CHAPTER VITHE HISTORICAL BALLAD

'O thinkna ye my heart was sair,When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair!There did she swoon wi' meikle careOn fair Kirkconnell Lea.O Helen fair, beyond compare!I 'll make a garland o' thy hairShall bind my heart for evermairUntil the day I dee.'

'O thinkna ye my heart was sair,When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair!There did she swoon wi' meikle careOn fair Kirkconnell Lea.

O Helen fair, beyond compare!I 'll make a garland o' thy hairShall bind my heart for evermairUntil the day I dee.'

Still older, and not less sad and sweet, is the lilt ofWillie Drowned in Yarrow, the theme amplified, but not improved, in Logan's lyric:

'O Willie 's fair and Willie 's rare,And Willie wondrous bonnie;And Willie hecht to marry meIf e'er he married ony.'

Gamrie, in Buchan, contends with the 'Dowie Howms' as the scene of this fragment; but surely its sentiment is pure Yarrow:

'She sought him east, she sought him west,She sought him braid and narrow;Syne in the cleaving o' a craigShe found him drowned in Yarrow.'

But best-remembered of the Yarrow Cycle isThe Dowie Dens. One cannot analyse the subtle aroma of this flower of Yarrow ballads. In it the song of the river has been wedded to its story 'like perfect music unto noble words.' 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 effect that Nature herself must have taught him, must have left us these wondrous pictures of the quarrel, hot and sudden; of the challenge, fiercely given and accepted; of the appeal, so charged with wild forebodings of evil:

'"O stay at hame, my noble lord,O stay at hame, my marrow!My cruel kin will you betrayOn the dowie howms o' Yarrow"';

of the treacherous ambuscade under Tinnis bank; of the stubborn fight, in which a single 'noble brand' holds its own against nine, until the cruel brother comes behind that comeliest knight and 'runs his bodythorough'; of the yearning and waiting of the 'winsome marrow,' while fear clutches at her heart:

'"Yestreen I dreamed a doleful dream,I fear there will be sorrow,I dreamed I pu'ed the birk sae greenFor my true love on Yarrow.O gentle wind that blaweth southFrae where my love repaireth,Blaw me a kiss frae his dear mouthAnd tell me how he fareth"';

'"Yestreen I dreamed a doleful dream,I fear there will be sorrow,I dreamed I pu'ed the birk sae greenFor my true love on Yarrow.

O gentle wind that blaweth southFrae where my love repaireth,Blaw me a kiss frae his dear mouthAnd tell me how he fareth"';

lastly, of the quest 'the bonnie forest thorough,' until on the trampled den by Deucharswire, near Whitehope farmhouse, she finds the 'ten slain men,' and among them 'the fairest rose was ever cropped on Yarrow':

'She kissed his cheek, she kaimed his hair,She searched his wounds a' thorough,She kissed them till her lips grew redOn the dowie howms o' Yarrow.'

The story is said to be founded on the slaughter of Walter Scott of Oakwood, of the house of Thirlstane, by John Scott of Tushielaw, with whose sister 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 the ballads. But it is well-nigh impossible to think of rueful Yarrow flowing through her dens to any other measure than that which keeps repeating

'By strength of sorrowThe unconquerable strength of love.'

But, as Wordsworth reminds us, these ever-youthful waters have their gladsome notes. On the not unchallengeable ground that it makes mention, in one version, of 'St. Mary's' as the fourth Scots Kirk at which halt was made after leaving the English Border,The Gay Goshawkhas been set down among the Yarrow ballads; and Hogg has confirmed the claim by using the tale as the foundation of hisFlower 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 kinsfolk's ban to the arms of love, was a device known to Juliet and to other heroines of old plays and romances. But few could have abode the test suggested by the 'witch woman' or cruel stepmother, whose experience had taught her that 'much a lady young will do, her ain true love to win':

'"Tak' ye the burning lead,And drap a drap on her white bosomTo try if she be dead."'

