TRUE THOMAS. Mainly after Scott. This is one of the ballads written down from the recital of the "good Mrs. Brown," to whose admirable memory ballad-lovers are so deeply indebted. It is given in the Brown MS. as _Thomas Rymer and Queen of Elfland_; in the Campbell MS. as _Thomas the Rhymer_. Scott obtained his excellent version from "a lady residing not far from Ercildoune." This Thomas the Rhymer, or True Thomas, or Thomas of Ercildoune, was a veritable personage, who dwelt in the village of Ercildoune situate by "Leader's silver tide" some two miles above its junction with the Tweed. Tradition has it that his date was the thirteenth century and his full name Thomas Learmont. He was celebrated as poet and prophet, the rustics believing that his gift of soothsaying was imparted by the Fairy Queen, who kept him with her in Elfland for seven years, permitting him then to return to the upper world for a season and utter his oracles, but presently recalling him to her mysterious court. A fragmentary old poem, showing probable traces, as Jamieson suggests, of the Rhymer's own authorship, tells this famous adventure in language whose antiquated form cannot disguise its sweetness. The melancholy likelihood seems to be that True Thomas was a fibbing Thomas, after all, and invented this story of his sojourn in Elfland to gain credit for his poetical prophecies, which claim to have first proceeded from the mouth of the Fairy Queen, when "Scho broghte hym agayne to Eldone tree, Vndir nethe that grenewode spraye; In Huntlee bannkes es mery to bee, Whare fowles synges bothe nyght and daye." _Ferlie_, wonder. _Ilka tett_, each lock (of hair). _Louted_, bowed. _Harp and carp_, play and talk. _Leven_, lawn. _Stern-light_, star-light. _Dought_, could. THE ELFIN KNIGHT. After Aytoun's version framed by collation from copies given by Motherwell, Kinloch, and Buchan. These were in the main recovered by recitation, although there is a broadside copy of the ballad in the Pepysian collection at Cambridge. Fragments of the story have been handed down in tavern-songs and nursery-rhymes, and it is to be found, more or less disguised, in the literatures of many countries, European and Asiatic. It is only in our own versions, however, that the outwitted knight is a supernatural being, usually an elf, though sometimes degenerating into "the Deil." Nowhere out of canny Scotland does his ungallantry debar him from the human ranks. _Sark_, shirt. _Gin_, if. _Tyne_, prong. _Shear_, reap. _Bigg_, build. _Loof_, hollow of the hand. _But_ (candle, etc.), without (candle, etc.) LADY ISOBEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT. Mainly after Buchan's version entitled _The Water o' Wearie's Well_, although it is in another version given by Buchan, under title of _The Gowans sae Gay_, that the name of the lady is disclosed, and the elfin nature of the eccentric lover revealed. In that ballad Lady Isobel falls in love with the elf-knight on hearing him