writers desiring, like Samuel Colvill in The Whigg's Supplication (1681), to throw ridicule on the Presbyterian clergy. And it is by the parodies falsely credited to him that poor Zachary is commonly remembered in Scotland to this day. Thus Colvill made Boyd deliberately put on record:

There was a man called Job

Dwelt in the land of Uz,
He had a good gift of the gob;
The same case happen us!

Another part of Job's story was declared to be :
Job's wife said to Job,

Curse God and die. O no, you wicked scold, No, not I.

Of Jacob, they put into Boyd's mouth this version : And Jacob made for his wee Josie,

A tartan coat to keep him cosie; And what for no? there was nae harm To keep the lad baith saft and warm. Boyd's manuscripts are in the library of Glasgow University. See the biographical notice prefixed to Neil's reprint of four of the poems from Zion's Flowers (1855).

Robert Baillie was born at Glasgow in 1599, and educated at the university of that city. In 1622 he received Episcopal ordination, and was shortly after presented to the parish of Kilwinning. In 1637 he refused to preach in favour of Laud's service-book, in 1638 sat in the famous General Assembly of Glasgow, in 1639 served as chaplain in the Covenanting army at Duns Law, and in 1640 was selected to go to London, with other commissioners, and draw up charges against Archbishop Laud. On his return to Scotland in 1642 he was appointed joint-professor of Divinity at Glasgow. In 1643 he was again sent to London as a delegate to the Westminster Assembly, and in 1649 was chosen by the Church to proceed to Holland and invite Charles II. to accept the Covenant and crown of Scotland. He performed his mission skilfully, and after the Restoration was made Principal of Glasgow University. A competent scholar, he corresponded (in Latin) with Voetius and other Continental scholars, and was master of thirteen languages, including Arabic and Ethiopic. His affectionate letters to Sharp showed that, even till after the 'great renunciation' had actually been accomplished, he refused to believe in the future archbishop's treachery to the Presbyterian cause. A representative of all that was best and most temperate in the Covenanting Church of his age, he died July 1662. His Letters and Journals, edited by David Laing (3 vols. Bannatyne Club, 1841-42), give a vivid picture of Scotland-political, ecclesiastical, academical, domestic-in a most confused and distracting time of feud, faction, and civil war; and his record of the Westminster Assembly and its proceedings is very valuable. He wrote in a Scotch which was very nearly provincial English, with many Scotticisms and not a few Scotch words. His first letter from London in

1640 to his wife at Kilwinning describes Strafford's first appearance before the Long Parliament:

I wrote

I know thow does now long to hear from me. to thee on Saturday was eight days from Durham. The day we went to Darntoun, where Mr Alexander Henderson and Mr Robert Blair did preach to us on Sonday At supper, on Sonday, the post with the Great Seall of England for our safe conduct, came to us, with the Eare Bristol's letter to Lowdoun, intreating us to make hate. On Monday we came, before we lighted, to Borouḥrig. twentie-fyve myles. On Tuesday we rode three sh posts, Ferribrig, Toxford, and Duncaster. There I was content to buy a bobin wastcoat. On Wednesday we came ane other good journey to Newwark on Trent, where we caused Dr Moyslie sup with us. On Thursday we came to Stamfoord; on Fryday to Huntingtown; on Saturday to Ware, where we rested the Sabbath, and heard the minister, after we were warned of the ending of the service, preach two good sermons. On Monday morning we came that tuentie myle to London before sun-ryseing; all weell, horse and men, as we could wish; diverse merchands and their servants with us, an little naigs; the way extreamlie foule and deep, the journies long and continued, sundrie of us unaccustomed with travell, we took it for God's singular goodness that all of us were so preserved; none in the companie bekl better out than I and my man, and our little noble naig From Killwinning to London I did not so much as stumble this is the fruit of your prayers. I was also a the way full of courage, and comforted with the sense of God's presence with my spirit. We were by the way great expences; their inns are all like palaces; no marve!! they extors their guests: for three mealls, course enough. we would pay, together with our horses, sixteen or seventeen pound Sterling. Some three dish of creevishes, like little partans, two and fourty shillings Sterling. Our lodgeings here were taken in the common garden: Rothes, Mr Archbald Johnstoun in one; Dumfermling, Mr Alexander Hendersoun in one; the three Barrouns in one; the three Burgesses in one; Lowdoun, whom we expect this night, in a fifth, where Mr Blair hes 2 chamber, I another, our men a third: our house mails everie week above eleven pound Sterling. The Citie is desyreous we should lodge with them; so, to-morrow I think we must flitt.