And Lord William, at St. Mary's Kirk, was more fortunate than Romeo in the vault of the Capulets; for when he rent the shroud from the face the blood rushed back to the cheeks and lips, 'like blood-draps in the snaw,' and the 'leeming e'en' laughed back into his own:

'"Gie me a chive o' your bread, my love,And ae glass o' your wine,For I hae fasted for your loveThese weary lang days nine."'

The Nut-brown BrideandFair Janetmight also be identified as among the Yarrow lays, if only it were granted that there is but one 'St. Mary's Kirk.' In the former, the balladist treats, with dramatic fire and fine insight into the springs of action, the theme that

'To be wroth with those we loveDoth work like madness in the brain.'

As in Barbara Allan, a word spoken amiss sets division between two hearts that had beat as one:

'Lord Thomas spoke a word in jest,Fair Annet took it ill.'

In haste he consults mother and brother whether he should marry the 'Nut-brown Maid, and let Fair Annet be,' and so long as they praise the tochered lass he scorns their counsel; he will not have 'a fat fadge by the fire.' But when his sister puts in a word for Annet his resentment blazes up anew; he will marry her dusky rival in despite. With a heart not less hot, we may be sure, his forsaken love dons her gayest 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's swift retort goes home, she can only respond with the long bodkin drawn from her hair. The word in jest costs the lives of three.Fair Janet's is another tragic wedding; love, and jealousy, and guilt again hold tryst in the little kirk whose grey walls are scarce to be traced on the green platform above the loch. 'I 've seen other days,' says the pale bride to her lost lover as he dances with her bridesmaiden:

'"I 've seen other days wi' you, Willie,And so hae mony mae;Ye would hae danced wi' me yoursel'And let a' ithers gae"';

and, dancing, she drops dead.

Fasting, and fire, and sickness unto death were, however, tame ordeals compared with those which 'Burd Helen' came through, as they are described in the ballad Professor Child holds, not without reason, to have 'perhaps no superior' in our own or any other tongue. Patient Grizel, herself the incarnation in literary form of a type of woman's faithfulness and meek endurance of wrong that had floated long in mediæval 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-surrender had been so complete that she has not the blessing of Holy Church and the support of wifely vows to comfort her in her hour of trial. All the summer day she runs by his bridle-rein until they come to the Water of Clyde, which 'Sweet Willie and May Margaret' also sought to ford on a similar errand:

'And he was never so courteous a knight,As stand and bid her ride;And she was never so poor a may,As ask him for to bide.'

She stables his steed; she waits humbly at table as the little page-boy; she listens, her colour coming and going, to the mother's scorns and the young sister's naïve questions. But never, until the supreme moment of her distress, does she draw one sign of pity or relenting from her harsh lord. Then, indeed, love and remorse, as if they had been dammed back, break forth like a flood, that bursts the very door, and makes it 'in flinders flee.' And because

'The marriage and the kirkin'Were baith held on ae day,'

our simple balladist bids us believe that the twain lived happily ever after.

The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace them to the thirteenth centuryTale of the Ash, by Marie of France. The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Skiæn 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 supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yetneither from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint. The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart:

'"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe,Lie still as lang 's ye may;For your father rides on high horseback,And cares na for us twae."'

And again,

'"Gin my seven sons were seven young rats,Runnin' upon the castle wa';And I were a grey cat mysel',Soon should I worry ane and a'."'

Wide, surely, is the gulf between the Original Woman of old romance and the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doubt, is for the better; and yet is it altogether for the better?

