unknown, are to be found in the Magyar ballads, connecting them with the common stock. In the specimens which follow, the ballad of Poisoned Janos is almost exactly similar in construction and refrain to the Scotch ballad of Lord Randal:-- "O, where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son, O, where hae ye been, my handsome young man?" "I hae been to the wild-wood; mother, make my bed soon, For I'm wearie wi hunting, and fain wald lie down!"-- with the substitution of the "crab with four feet" for the "eels boiled in broo"--the conventional poisoned dish. The same ballad in substance and form of expression, with the same devising of property to friends and the same bestowal of a curse upon the murderess, is to be found in Danish, German, Dutch, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, and other European folk-poetry, and may yet be discovered in Africa and the South Seas. The circumstance of the infant speaking from the cradle, giving warning of the faithlessness of his mother in Barcsai is common in the folk-ballads of many nations, and the incident of a bird's singing ill-news, the request of a dead man for a peculiar kind of coffin and a favorite burial place, and the growing together of flowers from the graves of a loving couple, are almost universal features in popular poetry; and the rejection of the body of a murdered man by a stream is also familiar. The griefs and sorrows over mortality, the laments of disappointed love, the woes of lonely old age, the remorse for sin, and the fierce passions of jealousy and revenge are common to human nature, and are interpreted in the same language the world over, whether in civilization or barbarism. In regard to the versions which follow, it is needless to state the difficulty of transferring the original vividness of expression, or preserving the effect of the repetitions and other peculiarities of primitive poetry in the conventional fetters of modern verse and rhyme. The first ballad, Barcsai, is given in a literal translation in order that these forms and turns of expression may be appreciated. The others have been rendered as literally and with as much of the original flavor as possible, but with a consciousness that much of the latter has inevitably evaporated. As says M. Jean de Nathy, to whose literal translations into French, Ballades et Chansons Populaires de la Hongrie, I am indebted for my knowledge of Magyar folkpoetry: "For the greater part without rhymes, they abound in repetition of words and parts of phrases, in alliterations and parallelism, called by the poet Arany 'rhymes of thought' which are difficult to render in modern forms of verse." BARCSAI. "Go, my master, go to Kolozvar, To Kolozvar, to the mansion of my father, And bring me, bring me the great piece of linen, The great piece of linen, of linen fine that I have had as a present." "Do not go, my father, do not go, do not quit your mansion,