imperfect traditions often required remodelling and renovation, a process of great delicacy and difficulty. It demanded original imaginative power, combined with a modest subordination to the tone of the ancient song. This was an admirable school for the training of such talent as Scott was gifted with. It even encouraged a bolder and more vivid strain of composition than he would have ventured on in his early avowedly original writings; for, assuming the position of the ancient minstrel, he spoke with an ancient freedom and fervour. Many of the ballads were completed by him where lines or stanzas were wanting, but the skill with which Scott adopted the style and spirit of an earlier age is especially shown in one which may be considered almost entirely as a modern imitation from his pen, for he speaks of it as not being of unmixed antiquity, but written from the remnant of a few stanzas current upon the border in a corrupted state. The exploit which forms the subject of it has been told also in Scott's agreeable prose. In the reign of Charles I., when the moss-trooping practices were not entirely discontinued, a borderer called Christie's Will was taken on some marauding party and imprisoned in the Tolbooth of Jedburgh. The Earl of Traquair, hearing of it, inquired the cause of his confinement; to which Will replied he was imprisoned for stealing two tethers. On being more closely questioned, he acknowledged an omission in his first confession,—the fact of there having been a delicate colt at the end of each tether. The joke amused the earl and gained the prisoner's release. Some time after, a lawsuit came on in which it was known that the opinion of the presiding judge was unfavourable to Lord Traquair's interests.

The point to be gained, therefore, was to keep the judge out of the way; and the earl had recourse to Christie's Will, who at once offered his services to kidnap Lord Durie, the obnoxious justiciary. This was accomplished by Will's suddenly seizing the judge from his horse while riding on the sands of Leith, muffling him in a large cloak, and then escaping into a secluded quarter, where he deposited his weary and terrified burden in an old castle in Annandale. During his confinement in the vault of the castle the only sounds he heard were a shepherd calling his dog and an old woman talking to her cat,-sounds he mistook for the invocations of spirits. The judge's horse being found, it was concluded the rider had been thrown into the sea; his friends went into mourning, and a successor was appointed on the bench. Lord Traquair gained his lawsuit, and Christie's Will was ordered to set the judge at liberty. This was effected in a manner equally mysterious, so that the judge and his friends were fully persuaded that he had been spirited away by witchcraft. Scott, taking these facts and the very imperfect fragments of the lost ballad, has given one of the most successful of the modern imitations

1

"Traquair has ridden up Chapelhope,

And sae has he down by the Grey Mare's Tail,
He never stinted the light gallop

Until he speered for Christie's Will.

"Now Christie's Will peeped frae the tower,
And out at the shot-hole keeked he;
'And ever unlucky,' quo' he, 'is the hour

That the warden comes to speer for me!'

"Good Christie's Will, now have nae fear!

Nae harm, good Will, shall hap to thee;
I saved thy life at the Jeddart air,

At the Jeddart air frae the justice tree.

"Bethink how ye sware, by the salt and the bread,
By the lightning, the wind, and the rain,
That, if ever of Christie's Will I had need,
He would pay me my service again.'

"Gramercy, my lord,' quo' Christie's Will,

'Gramercy, my lord, for your grace to me!
When I turn my cheek and claw my neck
I think of Traquair and the Jeddart tree.'

"And he has opened the fair tower-gate

To Traquair and a' his companie;

The spule o' the deer on the board he has set,
The fattest that ran on the Hutton Lee.

"Now, wherefore sit ye sad, my lord?
And wherefore sit ye mournfullie?
And why eat ye not of the venison I shot
At the dead of night on Hutton Lee ?'

"O weel may I stint of feast and sport,
And in my mind be vexéd sair ;
A vote of the cankered Session Court

Of land and living will make me bare.

“But if auld Durie to heaven were flown,

Or if auld Durie to hell were gane,

Or

if he could be but ten days stoun,

My bonny braid lands would still be my ain.'

"O, mony a time, my lord,' he said,

'I've stown the horse frae the sleeping loon;

But for you I'll steal a beast as braid,

For I'll steal Lord Durie frae Edinburgh town.

"O, mony a time, my lord,' he said,

'I've stown a kiss frae a sleeping wench; But for you I'll do as kittle a deed,

For I'll steal an auld lurdane aff the bench.'

"And Christie's Will is to Edinburgh gane;

At the Borough Muir then entered he;
And, as he passed the gallow-stane,

He crossed his brow and he bent his knee.

"He lighted at Lord Durie's door,

And there he knocked most manfullie; And up and spake Lord Durie sae stour, 'What tidings, thou stalward groom, to me?'

"The fairest lady in Teviotdale

Has sent, maist reverent sir, for thee;
She pleas at the session for her land, a'haill,
And fain she wad plead her cause to thee.'

"But how can I to that lady ride

With saving of my dignitie ?'
O, a curch and mantle ye may wear,
And in my cloak ye sall muffled be.'

"Wi' curch on head and cloak ower face,

He mounted the judge on a palfrey fyne;
He rode away, a right round pace,

And Christie's Will held the bridle-reyn.

"The Lothian edge they were not o'er,

When they heard bugles bauldly ring,

And, hunting over Middleton Moor,

They met, I ween, our noble king.

"When Willie looked upon our king,
I wot, a frighted man was he!
But ever auld Durie was startled mair,
For tyning of his dignitie.

:

"The king he crossed himself, I wis,
When as the pair came riding bye
An uglier crone and a sturdier loon,
I think, were never seen with eye.

"Willie has hied to the tower of Greame,
He took auld Durie on his back;
He shot him down to the dungeon deep,

Which garred his auld banes gie mony a crack.

"For nineteen days and nineteen nights,

Of sun, or moon, or midnight stern,

Auld Durie never saw a blink,

The lodging was sae dark and dern.

"He thought the warlocks o' the rosy cross
Had fanged him in their nets sae fast;
Or that the gypsies' glamoured gang
Had lair'd his learning at the last.

"Hey! Batty lad! far yaud! far yaud!' These were the morning sounds heard he;

And ever 'Alack!' auld Durie cried;

'The deil is hounding his tykes on me!'

"And whiles a voice on Baudrons cried, With sounds uncouth and sharp and hie 'I have tar-barrelled mony a witch,

But now,

I think, they'll clear scores wi' me!'

"The king has caused a bill be wrote,
And he has set it on the Tron:

'He that will bring Lord Durie back
Shall have five hundred merks and one.'

"Traquair has written a privie letter,
And he has sealed it wi' his seal :-
'Ye may let the auld brock out o' the poke;
The land's my ain, and a's gane weel.'