own minds of the events which they believed to be true, and the supernatural agencies of which they stood in actual awe. One can sympathise with Scott in the delight which he must have felt as he managed to draw out the fragmentary wonders of Tamlane and Thomas of Ercildoun into continuous narrative; for these are wonderful things in their wild imaginativeness, and must ever remain a testimony to the high-wrought fancies and picturesque ideas of the people among whom they lived. We are tempted to print here a less-known specimen of the Scottish supernatural ballad, called "Kemp Owain." Perhaps it may be considered to partake more of the grotesque and horrible than of the purely imaginative; but there is a sort of stern consistent flight of imagination in the whole conception, and the language and versification are together terse and powerful. It will be seen that the dialect has a strong flavour of the north; and Professor Aytoun conjectures, apparently with reason, that although it first appeared in a complete shape in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, its recovery is due to the industry of Mr Peter Buchan of Peterhead. KEMP OWAIN. "Her mother died when she was young, Her father married the worst woman, She served her with foot and hand, She threw her in owre Craigy's sea. Says, Lie you there, dove Isabel, And all my sorrows lie with thee; Thought that a savage beast was she: He hasted him to Craigy's sea, And on the savage beast look'd he, And with a swing she cam' about, 'Here is a royal belt,' she cried, Drawn shall your blood never be ; I vow my belt your death shall be!' The royal belt he brought him wi', Here is a royal ring,' she said, 'That I have found in the green sea; And while your finger it is on, Drawn shall your blood never be ; The royal ring he brought him wi', 'Here is a royal brand,' she said, 'That I have found in the green sea; And while your body it is on, But if you touch me, tail or fin, Drawn shall your blood never be ; I swear my brand your death shall be!' The royal brand he brought him wi', As fair a woman as fair could be." Perhaps all ballad poetry may be fairly divided, for practical purposes, into ballads sentimental, including those of the affections-ballads ima ginative, including those which deal in the supernatural-humorous ballads, involving sarcastic criticism on prevalent social follies-and ballads of historical narrative. The preceding remarks have, in however desultory a manner, treated of all these classes, both in Scotland and in Ireland, although very little has been said of the historical. In this department Ireland stands further apart than ever from Scotland, on account of the entirely distinct historical conditions of the two nations. As we have already remarked, the oldest productions expressing a contemporary sentiment about public events seem to go no farther back than the conclusion of the eighteenth century. But the Irish have, notwithstand 'Come to Craigy's sea, and kiss with me! ing, a historical past sufficiently an "I walked entranced cient, illustrated by quite a sufficient amount of poetical literature. To a nation whose history during recent centuries has been fraught with so much disaster, and dignified by so little glory, it is natural that a solace should be sought in the far past. There, indeed, ample room might be found for consolation. There is a very ancient authentic Irish history -a history distinct during periods when that both of England and Scotland is obscure. There is also a much vaster field spread out by fabulous annalists, in which the imagination is free to discover whatever it pleases. So, if the Ireland of any particular existing time should be disunited, idle, and famine-stricken, we have only to go back to the days of Brian Boroomh, or Nial of the Nine Hostages, or Ollamph Fodhla, or Olliol Fionn, to find an Ireland triumphant in the strength of union, rich and enterprising, and endowed with a treasury of gold and jewels which excite the wonder and envy of the world. If her degraded lawyers have to peruse the hated pages of Coke and Blackstone, there was a day when she fee'd counsel learned in the mighty laws of the Brehons. If her members of parliament have now to go up and get snubbed at St Stephens, she can look back to the distant century when the Hall of Tara received the majestic procession of her legislators, with their harpers marching before them, and an illustrious college of historians or reporters in the rear. It is necessary to have at command such inexhaustible resources in the far past before one can face the parliamentary statistics of the blue-books, by assertions so foreign to all modern experience and belief as the following : "A plenteous place is Ireland for hospit able cheer, Where the wholesome fruit is bursting from the yellow barley ear. Through a land of morn; And lustrous gardens aleft and right." Some of the bards of Young Ireland "Long, long ago, beyond the misty space race Were fleet as deers; With winds and waves they made their hiding-place, These western shepherd-seers. In their white foam, full often would inter Cromah, their day-god and their thunderer, Made morning and eclipse. her They pray'd with fire-touch'd lips. Great were their deeds, their passions and their sports. With clay and stone They piled on strath and shore those mystic forts Not yet o'erthrown. On cairn-crown'd hills they held their council-courts; While youths alone, With giant dogs, explored the elks' resorts, With all due admiration of the genius his day. The rude, fierce, rapid narrative of Blind Harry, the stirring metrical story of "the Bruce," diffused throughout the land, did for it what no mere efforts of a