"The Lady of the Tree" tells how a princess was stolen by the fairies, and how a knight to whom she appealed for rescue turned a deaf ear to her request and was afterward scorned by her when she returned to her rightful station. "The False Queen" is a mere fragment, but "The Avenging Childe" is both complete and vivid. Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly declares that Gibson's version of this ballad is superior to that of Lockhart. Let us compare a verse of both. Avoid that knife in battle strife, that weapon short and thin; The dragon's gore hath bath'd it o'er, seven times 'twas steeped therein; Seven times the smith hath proved its pith, it cuts a coulter through-- In France the blade was fashioned, from Spain the shaft it drew. Gibson renders this: 'Tis a right good spear with a point so sharp, the toughest plough-share might pierce. For seven times o'er it was tempered fine in the blood of a dragon fierce, And seven times o'er it was whetted keen, till it shone with a deadly glance, For its steel was wrought in the finest forge, in the realm of mighty France. My preference is for Lockhart's rendering. Gibson's first line is extraordinarily clumsy and cacophonous, and the ugly inversions in the second line could scarcely be tolerated outside the boundaries of the nursery. The remaining lines are well enough, but no improvement, I think, upon those of Lockhart, only the whole has a better swing, a livelier lilt, even if in the first line this is roughened by the crudity occasioned by the juxtaposition of so many sibilants and explosives. The Avenging Childe duly accounts for his enemy. Right soon that knife hath quenched his life--the head is sundered sheer, Then gladsome smiled the Avenging Childe, and fix'd it on his spear. Pity it is that a sense of humour seldom chimes with a sense of the romantic. An 'avenging childe' who could smile gladly when fixing the head of a foe on his spear seems more fitted for a Borstal institution than for the silken atmosphere of Courts. Yet he married the Infanta, and was knighted and honoured by the King. Possibly they found in him a kindred soul, if all we read in romance regarding kings and infantas be true. Count Arnaldos This very beautiful ballad, which is given in the Cancionero of Antwerp (1555), tells how Count Arnaldos, wandering by the seashore one morning, hears the mystic song of a sailor in a passing galley.