According to all modern canons, the conduct of these too-tardy bridegrooms was brutal beyond words; and as for the heroines of the Romantic Ballad, Mother Grundy, had she the handling of them, would use them worse than ever did moody brother or crafty stepmother. But the balladists and ballad characters had their own gauges of conduct. Their morals were not other or better than the morals of their age. They 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 attemptto glose the sin; they dealt not in innuendo ordouble entendre. Beside the page of modern realism, the ballad page is clean and wholesome. Human passion unrestrained there may be; but no sickly or vicious sentiment. There is a punctilious sense of honour; and if it is sometimes the letter rather than the spirit of vow or promise that is kept, the knights and ladies in the ballads are no worse than are the Pharisees of our day; and they are always ready to pay, and generally do pay, the utmost penalty.

Thus, in that most powerful and tragic ballad,Clerk Saunders, May Margaret ties a napkin about her eyes that she 'may swear, and keep her aith,' to her 'seven bauld brothers,' that she had not 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 excuses for their sin; the reason why ruth should turn aside vengeance—is told, in staccato sentences, by the brothers as they stand by the bedside of their 'ae sister,' with 'torches burning bright':

'Out and spake the first o' them,"I wot that they are lovers dear";And out and spake the second o' them,"They 've been in love this mony a year";And out and spake the third o' them,"His father had nae mair than he."'

'Out and spake the first o' them,"I wot that they are lovers dear";And out and spake the second o' them,"They 've been in love this mony a year";

And out and spake the third o' them,"His father had nae mair than he."'

And so until the seventh—the Rashleigh of the band—who spake no word, but let his 'bright brown brand' speak for him. What follows rises to the extreme heightof the balladist's art; literature might be challenged for anything surpassing it in simplicity and power, in the mingling of horror and pathos:

'Clerk Saunders he started and Margaret she turned,Into his arms as asleep she lay;And sad and silent was the nightThat was atween the twae.And they lay still and sleepéd sound,Until the day began to daw,And softly unto him she said,"It 's time, true love, you were awa'."But he lay still and sleepéd sound,Albeit the sun began to sheen;She looked atween her and the wa',And dull and drumlie were his een.'

'Clerk Saunders he started and Margaret she turned,Into his arms as asleep she lay;And sad and silent was the nightThat was atween the twae.

And they lay still and sleepéd sound,Until the day began to daw,And softly unto him she said,"It 's time, true love, you were awa'."

But he lay still and sleepéd sound,Albeit the sun began to sheen;She looked atween her and the wa',And dull and drumlie were his een.'

In the majority of ballads of theClerk Saundersclass there is some base agent who betrays trust and brings death upon the lovers. 'Fause Foodrage' takes many forms in these ancient tales without changing type. He is the slayer of 'Lily Flower' inJellon Graeme; and the boy whom he has preserved and brought up sends the arrow singing to his guilty heart. Lammiken, the 'bloodthirsty mason,' who must have a life for his wage, is another enemy within the house who finds 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. InGlenkindie, 'Gib, his man,' is the vile betrayer of the noble harper and his lady. Sometimes, as inGude Wallace,Earl Richard, andSir James the Rose, it is the 'lightleman' who plays traitor. But she quickly repents, and meets her fate in the fire or at the sword's point, in 'Clyde Water' or in 'the dowie den in the Lawlands o' Balleichan.' InGil Morice, that ballad which Gray thought 'divine,' it is 'Willie, the bonnie boy,' whom the hero trusted with his message, that in malice and wilfulness brings about the tremendous catastrophe of the tale. He calls aloud in hall the words he was bid whisper in the ear of Lord Barnard's lady—to meet Gil Morice in the forest, and 'speir nae bauld baron's leave.'

'The lady stampéd wi' her footAnd winkéd wi' her e'e;But for a' that she could say or doForbidden he wadna be.'

It is the angry and jealous baron who, in woman guise, meets and slays the youth who is waiting in gude greenwood, and brings back the bloody head to the mother.

