Now Lord Bateman is _Young Bekie_ in the Scotch ballads, who becomes _Young Beichan_, _Young Bichem_, and so forth, and has adventures identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket, Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has heard how _his_ Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of Gloucester’s _Life and Martyrdom of Thomas Becket_, Percy Society. See Child’s Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and _Motherwell’s Minstrelsy_, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example in the state of _Cantefable_, alternate prose and verse, like _Aucassin and Nicolette_. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the twelfth century. Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad. The examples selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the spirit of the Border raids which they record. A few notes are added in an appendix. The text is chosen from among the many variants in Child’s learned but still unfinished collection, and an effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry with most signs of uncontaminated originality. In a few cases Sir Walter Scott’s versions, though confessedly “made up,” are preferred. Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does not merely plough with Professor Child’s heifer, but has made a study of ballads from his boyhood. This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic American critics, from “the common blame of a plagiary.” Indeed, as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas here set forth. So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child’s regretted death. He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads, with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research, and a distinguished honour to American scholarship. We are not told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic, with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the Ballads: as to the influences which directed the selection of certain themes of _Märchen_ for poetic treatment, and the processes by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe. No one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of Professor Child. It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it unfinished. SIR PATRICK SPENS (_Border Minstrelsy_.) THE king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine o: “O whare will I get a skeely skipper To sail this new ship of mine o?”