literary age, how ever brightly illustrated by genius, or well founded in antiquarian knowledge, could achieve. And we can now recall these productions, as well as the minor traditionary ballads which followed their track, not in wrath or envy, but in just pride and national thankfulness. As the earliest of our own ballads celebrate the heroes of the war against the Edwards, so the oldest English ballad which refers to Scotland-it may be found in the curious collection printed by the Camden Society-represents these heroes as rebels and cut-throats who have incurred the just vengeance of the king, and exults in the fate and tortures of Wallace and Sir Simon Fraser. Without saying that this is as it ought to be, it may be said that it is what might be expected; and we question if any well-thinking Scotsman will be raised to a feeling of hatred, or even of moderate dislike of his English countrymen, by its perusal. The whole of the vexed questions about early Celtic poetry stand apart from any connection with the proper ballad-poetry of Scotland. It does not go far enough back to deal with the times when there were, at least in a portion of the country, Celtic kings and a Celtic government; and it is not sufficiently modern to come down to what may be called the revival of Celtic feeling. But it embraces and preserves some curious vestiges of that period of strife when the Celt was not yet brought to the ground, and it was a question from which of its two races Scotland should be ruled. The battle of Harlaw is sung in two very curious and valuable ballads in Professor Aytoun's Collection. It was fought on the slopes of Benachie ("where Gadie rins at the back of Benachie") in the year 1411. It is usual for historians to speak of it as the suppression of the rebellion of Donald of the Isles; but in reality it was the conclusive conquest which made the Lowland dynasty of kings supreme over Scotland, and broke for ever the rival empire of the west. Thus it is no doubt true that, while repelling the English invasion on the one hand, the Scottish kings were aggrandising their own sceptre on the other; much in the same manner as the Plantagenets were doing in Wales, and attempting to do in Scotland. Homages had been performed, submissions made or enforced, from time to time; but still the vital strength of the old Highland kingdom, which had been ruled by Somerled and his descendants, was not totally extinct until that last great battle. It was entirely characteristic of those conflicts in which, whether by the Ohio or the Ganges, undisciplined mobs of barbarous warriors are conquered by the disciplined strength of a smaller number belonging to a higher stage of civilisation, and trained to a superior military discipline. The feeling with which the small body of well-appointed men-at-arms approached the vast host of mountaineers, is put with his usual historical felicity by Scott into the mouth of the page Roland Græme : "If they hae twenty thousand blades, My horse shall ride through ranks so rude, As through the muirland fern, Grow cauld for Hieland kerne." The ballads about this battle are extremely curious from their cold business-like air. The narrator of the more elaborate of the two describes himself as a traveller come within the confusion of the conflict, but obliged to go on without satisfying himself touching its cause; for "there I had not time to tarry for business in Aberdeen." He picks up a companion, who tells the whole story with calmness and precision; and we see clearly that it is not the importance of the victory as a political event, nor the extensive slaughter of the Highlanders, that is viewed as matter of moment, but the death of several persons of family and condition who were leaders in the small Lowland force. It is very like some of the affairs in India, in which there is a great victory, but it is dearly bought by the death of a few pro It is natural that the ballad poetry of Scotland should be essentially Lowland, or, as it has been usual to say, Saxon, in its character. Whatever the Celts of the Highlands had in the shape of metrical narrative, was of course as thoroughly hidden from the Lowland population as it is from most of us at the present day, when we have not the benefit of a translation. We have, however, glimpses of the Highlands and of Highland customs in the ballads, and they are curious. In looking into them, it is necessary to remember that the existing cordiality between the Highlander and the Lowlander -or, we might with more fairness say, between the Highlander and all the other inhabitants of the United Kingdom is a recent matter. It dates from the '45, when kindly Scots of all accents and opinions, from Dumfries to Inverness, thought he was cruelly entreated by Cumberland and others; and in later times -or, perhaps, it would be more distinct to say, since the publication of Waverley-the feeling has expanded over the United Kingdom. It can do no harm now to any one to remember, as an historical fact, that it was once very far otherwise, and that the mountaineer in his national, or rather in his business costume, was about as unwelcome an object in the Lennox or the southern declivities of the Braes of Angus, as an Indian in his war-paint was at the same period, when seen lurking in the vicinity of New York or Boston. The antipathy arising from distinctions of race could not, indeed, be expected to die out, so long as Donald was enabled to put in practice his inveterate propensity for killing, not his own, but other people's mutton. It was a practice in which the Lowlander had no sympathy. The Borderer, it is true, participated in it also, and was more praised than blamed in song for such