cork-heeled shoes having been worn neither by the Scots lords, nor by the lords of any other nation, so early as the reign of Alexander III., at which period Sir Patrick Spens sailed on his disastrous voyage. But the appearance of such a comparatively modern detail of personal attire throws no discredit on the antiquity of the ballad, because in its oral transmission each singer or reciter would naturally equip the Scots lords in the particular kind of shoes which the Scots lords wore in his own day. Anachronism of this kind proves nothing, because such anachronism is involved in the very nature of the case, and must occur in every old composition which is frequently recited, and the terms of which have not been definitely fixed by writing. In the old Highland stories to which I allude, the wildest anachronisms are of the most frequent occurrence; with the most utter scorn of historical accuracy all the periods are jumbled together; they resemble the dance on the outside stage of a booth at a country fair before the performances begin, in which the mailed crusader, King Richard III., a barmaid, and a modern "swell" meet, and mingle, and cross hands with the most perfect familiarity and absence from surprise. And some of those violations of historical accuracy are instructive enough, and throw some light on the cork-heeled shoes of the Scots lords in the ballad. In one story a mermaiden and a General in the British army are represented as in love with each other and holding clandestine meetings. Here is an anachronism with a vengeance, enough to make Mr Robert Chambers stare and gasp. How would he compute the age of that story? Would he make it as old as the mermaiden or as modern as the British General? Personally, I have not the slightest doubt that the story is old, and that in its original form it concerned itself with certain love passages between a mermaiden and a great warrior. But the story lived for generations as tradition, was told around the Skye peat-fires, and each relater gave it something of his own, some touch drawn from contemporary life. The mermaiden remains of course, for she is _sui generis_; search nature and for her you can find no equivalent--you can't translate her into anything else. With the warrior it is entirely different; he loses spear and shield, and grows naturally into the modern General with gilded spur, scarlet coat, and cocked hat with plumes. The same sort of change, arising from the substitution of modern for ancient details, of modern equivalents for ancient facts, must go on in every song or narrative which is orally transmitted from generation to generation.