Other fine ballads in which mother and son carry on tragic colloquy areLord RandalandEdward. These versions of a story of treachery and blood, conveyed in the dark hints of a strange dialogue, have received many touches from later hands; but the germ comes down from the age of tradition. It has even been noted that, with the curious tenacity with which the ballad memory often clings to a detail while forgetting or mislaying essential fact, the food with which, in the version Burns recovered for Johnson'sMuseum, Lord Randal is poisoned—'eels boiled in broo'—is identical with that given to his prototype in the folk-ballads of Italyand 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 alleged poisoning of the Regent Randolph. But it lacks the terrible and dramatic intensity ofSon Davie, better known in the version transmitted, under the name ofEdward, by Lord Hailes to Bishop Percy'sReliques. Here it is the murderer, and not the victim, who answers; and it is the questioning mother, and not the absent false love, with whom the curse is left as a legacy. Despair had never a more piercing utterance than this:

'"And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife?Edward, Edward!And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wifeWhen ye gang over the sea, O?""The warld 's room, let them beg through life,Mither, Mither!The warld 's room, let them beg through life,For them never mair will I see, O!""And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear?Edward, Edward!And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear,My dear son, now tell me, O?""The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,Mither, Mither!The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,Sic counsels ye gae me, O!"'

'"And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wife?Edward, Edward!And what will ye leave to your bairns and your wifeWhen ye gang over the sea, O?"

"The warld 's room, let them beg through life,Mither, Mither!The warld 's room, let them beg through life,For them never mair will I see, O!"

"And what will ye leave to your ain mither dear?Edward, Edward!And what will ye leave to your ain mother dear,My dear son, now tell me, O?"

"The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,Mither, Mither!The curse o' hell from me shall ye bear,Sic counsels ye gae me, O!"'

Although Yarrow be the favoured haunt on Scottish soil—may we not also say on the whole round of earth?—of the Romantic Ballad, and has coloured them, andtaken colour from them, for all time, yet there are other streams and vales that only come short of being its rivals. 'Leader Haughs,' for instance, which the harp 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 Scott, has its scene on Leader side, and at the 'darksome town'—a misnomer in these days—of Lauder. Long before the time of that tough champion, St. Cuthbert and True Thomas had wandered and dreamed and sang by Leader. It was a Lord Lauderdale who rode to Traquair to court, after the older fashion, Katherine Janferie:

'He toldna her father, he toldna her mither,He toldna ane o' her kin;But he whispered the bonnie may hersel',And has her favour won.'

He it was, according to the old ballad, who rode to the bridal at the eleventh hour, with four and twenty Leader lads behind him:

'"I comena here to fight," he said,"I comena here to play;But to lead a dance wi' the bonnie bride,And mount and go my way"';

and it was Lord Lochinvar (although 'he who told the story later' has taught us so differently) who played the inglorious part of the deserted bridegroom. Scotthimself drank in the passion for Border romance and chivalry on the braes of Sandyknowe, between Leader and Eden waters, not far from Smailholm 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 famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and 'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ballad romance:

'The hills were high on ilka side,And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,And aye as she sang her voice it rangOut ower the head o' yon hill.There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,Merrily riding by,And ane o' them rade out o' the wayTo the bucht to the bonnie may.'

'The hills were high on ilka side,And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,And aye as she sang her voice it rangOut ower the head o' yon hill.

There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,Merrily riding by,And ane o' them rade out o' the wayTo the bucht to the bonnie may.'

Nowhere has the ballad inspiration and the ballad touch lingered longer than by Eden and Leader and Whitadder. Lady Grizel Baillie (who also wonned in Mellerstain) had them—

'There once was a may and she lo'ed nae men,And she biggit her bonnie bower doun in yon glen'—

and it still lives in Lady John Scott, who has sung ofThe Bonnie Bounds of Cheviotas if the mantle of the Border minstrels had fallen upon her.

