'The marriage and the kirkin' Were baith held on ae day,' our simple balladist bids us believe that the twain lived happily ever after. The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace them to the thirteenth century _Tale of the Ash_, by Marie of France. The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Skiaen Annie' of Danish folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the bridal bed for her supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint. The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart: '"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe, Lie still as lang 's ye may; For your father rides on high horseback, And cares na for us twae."' And again, '"Gin my seven sons were seven young rats, Runnin' upon the castle wa'; And I were a grey cat mysel', Soon should I worry ane and a'."' Wide, surely, is the gulf between the Original Woman of old romance and the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doubt, is for the better; and yet is it altogether for the better? According to all modern canons, the conduct of these too-tardy bridegrooms was brutal beyond words; and as for the heroines of the Romantic Ballad, Mother Grundy, had she the handling of them, would use them worse than ever did moody brother or crafty stepmother. But the balladists and ballad characters had their own gauges of conduct. Their morals were not other or better than the morals of their age. They strained out the gnats and swallowed the camels of the law as given to Moses; perhaps if they could look into modern society and the modern novel they would charge the same against our own times and literature. If they broke, as they were too ready to do, the Sixth Commandment, or the Seventh, they made no attempt to glose the sin; they dealt not in innuendo or _double entendre_. Beside the page of modern realism, the ballad page is clean and wholesome. Human passion unrestrained there may be; but no sickly or vicious sentiment. There is a punctilious sense of honour; and if it is sometimes the letter rather than the spirit of vow or promise that is kept, the knights and ladies in the ballads are no worse than are the Pharisees of our day; and they are always ready to pay, and generally do pay, the utmost penalty.