"Oh, very well," said the old man, changing his tone at once. "No harm in that. No harm whatever. Misplaced intention—but—but creditable. And now," he continued, in a still lighter strain, "since you mention the _Chronicle_, Mr. Carmichael, I must tell you of a scheme I have had for some time in mind. It is a series of papers on the old ballads of Scotland—or rather the chief of them—taking one for each weekly article, giving the different versions, with historical and philological notes. What do you think of that, now? Look at the material—the finest in the world!—the elemental passions, the tragic situations that are far removed from any literary form or fashion, that go straight to the heart and the imagination. Each of them a splendid text!" he proceeded, with an ever-increasing enthusiasm. "Think of Edom o’ Gordon, and the Wife of Usher’s Well, and the Baron o’ Brackla; Annie of Lochryan, Hynde Etin, the piteous cry of ’Helen of Kirkconnell,’ and the Rose of Yarrow seeking her slain lover by bank and brae. And what could be more interesting than the collation of the various versions of those old ballads, showing how they have been altered here and there as they were said or sung, and how even important passages may have been dropped out in course of time and transmission. Look, for example, at ’Barbara Allan.’ The version in Percy’s Reliques is as bad and stupid as it can be; but it is worse than that: it is incomprehensible. Who can believe that the maiden came to the bedside of her dying lover only to flout and jeer, and that for no reason whatever? And when she sees his corpse ’With scornful eye she looked downe, Her cheek with laughter swellin’’— "Well, I say that is not true," he went on vehemently; "it never was true: it contradicts human nature; it is false, and bad, and impossible. But turn to our Scottish version! When Sir John Graeme o’ the West Countrie, lying sore sick, sends for his sweetheart, she makes no concealment of the cause of the feud that has been between them—of the wrong that is rankling at her heart: ’O dinna ye mind, young man,’ said she, ’When the red wine ye were filling, That ye made the healths gae round and round, And slighted Barbara Allan?’ And proud and indignant she turns away. There is no sham laughter here; no impossible cruelty; but a quarrel between two fond lovers that becomes suddenly tragic, when death steps in to prevent the possibility of any reconciliation. He turned his face unto the wa’, And death was with him dealing: ’Adieu, adieu, my dear friends a’, Be kind to Barbara Allan!’ Can anything be more simple, and natural, and inexpressibly sad as well? It is the story of a tragic quarrel between two true lovers: it is not the impossible and preposterous story of a giggling hoyden grinning at a corpse!"