Buchan, in his “Ballads of the North of Scotland,” gives the ballad of “King Malcolm and Sir Colvin,” but it is based on a story told by Gervase of Tilbury, in his Otia Imperialia, and the scene is laid by him on the Gogmagog Hills in Cambridgeshire. He wrote in the 12th century, and his story is clearly taken from a ballad. So also Buchan’s “Leesome Brand” is found in Danish and Swedish. And “The Cruel Sister” is discovered in Sweden and the Faroe Isles. At an early period there was a common body of ballad, where originated no one can say; the same themes were sung all over the North of Europe, and the same words, varied slightly, were sung from the Tweed to the Tamar, in the marches of Wales and in Ireland. The greatest possible debt of gratitude is due to the Scots for having preserved these ballads when displaced and forgotten elsewhere, and it speaks volumes for the purity of Scottish taste that it appreciated what was good and beautiful, when English taste was vitiated and followed the fashion to prefer the artificial and ornate to the simple and natural expression of poetic fancy. It has been said that about the period of James I., the fashion set in for re-writing the old ballads in the style then affected. There is a curious illustration of this accessible. A ballad still sung by the English peasants, and found in an imperfect condition in Catnach’s broadsides, is “Henry Martyn.” It is couched in true ballad metre, and runs thus-- “In merry Scotland, in merry Scotland There lived brothers three, They all did cast lots which of them should go A robbing upon the salt sea. “The lot it fell upon Henry Martyn, The youngest of the three, That he should go rob on the salt, salt sea, To maintain his brothers and he. “He had not a-sailed a long winter’s night, Nor yet a short winter’s day, Before he espied a gay merchant ship Come sailing along that way. “Oh when that she came to Henry Martyn, Oh prithee, now let me go! Oh no! oh no! but that will I not, I never that will do. “Stand off! stand off! said he, God wot, And you shall not pass by me. For I am a robber upon the salt seas, To maintain my brothers and me. “How far? how far? cries Henry Martyn, How far do you make it? says he, For I am a robber upon the salt seas, To maintain my brothers and me. “They merrily fought for three long hours, They fought for hours full three. At last a deep wound got Henry Martyn, And down by the mast fell he. “’Twas a broadside to a broadside then, And a rain and a hail of blows. But the salt, salt sea ran in, ran in; To the bottom then she goes. “Bad news! bad news for old England; Bad news has come to the town, For a rich merchant vessel is cast away, And all her brave seamen drown.