Now, first, is not the literary beauty of the above expressions of the young huntsman calculated to excite suspicion? It may be asked, is there anything in the older Scottish poets comparable to them? Second, how like is the verse regarding the starling to one in _Gil Morrice_! Gil Morrice sat in guid green wood, He whistled and he sang; 'O what mean a' the folk coming? My mother tarries lang.' Then, as to the last verse, how like to one in _Young Waters_! Aft hae I ridden through Stirling town, In the wind both and the rain, But I ne'er rade through Stirling town Ne'er to return again. _Mary Hamilton_ describes the tragic fate of an attendant on Queen Mary, brought to the gallows for destroying her own infant. The reflections of the heroine at the last sad moment are expressed in the same rich strain of sentiment as some of the passages of other ballads already quoted, and with remarkable parallelisms in terms: 'O aften hae I dressed my queen, And put gowd in her hair; But now I've gotten for my reward The gallows tree to share. * * * 'I charge ye all, ye mariners, When ye sail ower the faem, Let neither my father nor mother get wit But that I 'm coming hame. * * * 'O little did my mother think That day she cradled me, What lands I was to travel ower, What death I was to die!' The Scottish ladies sit bewailing the loss of Sir Patrick Spence's companions, 'wi' the gowd kaims in their hair.' Sir Patrick tells his friends before starting on his voyage, 'Our ship must sail the faem;' and in the description of the consequences of his shipwreck, we find 'Mony was the feather-bed that flattered on the faem.' No old poet would use foam as an equivalent for the sea; but it was just such a phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would love to use in that sense. The first of the above verses is evidently a cast from the same mould of thought as Bradislee's mother's concluding lament, and Young Waters's last words just quoted. The resemblance is not of that kind which arises from the use of literary commonplaces or stock phrases: the expressions have that identity which betrays their common source in one mind, a mind having a great command of rich and simple pathos. In the _Gay Gos-hawk_, a gentleman commissions the bird to go on a mission to his mistress, who is secluded from him among her relations, and tell her how he dies by long waiting for her; whereupon she returns an answer by the same messenger, to the effect that she will presently meet him at Mary's Kirk for the effecting of their nuptials. The opening of the poem is just a variation of Bradislee's apostrophe to _his_ bird-messenger: 'O waly, waly, my gay gos-hawk, Gin your feathering be sheen!' 'And waly, waly, my master dear, Gin ye look pale and lean!