Our present business is not with songs of a national or local interest, but with those which can hardly be said to belong to any country in particular. And, first of all, we have to go back to a certain _Camillo, detto il Bianchino cieco fiorentino_, who sang ballads at Verona in the year 1629, and who had printed for the greater diffusion of his fame a sort of rhymed advertisement containing the first few lines of some twenty songs that belonged to his repertory. Last but one of these samples stands the following: "Dov' andastu jersera, Figlioul mio ricco, savio e gentil; Dov' andastu jersera?" "When I come to look at it," adds Camillo, "this is too long; it ought to have been the first to be sung"--alluding, of course, to the song, not to the sample. Later in the same century, the ballad mentioned above had the honour of being cited before a more polite audience than that which was probably in the habit of listening to the blind Florentine. On the 24th of September 1656, Canon Lorenzo Panciatichi reminded his fellow-academicians of the Crusca of what he called "a fine observation" that had been made regarding the song: "Dov' andastu a cena figlioul mio Ricco, savio, e gentile?" The observation (continued the Canon) turned on the answer the son makes to the mother when she asks him what his sweetheart gave him for supper. "She gave me," says the son, "_un' anguilla arrosto cotta nel pentolin dell' olio_." The idea of a roasted eel cooked in an oil pipkin offended the academical sense of the fitness of things; it had therefore been proposed to say instead that the eel was hashed: "Madonna Madre, Il cuore sta male, Per un anguilla in guazzetto." Had we nothing to guide us beyond these fragments, there could be no question but that in this Italian ballad we might safely recognise one of the most spirited pieces in the whole range of popular literature--the song of Lord Ronald, otherwise Rowlande, or Randal, or "Billy, my son:" "O where hae ye been, Lord Ronald, my son? O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?" "I hae been to the wood; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain would lie down." "Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Ronald, my son? Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?" "I dined wi' my love; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain would lie down." "What gat ye to dinner, Lord Ronald, my son? What gat ye to dinner, my handsome young man?" "I gat eels boil'd in broo; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain would lie down." "And where are your bloodhounds, Lord Ronald, my son? And where are your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?" "O they swell'd and they died; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm weary wi' hunting, and fain would lie down."