After all, the ballads of Yarrow and Ettrick, of the Merse and Teviotdale, owe their superior fame as much as anything to the happy chance that the Wizard of Abbotsford dwelt in the midst of them, and seizing upon them before they were forgotten, made them and the localities classical. Other districts 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 with the best.Lord Gregoryhas aliases and duplicates without number. But the scene is always Loch Ryan and some castled island within sight of that arm of the sea, whither the love-lorn Annie fares in her boat 'wi' sails o' the light green silk and tows o' taffetie,' in quest of her missing lord:

'"O row the boat, my mariners,And bring me to the land!For yonder I see my love's castleClose by the salt sea strand."'

Alas! cold is her welcome as she stands with her young son in her arms, and knocks and calls on her love, while 'the wind blaws through her yellow hair, and the rain draps o'er her chin.' A voice, that 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 boding dreams to find his true love and his child have been turned from his door, it is too late. His cry to the waves is as vain as Annie's cry to that 'ill woman,' his mother, who has betrayed them:

'"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!O Annie, winna ye bide?"But aye the mair that he cried Annie,The braider grew the tide."And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!Dear Annie, speak to me!"But aye the louder he cried Annie,The louder roared the sea.'

'"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!O Annie, winna ye bide?"But aye the mair that he cried Annie,The braider grew the tide.

"And hey, Annie, and how, Annie!Dear Annie, speak to me!"But aye the louder he cried Annie,The louder roared the sea.'

The shores and basin of the Forth have also their rowth of ballads; and some of them have, likeThe Lass of Lochryan, the sound of the waves and the salt smell of the sea mingled with their plaintive music.Gil Moricehas been 'placed' by Carronside—Ossian's 'roaring Carra'—a meet setting for the story.Sir Patrick Spenscleaves to the shores of Fife; though 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 the return of their 'good Scots lords'; the wraith of Sir Patrick himself in misty days strides the silver strand under the Hawes Wood, reading the braid letter. Near by is Donibristle; and it keeps the memory of the 'Bonnie Earl of Moray,' slain here, hints the balladist—though history is silenton the point—for pleasing too well the Queen's eye at Holyrood.

Edinburgh, too, draws a good part of its romance from the ballad bard. Mary Hamilton, of the Queen's Maries, rode through the Netherbow Port to the gallows-foot:

'"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,The night she 'll hae but three;There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beaton,And Marie Carmichael, and me."'

The Marchioness of Douglas wandered disconsolate on Arthur's Seat and drank of St. Anton's well:

'"O waly, waly, love be bonnieA little time while it is new,But when it 's auld it waxes cauldAnd fades awa' like morning dew.But had I wist before I kissedThat love had been so ill to win,I 'd locked my heart within a kistAnd fastened it wi' a siller pin"';

'"O waly, waly, love be bonnieA little time while it is new,But when it 's auld it waxes cauldAnd fades awa' like morning dew.

But had I wist before I kissedThat love had been so ill to win,I 'd locked my heart within a kistAnd fastened it wi' a siller pin"';

and across the hill lies the 'Wells o' Wearie.' Nowhere else has the wail of forsaken love found such wistful expression—except inThe Fause Lover:

'"But again, dear love, and again, dear love,Will you never love me again?Alas! for loving you so well,And you not me again."'

From Edinburgh wandered Leezie Lindsay, kilting her coats of green satin to follow her Lord Ronald Macdonald the weary way to the Highland Border; and to its plainstanes came the faithful Lady of Gicht to ransom her Geordie:

'My Geordie, O my Geordie,The love I bear my Geordie!For the very ground I walk uponBears witness I lo'e Geordie.'

And these regions of the North have as much of the 'blood-red wine' of ballad romance coursing through them as Tweedside or Lothian, although it may be of harsher and coarser flavour. Space does not allow of doing justice to the Northern Ballads, some of them simple strains, made familiar by sweet airs, likeHunting Tower, orBessie Bell and Mary Gray, or theBanks of the Lomond; others, and these chiefly from the wintry side of Cairn o' Mount, 'bleak and bare' as that wilderness of heather; still others, and from the same quarter, gallant, warm-hearted, light-stepping tunes as ever were sung—Glenlogie, for instance:

'There were four-and-twenty noblesRode through Banchory fair;And bonnie GlenlogieWas flower o' them there.'

