Has it ever happened, since the harp of Orpheus drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, that ruth has taken so grim a form as that of _Edom o' Gordon_, as he turned over with his spear the body of his victim? 'O gin her breast was white; "I might have spared that bonnie face To be some man's delight."' Is there in the many pages of romance a climax so surprising, so overwhelming--a revelation that in its succinct and despairing candour goes so straight to the quick of human feeling--as that in the ballad of _Gil Morice_?-- '"I ance was as fu' o' Gil Morice As the hip is wi' the stane."' To the fountainhead of our ballad-lore the great poets and romancists, from Chaucer to Shakespeare, and from Shakespeare to Wordsworth and Swinburne, and from Gavin Douglas to Burns and Scott and Stevenson, have gone for refreshment and new inspiration, when the world was weary and tame and sunk in the thraldom of the vulgar, the formal, and the commonplace; and never without receiving their rich reward and testifying their gratitude by fresh gifts of song and story, fresh harpings on the old lyre that moved the hearts of men to tears and laughter long before they knew of printed books. The old wellspring of music and poetry is still open to all, and has lost none of the old power of thrilling and enthralling; and the present is a time when a long and deep draught from the Scottish ballads seems specially required for the healing of a sick literature. CHAPTER IV THE MYTHOLOGICAL BALLAD 'Oh see ye not that bonnie road That winds about yon fernie brae? Oh that 's the road to fair Elfland Where you and I this day maun gae.' _Thomas the Rhymer._