All things here goes as our heart could wish. The Lieutenant of Ireland came bot on Monday to toun late; on Tuesday rested; on Wednesday came to Parliamen: : bot ere night, he was caged. Intollerable pryde an

oppression cryes to Heaven for a vengeance. The Lower House closed their doores; the Speaker keeped the keyes till his accusation was concluded. Thereafter, Mr Pym went up, with a number at his back, to the Higher House, and, in a prettie short speech, did, in name of the Lower House, and in name of the Commons of all Ergland, accuse Thomas Earle of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, of high treasone, and required his person to be arreisted till probation might be heard. So Pym and his back were removed; the Lords began to consult on that strange and unexpected motion. The word goes in haste to the Lord Lieutenant, where he was with the King with speed he comes to the House; he call rudelie at the doore; James Maxwell, keeper of the Black-Rod, opens; his Lordship, with a proud glouming countenance, makes towards his place at the boordhead bot at once manie bids him void the House; so be

is forced in confusion to goe to doore till he was called. After consultation, being called in, he stands, bot is commanded to kneell, and, on his knees, to hear the sentence. Being on his knees, he is delyvered to the keeper of the Black-Rod, to be prisoner till he was cleared of these crymes the House of Commons did charge him with. He offered to speak, bot was commanded to be gone without a word.

In the outer roome James Maxwell required him, as prisoner, to deliver his sword; when he had gotten it, he cryes, with a loud voyce, for his man to carrie my Lord Lieutenant's sword. This done, he makes through a number of people towards his coatch, all gazeing, no man capping to him, before whom that morning the greatest of England would have stood discovered all crying, What is the matter? He said, A small matter I warrand yow! They replyed, Yes indeed, high treason is a small matter! Coming to the place where he expected his coatch, it was not there; so he behooved to returne that same way through a world of gazeing people. When at last he had found his coatch, and was entering, James Maxwell told him, Your Lordship is my prisoner, and must goe in my coatch; so he behooved to doe. For some dayes too manje went to visit him, bot since, the Parliament hes commanded his keeping to be straiter. Pursevants were dispatched to Ireland, to open all the ports, and to proclaime that all who had grievances might come over; also to fetch over Sir George Ratcliffe, who will be caused to depone manie things. The chief is, his intention with the Irish armie, and so manie as the King could make, to fall on the English lords, who are the countrie way; his cruell monopolies, whereby he sucked up, for his own use, the whole substance of Ireland. My Lord Montnoris, Sir John Clatworthie, the Chancellor, hes been chief informers. The King was much commoved; the Marqueis, by the deliverie of Pym his speech, did somewhat calme him. The Parliament of Ireland is sitting remonstrance from them, without anie knowledge of things done here, came this day to the King, which, they say, hes calmed him much, and turned his minde somewhat from the Deputie.

a

We were extreamlie welcome here. The Parliament hes granted ane hundred thousand pound Sterling, whereof we shall have near fourtie in present money, to pay our armie six weekes, without prejudice to exact what, according to our bargain, is more due to us from the four shyres. Burton, I hear, is come to toun; Bastwick and Prin are coming, as they were sent for; Lightoun hes been twyce heard, and on Fryday, is hoped, sall be absolved. Lincolne, on Saturday, did sitt in Parliament; and his petition, to have his cause discussed in Parliament, receaved. The King, in his first speech, did call us rebels; bot much murmuring being at that style, he thought good, two dayes thereafter, to make a speech to excuse that phrase, and to acknowledge us his subjects, to whom he had sent his Great Seall, and with whom he was in treatie, to settle a perfect agreement, with their consent and approbation.