For the most part they are variants, many of them badly mutilated in the rhymes, that are familiar, under other names, farther south. They gather about the family history 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; and they tell of love adventures and mischances that have befallen the Lords of Huntly or Aboyne, the Lairds of Drum or Meldrum, and even the humble Trumpeter of Fyvie.

'It fell about the Lammas tide,When the muirmen win their hay,The doughty Douglas bound him to rideInto England, to drive a prey.'

The Battle of Otterburn.

The kindly Scot will not quarrel with the comparative mythologist who tells him that the superstitions embalmed in his ballad minstrelsy are wanderers out of misty times and far countries—primitive ideas and beliefs that may have started with his remote ancestors from the heart of the East, to find harbour in the valleys of the Cheviots and the islands of the West, or that have drifted thither with the tide of later inroads. Nor will he greatly protest when the literary historian assures him that the plots and incidents in the popular old rhymes of the frenzies and parlous adventures of love have been borrowed or adapted from the metrical and prose romances of the Middle Ages. He can appreciate in his poetry, as in his pedigree, high and long descent; all the more since, as he flatters himself, whencesoever the seed may have come, it has found kindly soil, and drawn from thence a strength andcolour such as few other lands and ballad literatures can match.

But to suggest that not even our Historical Songs of fight and of foray against our 'auld enemies' of England are genuine, unalloyed products of the national spirit; to hint thatKinmont Willie,The Outlaw Murray, orThe Battle of Otterburnitself is an exotic—that were a somewhat dangerous exercise of the art of analytic criticism, in the presence of a Scottish audience. In truth, no poetry of any tongue or land is more powerfully dominated by the sense of locality—is more expressive of the manners of the time and mood of the race—than those rough Border lays of moonlight rides, on reiving or on rescue bound, and of death fronted boldly in the press of spears or 'behind the bracken bush.' These are not tales of the infancy of a people. Scotland had already attained to something of national unity of blood and of sentiment before they came to birth. For generations and centuries she had to keep her head and her bounds against an enemy as watchful and warlike as herself, and many times as strong. Blows were struck and returned, keen and sudden as lightning. The 'hammer of the Scots,' wielded by the English kings, had smitten, and under its blows the race had been welded together and wrought to a temper like steel, supple upon occasion to bend, but elastic and unbreakable, and with a sharp cutting edge.

Heroes conquered or fell; and sometimes a minstrelwas by to sing the exploit. Patriotism and the joy of combat are leading notes in these Historic Ballads. The annals of Scotland are full of family and clan feuds—the quarrels of kites and crows. But, with a fine and true instinct, the best of these ballads avoid taking account of the bickerings in the household. It is when they sing of 'patriot battles won of old,' where Scot and Southron met, 'red-wat shod,' that the strain rises to its clearest, and 'stirs the heart like the sound of a trumpet.' Nor is it always the events that are most noised in the history-book that are best remembered in the ballads. The old singers and their audiences delighted more in personal episode than in filling a big canvas; their genius was dramatic rather than epic.Hardyknut, with its commemoration of the battle of Largs and the Northmen, although accepted by theliteratiof the early Georgian era as a genuine 'antique,' has long been proved to be an imitative production of Lady Wardlaw's. The rhyme which the Scottish maidens sang about Bannockburn is lost. The Wallace group of ballads bears plain marks of spurious intermixture, or later composition. There are no traditional verses preserved in popular memory regarding the disasters of Neville's Cross or of Homildon Hill, where so much good Scots blood soaked an alien sod; or of that shameful day of Solway Moss, about which James the Fifth muttered strange words on his dying-bed. Even the pathetic strain, more lyrical, however, than narrative, in which lament is made forThe Flowers o' the Forest, that were 'wede awa'' at Flodden, came two centuries later than the woful battle.

