take up instead the quarrel of the Kirk. Even so late as the Co

or smouldered with a fervent heat. They flung themselves into the front of Kirk controversy, as they did also into more peaceable pursuits, suc

die out of the land. Its echo has never been wholly missed by Dee and Earn and Girvan; certainly never by Yarrow and Teviot and Tweed. The 'Spiritual Songs'-the 'Gude and Godlie Ballates'-are lost, or are remembered only by the antiquary; not indeed because they were spiritual, or because they were written by worthy men with good intent-for the Scottish Psalms, sung to their traditional melodies, touch a still deeper chord in the natural breast than the ballads-but because they lacked the sap of life, the beauty and the passion of nature's own teaching, which only can give immortality to song. There is a 'Harp of the Covenant', and in it there are piercing wails wrung from a people almost driven frantic with suffering and oppression. But the popular lays of the civil wars and commotions of the sev

se and ra

and girn

ks and cu

higg

hem should have been almost contemporary with that merging of the Parliaments of the two kingdoms, which, according to the fears and beliefs of the time, was to have made an end of the nationality and identity of the smaller and

little barber-poet was itself the greatest imaginable contrast to the soured Puritanism and prim formalism that for half a century and more had infested the national letters. But the author of The Gentle Shepherd himself-and small blame to him-did not fully comprehend the nature and extent of his mission. He did not wholly rid himsel

ient days.' Of Lady Grizel Baillie's lilts, composed at 'Polwarth on the Green' or at Mellerstain-classic scenes of song and of legend, both of them-mention has been made; they have on them the very dew of homely shepherd life, closed about by the hills, of 'forest charm

place stands

folks ken'

hat dwelt on

that wonned

ts artificial garnishing of classic allusions, mar

. Her contemporary, Mrs. Cockburn, who wrote the more hackneyed set of the same Border lament, was of the ancient race of Rutherford of Wauchope in the same romantic Border district,-a district wherein James Thomson, of The Seasons, spent his childhood from almost his earliest infancy, and where the prototype of Scott's Dandie Dinmont, James Davidson of 'Note o' the Gate,' sleeps sound under a green heap of turf. To trace the Teviotdale dynasty

athy with the 'Lost Cause'-after it was finally lost; even while her reason and judgment remained, on the whole, true to the side and to the principles that were victorious. Men who were almost Jacobin in their opinion-Robert Burns is a prime example-became Jacobite when they donned their singing robes. The faults and misdeeds of the Stewarts were forgotten in

ere of poetry. Whichever side had the better in the sword-play, there can be no doubt which has won the triumph in the piping. Song and music have given the Stewart cause its revenge against fortune; and Prince Charlie, and not Cumberland, will re

beth Halkett, Lady Wardlaw, a balladist whose verse, acknowledged and unacknowledged, had many genuine touches 'of the antique manner;' and Lady Anne Barnard, a granddaughter of Colin, Earl of Balcarres, whose career was one of the romances of the '15 and of the House of Lindsay, was able to tell Sir Walter Scott, so late as 1823, the story of the conception and birth of her Auld Robin Gray, which also, on its first anonymous appearance, was taken by some as 'a very, very ancient ballad, composed perhaps

was then fifteen years of age, 'beardless, young, and blate,' b

ements

jumble rig

ting in h

ly heaving the breast' of th

poor auld S

plan or beuk

a sang a

inks. Everywhere, from the Moray Firth to the Cheviots, and from the East Neuk of Fife to Maidenkirk, there were preludings for the new and splendid burst of Scottish song, that by and by broke from the banks of Ayr and Doon. The service rendered by the genius of Burns in quickening and purifying Scottish song and ballad poetry has often been acknowledged. It was, indeed, beyond all measure and praise. But recognition, has not, perhaps, been made so fully and frequently of what our 'King of Song' owed to the popular poetry of country people and elder times-an

eved for the songs, however, Walter Scott did for the ballads and prose legends of Scotland. The appearance of the Border Minstrelsy makes 1802 the red-letter year in the later annals of the Scottish Ballad. More than twenty years before, the little lame boy, with the good blood of two Border clans, the Scotts and the Rutherfords, in his veins, had lain on the braes of Sandyknowe, and had drunk in through all his senses the history and romance of the Borderland. He had heard from the 'aged hind,' or at the 'wi

