A rush of Jacobite song, which had the great good fortune to be wedded to music not less witching than itself, followed rather than attended the Rebellion; and has become among the most precious and permanent of the nation's possessions in the sphere of poetry. Whichever side had the better in the sword-play, there can be no doubt which has won the triumph in the piping. Song and music have given the Stewart cause its revenge against fortune; and Prince Charlie, and not Cumberland, will remain for all time the hero of the cycle of song that commemorates the last romantic episode in our domestic annals. Jacobite poetry has been lyrical for the most part. But the ballad--narrative in form and dramatic in spirit--has not been neglected. In a host of singers, Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, wears the laurel crown of the Jacobite Muse, and Strathearn is the chief centre of inspiration. But the authoress of _The Auld Hoose_, and _The Land o' the Leal_, also wrote ballads of cheery and pawky, yet 'genty' humour that have caught and held the popular ear, as witness the immortal _Laird of Cockpen_. Hamilton of Bangour, who was 'out' in the '45, had struck anew the lyre of Yarrow in _Busk ye, busk ye!_ Fife could already 'cock her crest' over Elizabeth Halkett, Lady Wardlaw, a balladist whose verse, acknowledged and unacknowledged, had many genuine touches 'of the antique manner;' and Lady Anne Barnard, a granddaughter of Colin, Earl of Balcarres, whose career was one of the romances of the '15 and of the House of Lindsay, was able to tell Sir Walter Scott, so late as 1823, the story of the conception and birth of her _Auld Robin Gray_, which also, on its first anonymous appearance, was taken by some as 'a very, very ancient ballad, composed perhaps by David Rizzio.' As with so many other ballads--perhaps as with most of them--the inspiration of the words was caught from a beautiful and still older air--'an ancient Scotch melody,' says Lady Anne, 'of which I was passionately fond; Sophy Johnstone used to sing it to us at Balcarres.' The date of this, perhaps the sweetest of our modern ballads, is fixed approximately by the gifted writer 'as soon after the close of the year 1771'--perhaps the first approach that can be made to the timing a ballad's birth. Walter Scott, also, was born in the latter half of 1771. Burns was then fifteen years of age, 'beardless, young, and blate,' but already, as he wrote to the 'guidwife of Wauchope-house,' with 'The elements o' sang In formless jumble right an' wrang Wild floating in his brain.' Already the wish was 'strongly heaving the breast' of that young Ayrshire ploughman, 'That I, for poor auld Scotland's sake Some usefu' plan or beuk could make, Or sing a sang at least.'