On Tuysday last was here a fast: Mr Blair and I preached to our commissioners at home; for we had no

cloathes for outgoing. Manie ministers used greater freedome than ever here was heard of. Episcopacie it self beginning to be cryed down, and a Covenant cried up, and the Liturgie to be scorned. The Toun of London, and a world of men, minds to present a petition, which I have seen, for the abolition of Bishops, Deanes,

All

and all their aperteanances. It is thought good to delay it till the Parliament have pulled doun Canterburie and some prime Bishops, which they minde to doe so soon as the King hes a little digested the bitterness of his Lieutenant's censure. Hudge things are here in working: The mighty hand of God be about this great work! We hope this shall be the joyfull harvest of the teares that thir manie yeares hes been sawin in thir kingdomes. here are wearie of Bishops. This day a committee of ten noblemen, and three of the most innocent Bishops, Carlile, Salisburie, Winchester, are appointed to cognosce by what meanes our pacification was broken, and who advysed the King, when he had no money, to enter in warre without consent of his State. We hope all shall goe weell above our hopes. I hope they will not neglect me; prayer is our best help: for albeit all things goes on here above our expectation; yet how soone, if God would but wink, might the devill, and his manifold instruments here watching, turn our hopes in fear! When we are most humble, and dependant on God, whose hand alone has brought this great work to the present passe, we are then most safe. This day I have heard that Canterburie hes ane Apologie at the presse; if it be so, at once I will have more to doe.

R. BAYLIE.

London, November 18th [1640). Darnton, Derntoun, &c., are contracted forms of Darlington; creevishes is one of many former English spellings of crayfish, all derived from the old French word now spelt écrevisses; partans is Scotch for crabs; the Marqueis is the Marquis of Hamilton; Lightoun, Archbishop Leighton; and Canterburie, Archbishop Laud.

William Lithgow, born at Lanark in 1582, had already visited the Shetlands, Bohemia, Switzerland, &c., when, in 1610, he set out on foot from Paris to Palestine and Egypt. His second tramp (1614-16) led him through North Africa from Tunis to Fez, and home by way of Hungary and Poland. In his last journey (1619-21) to Spain via Ireland he was seized as a spy at Malaga and tortured. At London, Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, promised him reparation, but contented himself with promising. So Lithgow assaulted, or by another account was assaulted by, him in the king's anteroom, for which he was clapped into the Marshalsea. He died at Lanark, perhaps in 1645. He claimed to have walked more than 36,000 miles, and was as Protestant as he was greedy of money. His interesting but euphuistic Rare Adventures and Paineful Peregrinations was published in a complete form in 1632 (12th ed. 1814), incompletely in 1614. Besides he wrote The Siege of Breda (1637), Siege of Newcastle (1645), Poems (ed. by Maidment, 1863), &c. Lithgow, like the Earls of Ancrum and Stirling and Drummond of Hawthornden, belonged to the first generation of Scotsmen who wrote, or aimed to write, English rather than the contemporary form of Scotch.

Sicilian Duellists.

And now having followed the Italian saying Si meglior a star solo come mala accompaniato [sic], It is better for a man to be alone than in ill company, I traversed the kingdome to Trapundie [Trapani], seeking transportation for Africke, but could get none; and returning thence

overthwart the iland, I call to memory being lodged in the bourge of Saramutza belonging to a young baron, and being bound the way of Castello Francko, eight miles distant and appertaining to another young noble youth, I rose and marched by the breach of day, where it was my lucke, half way from either towne, to find both these beardlesse barons lying dead and new killed in the fields, and their horses standing tyed to a bush beside them; whereat being greatly moved, I approached them, and perceiving the bodies to be richly cled with silken stuffes, facily [facilely, easily] conjectured what they might be, my host having told me the former night that these two barones were at great discord about the love of a young noble woman; and so it was: for they had fought the combat for her sake, and for their own pride lay slaine here. For as fire is to gunpowder, so is ambition to the heart of man, which, if it be but touched with selfe-love, mounteth aloft and never bendeth downward till it be turned into ashes. And here it proved, for that ladies sake, that troppo amore turned to presto dolore. Upon which sight, to speake the truth, I searched both their pockets, and found their two silken purses full loaden with Spanish pistolls; whereat my heart sprung for joy; and taking five rings off their foure hands, I hid them and the two purses in the ground, half a mile beyond this place; and returning againe, leaped to one of their horses, and came galloping back to Saramutza; where, calling up my host, I told him the accident, who, when he saw the horse, gave a shout for sorrow, and running to the castle, told the lady the Baron's mother; where, in a moment, she, her children, and the whole town, runne all with me to the place; some cled, some naked, some on footte, and some on horse; where when come, grievous was it to behold their woful and sad lamentations. I, thus seeing them all mad and distracted of their wits with sorrow, left them without good night; and coming to my treasure, made speedy way to Castello Francko, where bearing them the like news, brought them all to the like distraction and flight of feet.

Ireland in 1619.