Perhaps it is natural that a warlike people should sing of their triumphs rather than of their defeats and humiliations. But if the old ballads have lost sight of some great landmarks in the country's chronicle, they have preserved names and incidents which the duller pen of history has forgotten or overlooked. The breath of poetry passes over the Valley of Bones of the national annals, and each knight stands up in his place, a breathing man and a living soul. They are none the less real and living for us because Dry-as-dust has mislaid the vouchers for their birth and their deeds, and cannot fit them into their place in his family trees and chronological tables.

It follows, from the strongly patriotic cast of the ballads of war and fray, that they should have sprung up most rankly on the battle-fields and around the peel-towers of the Borderland. It was on the line of the Tweed and of the Cheviots that the long quarrel was fought out; and thus the Merse, Ettrick Forest, and Teviotdale; the Debateable Land, Liddesdale, and Annan Water became the native countries of the songs of raid and battle. The 'Red Harlaw'—which has had its own homespun bard, although of a different note and fibre from the minstrels of the Border—may be said to have ended the struggle for the mastery between Highlands and Lowlands. From thence onwardthrough the age of ballad-making, there werespreaghsand feuds enow upon and within the Highland Line. But, until the time when Jacobitism came to give change of theme and bent, along with change of scene, to the spirit of Scottish romance, none of these local bloodlettings sufficed to inspire a ballad of more than local fame; unless indeed the story drew part of its power to live and to please from other sources besides the mere zest for fighting. In distinction, as we shall see from the typical Border War Lay, in which woman, if her presence is felt at all, is kept in the background, as looker-on or rewarder of the fight, in such Northern tales of raid and spulzie asThe Baron of Bracklay,Edom o' Gordon,The Bonnie House o' Airlie, or evenThe Burning o' Frendraught, she is brought into the heart of the scene and forms an abiding and controlling influence.

In a word, these are at least as much Romantic as Historical Ballads. We suspect that woman's guile and treachery are at work, as soon as we hear the taunting words of Bracklay's lady:

'O rise, my bauld Baron,And turn back your kye,For the lads o' DrumwharronAre driving them bye.'

We are made sure of it, when the minstrel tells us:

'There was grief in the kitchenBut mirth in the ha';But the Baron o' BracklayIs dead and awa'.'

And in the assault on the 'House o' the Rhodes,' it is not the wild work of the Gordons on which our thoughts are fixed; it is not even on the Forbeses, riding hard and fast to be in time for rescue:

'Put on, put on, my michty men,As fast as ye can drie;For he that 's hindmost o' my menWill ne'er get good o' me.'

It is 'the bonnie face that lies on the grass,' and Lady Ogilvie, and not her lord or the 'gleyed Argyll,' is central figure of the tale of the raid of the Campbells against their hereditary foes in Angus.

As a rule, in those ballads of the Borders whose business is with foray and reprisal, we have none of this disturbing element. The sheer love of adventure, the chance of exchanging 'hard dunts' with the Englishmen, is inducement enough for us to follow the lead of the Douglas or Buccleuch across the Waste of Bewcastle or through the wilds of Kidland. The women folks are safe and well defended in the peel-towers, from whence, when the word has gone out to 'warn the water speedilie,' the bale-fires flash up the dales from water-foot to well-e'e, and set the hill-crests aflame with the news of the enemy's coming. They may have given the hint of a toom larder by serving a dish of spurs on the board. They will be the first to welcome home the warden's men or the moss-troopers if they return with full hands, or to rally them if they have brought nothing back but broken heads. But keeping orbreaking the peace on the Borders is a man's part; and only men mingle in it. Both sides are too accustomed to surprises, and have too many strong fortalices and friends at hand, to give the foe the chance of 'lifting' whole families as well as their gear and cattle. The last thing one looks for, then, in the moss-trooping ballads is a strain of tender and pathetic sentiment. The tone is hearty and virile even to boisterousness. The minstrel, like the fighters, revels in hard knocks and rough jests. He has ridden with them probably, and has had the piper's share of the plunder and whatever else was going. He has heard 'the bows that bauldly ring and the arrows whiddering near him by,' as he passes through the 'derke Foreste.' He took the fell with the other folk in the following of the Scottish warden, and looking down the slope towards Reed Water, witnessed the beginning and end of the skirmish known asThe Raid of the Reidswire.

