Gae warn the water broad and wide, Gae warn it sune and hastilie; He that winna ride for Telfer's Kyle Let him neer look in the face o' me. and the difference in the spirit is reflected in the quality of the verse, the one dull and commonplace, suited to an audience of heavy-faced rustics in an alehouse, and the other full of fire and vigor, fit to be chanted in the dining hall of a Border chief. It is impossible to analyze ethnologically the causes of the great superiority of the Scottish popular poetry, or to define how much of the elevation of feeling and appreciation of the magic of nature came from the greater admixture of the Celtic element, which in its turn was given force and vigor, directness of expression and coherence of construction by the stronger nature of the invading element, which, for the want of a more definite term, is called Saxon. The effect of these influences is merely conjectural, as is also that of the country itself, its natural scenery, the disturbed life of the people, and the ferment of the popular mind. It can only be said that there was something in the national genius of the Lowland Scotch different from that of their more stolid neighbors at the south and their more mystical neighbors at the north, and which fitted them for the production of popular poetry in song and ballad at once elevated and impassioned, and which has resulted in a quantity and quality which no other province of the world has rivaled. It is known over the world, and has been translated into almost every literary language of Europe. To the English reader it is only necessary to give the titles to recall the verses that cling to the memory, and express the deepest glow of passion and pathos in words whose magic melody is beyond the reach of art, and which are winged with a force above the powers of uninspired speech. The Border Widow tells how she buried her slain husband:-- I took his body on my back, And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat, I digged a grave and laid him in, And happd him with sod sae green. Lord Randal comes home to his mother from his false love's poisoned banquet:-- O, where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son, O, where hae ye been, my handsome young man; I have been to the greenwood; mither, mak my bed soon, For I'm wearie wi hunting and fain wald lie down." The lady of the House of Airlie cries out from the burning reek to the cruel Edom o' Gordon:-- "Were my good lord but here this day, As he's awa wi Charlie; The dearest blood o' a' thy men Wad sloken the lowe o' Airlie." Johnnie Armstrong gives his last "Good Night" in defiance:-- O, how John looked over his left shoulder, And to his merry men thus spoke he; "I have asked grace of a graceless face, No pardon here for you and me." Mary Hamilton cries from the gallows-tree in a burst of anguish:--