"Says, 'Ye sall ligg i' the mirk all night.'" Now, the object in all translations of ballad-poetry being to reproduce simple and downright phrases with equal simplicity and force, to give us the same effects and not the same words, we vastly prefer Jamieson's verse to Dr. Prior's, in spite of the affectation of _ligg_ for _lie_. If _blind-house_ be the equivalent for _dark_ in the original, Dr. Prior should have told us so in a note, giving us the stronger (because simpler) English word in the text. He might as well write _hand-shoe_ for _glove_, in a translation from the German. Elsewhere Jamieson errs in preferring _groff_ to _great_, and the more that _groff_ means more properly _coarse_ than _large_. The following couplet is also from Dr. Prior's translation of this ballad:-- "They cried one evening till the sound Their mother heard beneath the ground." Jamieson has it,-- "'Twas lang i' the night, and the bairnies grat [cried], Their mither she under the mools [mould] heard that." Again, Dr. Prior gives us,-- "Her eldest daughter then she sped To fetch Child Dyring out of bed"; instead of Jamieson's-- "Till her eldest dochter syne [then] said she, 'Ye bid Child Dyring come here to me.'" And, still worse,-- "Out from their chest she stretch'd her bones And rent her way through earth and stones"; where Jamieson is not only more literal, but more forcible,-- "Wi' her banes sae stark a bowt she gae Hath riven both wall and marble gray." The original is better than either,-- "She upward heaved her mighty bones And rived both wall and gray marble-stones." Jamieson had the true instinct of a translator, though his own verses defy the stanchest reader; and, reasoning by analogy, Dr. Prior's translations are so bad that he ought to be capable of very good original poetry. However, with all its defects, Dr. Prior's book is of value for the information it gives. Under the dead ribs of his translations the reader familiar with old ballads can create a life for himself, and can form some conception of the spirit and strength of the originals.