'Be this our folk had taen the fellAnd planted pallions there to bide;We looked down the other side,And saw them breasting ower the braeWi' Sir John Forster as their guide,Full fifteen hundred men and mae.'

With strokes, graphic and humorous, he describes how the meeting of the two wardens, 'begun with merriment and mowes,' turned to the exchange of such 'reasons rude' between Tyndale and Jed Forest, as flights of arrows and 'dunts full dour.' Pride was at the bottom of the mischief; pride and the memory of old scores.

'To deal with proud men is but pain;For either must ye fight or flee,Or else no answer make again,But play the beast and let them be.'

And so, when the English raised the question of surrendering a fugitive,

'Carmichael bade them speak out plainlie,And cloak no cause for ill or good;The other answering him as vainly,Began to reckon kin and blood;He raise, and raxed him where he stood,And bade him match him wi' his marrows;Then Tyndale heard these reason rude,And they let off a flight of arrows.'

Again, inKinmont Willie, the flower, with one exception to be named, of the ballads that celebrate the exploits of the 'ruggers and rivers,' the singer lets slip, as it were by accident, that he was of the bold and lawless company that broke Carlisle Castell in time of peace. The old lay tingles and glows with the restless untameable courage, the dramatic fire, the grim humour, and the spirit of good fellowship that were characteristic, along with some less admirable qualities, of the old Borderers. The rage, tempered with a dash of Scots caution, of the Bauld Buccleuch when he heard that his unruly countryman had been taken 'against the truce of border tide' by the 'fause Sakelde and the keen Lord Scroope'; his device for a rescue that while it would set the Kinmont free, would 'neither harm English lad nor lass,' or break the peace between the countries; the keen questionings andadroit replies that passed, like thrust and parry, between the divided bands of the warden's men and Sakelde himself, who met them successively as they crossed the Debateable Land, until it came to the turn of tongue-tied Dickie o' Dryhope, who, having never a word ready, 'thrust the lance through his fause bodie,'—all these are told in the most vigorous and graphic style of rough first-hand narrative. And then the story-teller takes up the parable in his own person, and describes how he and his comrades plunged through the flooded Eden, climbed the bank, and through 'wind and weet and fire and sleet' came beneath the castle wall:—

'We crept on knees and held our breath,Till we placed the ladders against the wa';And sae ready was Buccleuch himsel'To mount the first before us a'.He 's ta'en the watchman by the throat,And flung him down upon the lead—"Had there not been peace between our lands,Upon the other side thou 'dst gaed!"'

'We crept on knees and held our breath,Till we placed the ladders against the wa';And sae ready was Buccleuch himsel'To mount the first before us a'.

He 's ta'en the watchman by the throat,And flung him down upon the lead—"Had there not been peace between our lands,Upon the other side thou 'dst gaed!"'

In the 'inner prison' lay Willie o' Kinmont, like a wolf in a trap, sleeping soft and waking oft, with thoughts of the gallows, on which he was to swing in the morning, and of his wife and bairns and the 'gude fellows' in the Debateable Land he was never to see again. But in an instant, at the hail and sight of his friends, the fearless humour of the Border rider comes back to him; mounted, irons and all, on the shoulders of Red Rowan, 'the starkest man in Teviotdale,' he must first takefarewell of his host, Lord Scroope, with a significant promise that he would 'pay him lodging maill when first they met on the border side.'

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