So we learn that fairy stories, very wonderful fairy stories, are still being written to-day as they were long years ago when the world was younger. Beauty, fantasy, and magic belong to us all. The love of these things calls us, as it were, with a very sweet voice, and when we hear that call--often from a book--we recognize it as the spirit of the fairy story. Sometimes the spirit of a fairy tale is caught perfectly and beautifully in {108} a poem. You will find such a poem in the collection known as _The Oxford Book of English Verse_. The name of the poem is "Kilmeny", and the name of the man who wrote it is James Hogg, or, as he is often called, The Ettrick Shepherd. He was a friend of Sir Walter Scott. "Kilmeny" has the same magic that Barrie's plays show so remarkably. Late, late in gloamin' when all was still, When the fringe was red on the westlin hill, The wood was sere, the moon i' the wane, The reek o' the cot hung over the plain, Like a little wee cloud in the world its lane; When the ingle low'd wi' an eiry leme, Late, late in the gloamin' Kilmeny came hame! You may not know what some of these words mean. Gloaming is twilight; westlin is western; reek is smoke; its lane means all by itself; ingle is the open fire-place; low'd is flamed; eiry leme is eery gleam. {109} PART IV BALLADS, LAYS AND STORIES IN VERSE {111} CHAPTER XVII PERCY'S RELIQUES--CHEVY CHASE AND THE BATTLE OF OTTERBOURNE--SIR PATRICK SPENS--THE NORTHERN MUSE A ballad is a simple tale told in simple verse. These tales in verse may be very old, or they may have been composed only a few years ago. But, generally speaking, the old ballads are best. The world seems to have lost the art of telling stories in verse as simply and naturally as people could many hundreds of years ago. The old ballads are like old fairy tales; no one knows when they were first told or sung. It seems likely that they were made, not by great people or distinguished scholars, but by simple, ordinary people, to be sung or told to other simple, ordinary people. You will remember that fables in the same way were likely told first by one neighbour to another. Ballads and fairy tales and fables, long before books or newspapers were printed, were ways in which everyday people handed down from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters, chronicles and history, learning and good advice, wise sayings, and notable happenings.