But I question if folk-poetry ever captured a lilt more exquisite than that of the first four lines of "The Gardener" or a sharper note of anguish than that of the last quatrain. [53] To me at least Old Scots must always remain the language of the ballad par excellence, by virtue of the subtlety, the finely wrought and divinely coloured wealth of expressive idiom which bursts from its treasure-chest in a profusion of begemmed and enamelled richness, more various, more magical than any Spanish gold. Much of this Lockhart filched to give his Castilian bullion a replating. But in places he falls back most wretchedly upon the poetical trickeries of his day, falls to the level of Rogers and Southey, to the miserable devices and tinsel beggary of those bravely bound annuals beloved by the dames and damsels of the day before yesterday. In places, however, he outballads the ballad in pure gaucherie. These words she spake, then down she knelt, and took the bowman's blow, Her tender neck was cut in twain, and out her blood did flow. The next, and not the last of the series, as Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly has it, is obviously the handiwork of Walter Scott, than whom none could fail more miserably on occasion. We can picture him doling "The Death of Don Pedro" from out the great thesaurus of his brain (that sadly drained mint, ever at the service of a friend or a publisher), as a dinted and defaced coin. Only in the last verse does the old fire blaze up. Thus with mortal gasp and quiver, While the blood in bubbles well'd, Fled the fiercest soul that ever In a Christian bosom dwell'd. On such a subject the composer of "Bonnie Dundee" might well have felt the blood run faster, and the pen quiver in his fingers like an arrow on a tightened bow-string. Two royal brothers strive with hateful poniards for each other's lives. Pedro, a prisoner in the hands of Henry of Trastamara, his natural brother, is wantonly insulted by the victorious noble, and replies by flying at his throat in an outburst of animal courage and kingly rage. Dumbfounded at the death-struggle of monarch and usurper, Henry's allies look on, among them the great Du Guesclin. Pedro pins the lord of Trastamara to the ground. His dagger flashes upward. Du Guesclin turns to Henry's squire. "Will ye let your lord die thus, you who eat his bread?" he scoffs. The esquire throws himself upon Pedro, clings to his arms and turns him over, and, thus aided, Henry rises, searches for a joint in the King's armour, and thrusts his dagger deep into that merciless heart. The murderer, the friend of Jew and Saracen, is slain. His head is hacked off, and his proud body trampled beneath mailed feet. Surely a subject for a picture painted in the lights of armour and the red shadows of blood and hate.