‘Busk and boon, my merry men a’, For ill dooms I do guess; I cannot look on that bonnie face As it lies on the grass.’ ‘Wha looks to freits, my master dear, Its freits will follow them; Let it ne’er be said that Edom o’ Gordon Was daunted by a dame....’” I cannot help wondering whether the great work done in the last century and a half towards the recovery of old ballads in their integrity will have any effect beyond the entertainment of a few scientific men and lovers of what is ancient, now that the first effects upon Wordsworth and his contemporaries have died away. Can it possibly give a vigorous impulse to a new school of poetry that shall treat the life of our time and what in past times has most meaning for us as freshly as those ballads did the life of their time? It is possible; and it is surely impossible that such examples of simple, realistic narrative shall be quite in vain. Certainly the more they are read the more they will be respected, and not only because they often deal with heroic matters heroically, but because their style is commonly so beautiful, their pathos so natural, their observation of life so fresh, so fond of particular detail--its very lists of names being at times real poetry. Sometimes the style is equal and like to that of the most accomplished poetry, as in the stanza-- “The Ynglyshe men let ther boys (bows) be, And pulde owt brandes that were brighte; It was a hevy syght to se Bryght swordes on basnites lyght.” Or in-- “God send the land deliverance Frae every reaving, riding Scot! We’ll sune hae neither cow nor ewe, We’ll sune hae neither staig nor stot.” It is equally good in passages where the poet simply expresses his hearty delight in something which his own eyes have seen among his neighbours, as in-- “He had horse and harness for them all, Goodly steeds were all milke-white: O the golden bands an about their necks, And their weapons, they were all alike....” And, by the way, do not touches like these often reveal the stamp of individuals upon pieces which are loosely said to have been “composed by the folk”? They quite do away with the notion that ballads were composed by a number of people, after the fashion of a story in the game of “Consequences.” In fact, it is one of the pleasures of reading ballads to watch for those things which show us the heart of one man who stands out by himself. Such a one was the man who said-- “I dreamt I pu’d the heather green Wi’ my true love on Yarrow.” And who was that unhappy one who served a king for seven years and only once saw the king’s daughter, and that was through a gimlet-hole? Two were putting on her gown, two putting on her shoes, five were combing down her hair-- “Her neck and breast was like the snow-- Then from the bore I was forced to go.”