air flood, and

down Tev

ne as it was when ballad romanc

led as th

ange tale bew

who with he

trength had spur

·

by the win

heard of w

lights, of l

spells, of w

t battles

ight and Bru

huge square tower of Hume-'Willie Wastle's' castle-stands on the same sky-line as Smailholm peel itself, keeping guard along with it over the passes and marches of the ancient Scottish Kingdom. Wrangholm is near by, where St. Cuthbert dreamed and played boyish s

r of a

ng ouyr a

rank next after, if they should not take precedence of the Vale of Yarrow. Six years before Scott's birth, while Burns was just a toddler, Bishop Percy's Reliques had seen the light. The chief gathering ground of this celebrated collection was on the English side of the Border, but was not confined to ballad poetry. But it brought to some of the choicest of our ballads, such as Sir Patrick Spens, a fame and vogue such as they had never before enjoyed in the world without; and it profoundly influenced the poetic thought and taste of Scotland, as of every land where song was loved and English speech was spoken. One effect was seen in the more strictly Scottish

from oblivion of the old ballads should thenceforth be a business which, not alone the antiquary and the poet, but the whole people should make their concern. Jamieson's Popular Ballads followed in 18

n the structure of the pieces picked up from oral recitation and singing, presented endless points of difference according to the locality and to the individual singer or collector. As has been said, each old piece of popular poetry, before it has been fixed in print, and even after, takes a certain part of its colour and character from the minds and memories through which it has been strained. As an illustration of this, in another field, one might mention that Pastor Hurt, when he set about, a few years ago, gathering th

rom the human liability to err-few men have been less so. As Percy admitted Hardyknut and other examples of the pseudo-antique among his specimens of 'Old Romance Poetry,' Scott's critical acumen did not avail to detect brazen forgeries of Surtees, like Barthram's Dirge and The Death of Featherstonhaugh. In Cromek's Relics of Galloway Song were somewhat palpable 'fakements' of Allan Cunningham; William Motherwell and

The great Master of Romance was, as one of his companions said, 'makin' himsel' a' the time.' Dandie Dinmont, whom the author of Guy Mannering sketches from the traits of a dozen honest yeomen and store farmers, whose hospitality he had shared in his rambles through the wilds of Liddesdale, would a few generations earlier have been a stark moss-trooper, ready to ride to the rescue of Kinmont Willie or to seek his 'beef and kail'

e Links of For

ey the cro

ie woods o'

fain wou

st of his 'finds' was Hogg himself. He was nursed in the lap of the Forest and cradled in ballad and fairy lore. Here was the 'heart of pathos' of the older poetry; the head buzzing with its wild fancies; 'the sang o' the linty amang the broom in the spring'; and along with these the shaggy front, the strong hand-grips, t

he taste and retentive memory of Mrs. Brown, daughter of Professor Thomas Gordon, of King's College, Aberdeen, and wife of a minister of Falkland, in the beginning of the century. There are in existence three MSS. of the songs and ballads this lady was able t

d from nurses and country-women in that sequestered part of the country. Being maternally fond of my children when young, she had them much about her, and delighted them with her songs and tales of chivalry. My youngest daughter, Mrs. Brown, at Falkland, is blessed with a memory as good as her aunt, and has almost the whole of her songs by heart. In convers

amity to lose. What may almost be described as the 'classical text' of some of the finest of our ballads, is that obtained by collation of the Brown 'sets,' of which the fullest is that originally owned by Robert Jamieson, which reappears in revised form in one of the copies possessed by Miss Tytler. From the circumstances of its origin, this t

and the Cabrach, the late Dean Christie was still able to gather from the lips of old peasant and fisher women specimens both of ballads and ballad airs that had never been in print. The chief work for half a century has been that of comparing, collating, and critically annotating the mate

have not sent down to us out of the darkness, along with their song, so much as their name. Wordsworth, as well as Scott, pored entranced over Percy's Reliques. Coleridge, Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, and a host besides, have drunk delight and found inspiration

ards a

ng is