participation; but there were broad distinctions separating his position from that of the northern mountaineer. In the first place, he was generally a grazier himself, with his stock of oxen and sheep, which might on occasion be harried as he harried other men's; while the Highlander thought it far better to let his Lowland neighbours go through the whole drudgery of rearing the animals which he desired, trusting to success and a moonlight night for their removal to the proper place of consumption. But there was a far more material difference than this. All the Highlander's victims were his Lowland countrymen. But on the Borders, although there were perhaps a few impartial people in the debatable land who "Drove the beeves that made their broth, From England and from Scotland both," yet the staple of the plundering fell upon the English enemy-the land of the tyrants who had endeavoured to conquer old Scotland; and thus successful marauding was elevated into a patriotic duty. Hence the feats of the Border thieves, as they are discourteously called in our later acts of Parliament, are the theme of some of the most stirring and picturesque of the descriptive ballads. There is the exulting description of the recapture out of Newcastle Jail of Jock o' the Side, of whom Maitland says— "He is weel kend, Johne of the Syde, For to break byres, It would be difficult, in any literature, to show in the same compass so rapid and effective a narrative of misfortune and success-of wrong and retribution-as the ballad of "Jamie Telfer." One Martinmas night the captain of Bowcastle is upon him,— "And whan they cam to the fair Dodhead, Right hastily they climbed the peel; They loosed the kye out, ane an' a', And ranshackled the house right weel. Now Jamie Telfer's heart was sair, The tear aye rowing in his e'e; The captain turned him round and leugh; Said- Man, there's naething in thy house, But ae auld sword without a sheath, That hardly now wad fell a mouse!'" We next follow the poor fellow through the varied results of his appeals for aid. Gibbie Elliot alone sternly refuses, and for specific rea sons: "Gae seek your succour where ye paid black mail, For, man! ye ne'er paid money to me." Auld Jock Grieve, to whose door he next brings the fray, is married to his wife's sister, and cannot but do something; so he mounts the weary wayfarer on a bonny black, and sends him forth. The next is William's Wat, whose gratitude is hearty; for he never had come by the fair Dodhead that he had found the basket bare. Cheered and strengthened by small aids, Jamie goes on to Branksome, where he makes his woes known to his chief, and then we have indeed no longer the slow movements of the desponding unfortunate, but all the stirring incidents of a Border gathering are brought before us at once :"Alack for wae!" quoth the gude auld lord, "And ever my heart is wae for thee! But fye, gar cry on Willie, my son, And see that he come to me speedilie! Gar warn the water, braid and wide, Gar warn it soon and hastily! They that winna ride for Telfer's kye, Let them never look in the face o' me! Warn Wat o' Harden, and his sons, Wi' them will Borthwick water ride; Warn Gaudilands, and Allanhaugh, And Gilmanscleugh, and Commonside. Ride by the gate at Priesthaughswire, And warn the Currors o' the Lee; As ye come down the Hermitage Slack, Warn doughty Willie o' Gorrinberry." The Scots they rade, the Scots they ran, Sae starkly and sae steadilie! And aye the owre-word o' the thrang, Was-" "Rise for Branksome readilie!" The cattle and their escort are overtaken. There is a spirited fight, with some slaughter, and the party might return with credit, but a wild gallant, Watty o' the Wudspurs, suggests the more poetic conclusion of carrying away the captain of Bewcastle's own kye along with the rescued booty; and so, "When they cam to the fair Dodhead, They were a welcome sight to see! For instead of his ain ten milk-kye, Jamie Telfer has gotten thirty and three." Such ballads as the "Outlaw Murray" and "Johnie Armstrong" are testimony of another kind to the popular estimate of the Border chief. Here we are no longer with "Jock o' the Side," "Dick o' the Cow," or the bereft owner of the fair Dodhead-all stalwart fighters and capital drivers of a foray, but most of them with scarce a follower of their own-retainers rather than leaders— who might be described in the account which Scott makes the mosstrooper give of himself in the Fair Maid of Perth; "My name is the Devil's Dick of Hellgarth, well known in Annandale for a gentle Johnstone. I follow the stout laird of Wamphray, who rides with his kinsman the redoubted laird of Johnstone, who is banded with the doughty Earl of Douglas." Above these were a sort of freebooter aristocracy, like the owners of the castles on the Rhine and Danube-men who had each a small army, and kept a court. How fine a description have we of such a predatory little court in the opening stanzas of "The Song of the Outlaw Murray,"-a ballad which we are glad to see has passed Professor Aytoun's critical ordeal, and is accepted by him as genuine. "Ettrick Forrest is a fair forrest, In it grows many a seemly tree; The hart, the hynd, the dae, the rae, And of all wild beasts great plentie. There a castle's builded of lime and stane, O gin it stands not pleasantlie: There's in the forefront of that castle fair, Twa unicorns is braw to see. There's the picture of a knight and lady bright, And the green holline aboon their bree; There an Outlaw keeps five hundred men, He keeps a royal company. His merry men's in livery clad, Of the Lincoln green is fair to see, He and his lady in purple clad; O gin they live not royallie! A still more touching testimony to |