ALISON GROSS. After Jamieson's version taken from the recitation of Mrs. Brown. Child claims that this tale is a variety of _Beauty and the Beast. Lemman_, lover. _Gar_, make. _Toddle_, twine. _Seely Court_, Happy Court or Fairy Court. See English Dictionary for changes of meaning in _silly_. THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL. After Scott, with a stanza or two from Chambers, both versions being recovered by recitation. Although this is scarcely more than a fragment, it is well-nigh unsurpassed for genuine ballad beauty, the mere touches of narrative suggesting far deeper things than they actually relate. _Martinmas_, the eleventh of November. _Carline wife_, old peasant-woman. _Fashes_, troubles. _Birk_, birch. _Syke_, marsh. _Sheugh_, trench. _Channerin'_, fretting. _Gin_, if. _Byre_, cow-house. A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE. After Scott. This dirge belongs to the north of England and is said to have been chanted, in Yorkshire, over the dead, down to about 1624. _Lyke-Wake_, dead-watch. _Sleete_, salt, it being the old peasant custom to place a quantity of this on the breast of the dead. _Whinny-muir_, Furze-moor. A manuscript found by Ritson in the Cotton Library states: "When any dieth, certaine women sing a song to the dead bodie, recyting the journey that the partye deceased must goe; and they are of beliefe (such is their fondnesse) that once in their lives, it is good to give a pair of new shoes to a poor man, for as much as, after this life, they are to pass barefoote through a great launde, full of thornes and furzen, except by the meryte of the almes aforesaid they have redemed the forfeyte; for, at the edge of the launde, an oulde man shall meet them with the same shoes that were given by the partie when he was lyving; and, after he hath shodde them, dismisseth them to go through thick and thin, without scratch or scalle." _Brigg o' Dread_, Bridge of Dread. Descriptions of this Bridge of Dread are found in various Scottish poems, the most minute being given in the legend of _Sir Owain_. Compare the belief of the Mahometan that in his approach to the judgment-seat, he must traverse a bar of red-hot iron, stretched across a bottomless abyss, true believers being upheld by their good works, while the wicked fall headlong into the gulf. PROUD LADY MARGARET. After Aytoun. The original versions of this ballad, as given by Scott, Buchan, Dixon, and Laing, differ widely. It is known under various titles, _The Courteous Knight_, _The Jolly Hind Squire_, _The Knicht o Archerdale_, _Fair Margret_, and _Jolly Janet_. Similar ballads are rife in France, although in these it is more frequently the ghost of a dead lady who admonishes her living lover. _Wale_, choose. _Ill-washen feet_, etc., in allusion to the custom of washing and dressing the dead for burial. _Feckless_, worthless. _Pirie's chair_ remains an unsolved riddle of the ballad, editors and commentators not being as good at guessing as the ghost.