I remember I saw in Irelands North-parts two remarkable sights: The one was their manner of tillage, ploughs drawne by horse-tayls, wanting garnishing; they are only fastened with straw or wooden ropes to their bare rumps, marching all side for side, three or foure in a ranke, and as many men hanging by the ends of that untoward labour. It is as bad a husbandry, I say, as ever I found among the wildest savages alive; for the Caramins, who understand not the civil form of agriculture, yet they delve, hollow, and turn over the ground with manuall and wooden instruments: but they the Irish have thousands of both kingdomes daily labouring beside them, yet they can not learne, because they will not learne, to use garnishing, so obstinate they are in their barbarous consuetude, unless punishment and penalties were inflicted; and yet most of them are content to pay twenty shillings a yeare, before they wil change their

custome.

The other as goodly sight I saw was women travayling or toyling at home, carry their infants about their necks and laying their dugges over their shoulders, would give sucke to the babes behinde their backes, without taking them in their armes. Such kind of breasts, me thinketh, were very fit to be made money-bags for East or West

Indian merchants, being more than halfe a yard long, and as well wrought as any tanner, in the like charge, could ever mollifie such leather.

As for any other customes they have, to avoyd prolixitie I spare, onely before my pen flee over seas I would gladly shake hands with some of our churchmen there; for better are the wounds of a friend, than the sweet smile of a flatterer; for love and trueth cannot dissemble. Many dissembling impudents intrude themselves in this high calling of God, who are not truely neither worthily thereunto called; the ground here arising either from a carnall or carelesse presumption, otherwise from needy, greedy, and lacke of bodily maintenance. Such is now the corruption of time, that I know here even mechanick men admitted in the place of pastors: yea, and rude-bred souldiers, whose education was at the musket-mouth, are become there both Lybian, grave, an: unlearned church-men. Nay, besides them [un]professed, indeed professed schollers whose warbling mouthes. ingorged with spoonefuls of bruised Latine, seldome or never expressed, unless the force of quaffing spew it forth from their empty sculles; such, I say, interclude their doctrine between the thatch and the church-walls tops; and yet their smallest stipends shall amount to one, two, three, or foure hundred pounds a-year.

Whereupon you may demand mee, how spend they, or how deserve they this? I answer, Their deserts are nought, and the fruite thereof as naughtily spent ; for sermons and prayers they never have any; neither never preached any, nor can preach. And although some could, as perhaps they seeming would, they shall have no auditour (as they say) but bare walls, the plants of their parishes being the rootes of mere Irish. As concerning their cariage in spending such sacrilegious fees, the course is thus.

The alehouse is their church, the Irish priests their consorts; their auditors be, Fill and fetch more; their text Spanish sack, their prayers carrousing, their singing of psalmes the whiffing of tobacco, their last blessing aqua vita, and all their doctrine sound drunkenness. And whensoever these parties meete, their parting is Dane-like, from a Dutch pot, and the minister stil. purse-bearer, defrayeth all charges for the priest. Argaments of religion, like Podolian Polonians, they succumbe; their conference only pleading mutuall forbearance; the minister affrayed of the priests' wood-carnes, and the priests as fearfull of the minister's apprehending or denoting them; contracting thereby a Gibeonized covenant; yea, and for more submission's sake, hee will give way to the priest to mumble masse in his church, where in all his life he never made prayer nor sermon.

Loe there are some of the abuses of our late weak and stragling ecclesiasticks there, and the soule sunke sorrow of godless epicures and hypocrites. To all which, and much more, have I been an ocular testator, and so netimes a constrained consociat to their companeonry: yet not so much inforced, as desirous to know the be haviour and conversation of such mercenary Jebusites. Great God amend it, for it is a great pity to behold it; and if it continue so still, as when I saw them last, O farre better it were, that these ill-bestowed tythes, and church-wall rents, were distributed to the poore and needy, than to suffocate the swine-fed bellies of such idle and prophane parasites.

And here another general abuse I observed, that whensoever any Irish dye, the friend of the defunct (besides

other fees) paying twenty shillings to the English curate, shall get the corpse of the deceased to be buried within the church, yea often even under the pulpit-foot; and for lucre interred in God's sanctuary when dead, who, when alive, would never approach nor enter the gates of Sion, to worshipe the Lord, nor conforme themselves to true religion. Truely such, and the like abuses, and evill examples of lewd lives, have beene the greatest hinderance of that land's conversion; for such, like wolves, have been from time to time but stumbling-blocks before them; regarding more their own sensuall and licentious ends, than the glory of God, in converting of one soul unto his church.

