We end our folk-lore stories with these curious examples of legend and traditions. THE ROCK OF THE ILLINOIS. A BALLAD. The Illini lived in the climes of the flowers, Where the air-swimming birds in the sunshine delight, Where the summers were splendors of magical hours, And the day was a sun-torch, a star-torch the night. Oh, fair were their lives on the carpets of bloom, And loud were their fire-songs of triumph and joy, And redly their night-torches danced through the gloom At their feasts on the Rock of the blue Illinois: The gray rock that hung O’er the billows of blooms, Where the rain-plover sung In the dark under glooms, And cool, cool ran the prairie river! That Rock was the Indian’s glory and pride, The crown of the venturous chiefs, massive and strong, The prairies beneath it, and dimpling beside The bright laughing face of the river of song. But the Plumes of the Lakes all united at last, The tribes of the Illini proud to destroy, And down from the northern plains swept like a blast, And laid siege to the Rock of the blue Illinois: The gray rock that hung O’er the billows of blooms, Where the rain-plover sung In the dark under glooms, And cool, cool ran the prairie river! “Ho! Ho!” cry the chiefs of the Illini proud, To the braves of the Lakes on the prairie below, “Ye have come in the sun, ye will go in the cloud, As the hatchet-wolves run to the timber—Ho! ho!”— “Ho! Ho!” answer back the Lake Plumes, in their ire, “’Tis the North winds that wither, and waste and destroy, We have come in the blast, and will go in the fire.” Then loud laughed the Rock of the blue Illinois: The gray rock that hung O’er the billows of blooms, Where the rain-plover sung In the dark under glooms, And cool, cool ran the prairie river.