and the burden and the measure, the simplicity and strength of diction, of Danny Deever are equally calculated to take a possessing hold upon the ear. These ballads are not imitations derived from study of the ancient popular ballads, but obtaining their inspiration from the same original source in strong and primitive emotion interpreted in the simplest language possible, and speaking through the ear by the chanted rather than through the eye by the printed line. It is this appeal to the ear which is the strongest characteristic of the form of the ancient ballads. They were made to be sung or chanted rather than read, and therefore they have a felicity of sound as an interpreter of meaning which is often perfect in its expression; and when imperfect, that is, when the meaning is not clear, but is only vaguely and dimly attached to the sound, as in the refrains and burdens, there is a flavor or an atmosphere of meaning which pervades it and adds to the effect. There is a touch of the plaintiveness of natural sounds which no literary art could give in the opening of The Queen of Elphan's Nourrice:-- I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low, An' a cow low down in yon fauld. Long, long will my young son greet Or his mother take him from cauld. Even when the burden is still more arbitrary, and without any direct reflection of the meaning whatever, it is never felt to be incongruous or artificial, and has a mystic and intensifying effect, as in the painful ballad of The Sheath and Knife:-- He has made a grave that was long and deep, The broom blooms bonnie, and says it is fair, And he's buried his sister, with her babe at her feet, And they 'll never gang down to the broom any mair. And even when the refrain might be called simply a meaningless chant, it makes a part of the ballad which could not be taken away without a loss of the quality which gives it a living voice, as in the chorus, which sings of itself to The Elfin Knight: My plaid awa, my plaid awa, And o'er the hills and far awa, And far awa to Norowa. My plaid shall not be blawn awa. As to these stanzas and lines, which give a perfect marriage of sound and meaning either in the interpretation of emotion or description, and in which the ear is the interpreter of the eye and the heart with a skill which no art could give, they are numberless, and of the very substance of the genius of the old ballad singers. There is nothing in the cultivated skill of trochee and spondee to equal such untaught perfections of the human voice as these:-- O, we were sisters, sisters seven; We were the fairest under heaven. (Gil Brenton.) And a lightsome bugle then heard he blowe, Over the bents sae browne. (Sir Cawline.) It was a sad and rainy night, As ever rained from town to town. (Clerk Saunders.)