Thus, like Antaeus, poetry sprang up again, fresh and strong, at the touch of its native earth; 'although declining in castles, it still thrilled with youth along the hedges and copses, in the woods and on the moors'; banished from court, it found refuge in the wilderness and sang at poor men's hearths and at rural fairs, where the King himself, if we may believe tradition, went out in romantic quest of it and of adventure, clad as a _gaberlunzie man_. In the _Complaynt of Scotland_, published in 1549, we have an enticing picture of the extent to which ballad lore and ballad music entered into the lives of the country people on the eve of the Reformation troubles. At the gatherings of the shepherds, old tales would be told, with or without stringed accompaniment--of _Gil Quheskher_ and _Sir Walter, the Bauld Leslye_, pieces now probably lost to us irrecoverably; of the familiar _Tayl of Yong Tamlane_; of _Robene Hude_ and _Litel Ihone_, whose fame, like that of the prophecies of Thomas of Ercildoune, had already been firmly established for a couple of centuries; of the _Red Etin_, whose place in folklore is well ascertained; and of the _Tayl of the Thre Vierd Systirs_, in which one can snuff the ingredients of the caldron in _Macbeth_. There were dances, founded on the same themes--_Robin Hood_, _Thom of Lyn_, and _Johnie Ermstrang_; and between whiles the women sang 'sueit melodious sangis of natural music of the antiquite, such as _The Hunting of Cheviot_ and _The Red Harlaw_.' But of all this feast which he spreads in our sight, our author only lets us taste a morsel--a couple of lines taken apparently from a lost ballad on the fate of the Chevalier de la Beaute, rubbed down by the rough Scottish tongue to 'Bawty,' at Billie Mire in 1517.