Now as concerning the unconscionable carriage of the Hybernian clergy, ask mee, and there my reply. As many of them (for the most part) as are Protestant ministers have their wives, children, and servants invested Papists; and many of these church-men at the houre of their death, like dogges return back to their former vomit. Witness the late Viccar of Calin (belonging to the late and last Richard Earl of Desmond, who being on his deathbed, and having two hundred pounds a-year; finding him selfe to forsake both life and stipend, sent straight for a Romish priest, and received the Papall sacrament: confessing freely in my audience that he had been a Romane Catholick all his life, dissembling onely with his religion for the better maintaining of his wife and children. And being brought to his burial place, he was interred in the church, with which he had played the ruffian all his life; being openly carried at mid-day with Jesuits, priests, and friers of his own nation, and after a contemptible manner, in derision of our profession and lawes of the kingdom.

Elsewhere in his travels he has described the Caramins as a tribe of savage Lybians in the north of Africa; hence Lybian applied to the Irish clergy is uncomplimentary. And in his sojourn in Poland, he has explained what the inhabitants of the province of Podolia had suffered from their next neighbours, the heathen Tartars. Wood-carnes, wild Irish kernes.

John Barclay, author of the Argenis, was born in 1582, at Pont-à-Mousson, in Lorraine, where his father, a Scotsman, was professor of Law. Owing, it is said, to persecution on the part of the Jesuits, he came with his father to England about 1603, and either in that year or two years later he published his Euphormionis Satyricon, a politicosatirical romance, chiefly directed against the Jesuits, supplements to which were the second part (1607), the Apologia (1611), and the Icon Animorum (1614). In 1616 he left England and went to Rome, where he died, a good Catholic, in 1621. In the same year appeared his Argenis, according to Cowper 'the best romance that ever was written.' It was written in Latin, and was translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Polish, &c. There are three English versions, besides one entered at Stationers' Hall by Ben

Jonson in 1623, but never published. The first published was by Le Grys and May in 1628; the last was by Clara Reeve in 1772. It resembles the Arcadia in its romantic adventures, the Utopia in its discussion of political problems, and, a seventeenth-century roman à clef, under disguised names and circumstances reviews the events and personages of European history during the later half of the sixteenth century. The story of the loves of Polyarchus and Argenis is really a political allegory, containing clever allusions to the state of Europe, more particularly of France during the time of the League; to Queen Elizabeth, Henri IV., and Philip II. It influenced Fénelon's Télémaque, may be said to have led the way to Calprenède, Scudéry, and Madame de la Fayette, and has merited the admiration of readers as dissimilar as Richelieu, Leibnitz, and Coleridge. See Dupond, L'Argénis de Barclai (1875).

Arthur Johnston (or JONSTON, Latinised Jonstonus; c. 1587–1641), remarkable among Scotsmen, along with George Buchanan, as a writer of Latin poetry who attained to European reputation. Born at Caskieben, near Aberdeen, he studied at Aberdeen, graduated in medicine at Padua (1610), and resided for about twenty years in France. On his return to Britain he obtained the patronage of Archbishop Laud, was appointed physician to Charles I., and became rector of King's College, Aberdeen. He wrote Latin elegies and epigrams, a paraphrase of the Song of Solomon, a collection of short poems (published in 1637) entitled Musæ Aulica, and (his greatest work) a complete version of the Psalms. He also edited and contributed to the Delicia Poetarum Scotorum, Latin poems by various Scottish authors. In Hallam's opinion: "The Scots certainly wrote Latin with a good ear and considerable elegance of phrase. . . . I am inclined to think that Johnston's Psalms, all of which are in elegiac metre, do not fall short of those of Buchanan, either in elegance of style or correctness of Latinity.' Sir William Geddes is content to rank Johnston after, but close to, his great countryman. Editing a collection of the writers of Latin verse in Aberdeen, especially during the reigns of James I. and Charles I.—the period when such verse was in Scotland the normal and recognised vehicle of poetic expression'-Sir William accounts Johnston as foremost ‘of a cultured group of scholars such as no other city in Scotland, or even in the British Isles, could match at the period when they appeared.'

Principal Sir William Geddes edited a magnificent edition of the works of Johnston for the New Spalding Club (2 vols. 4to, 1892-95, in the Musa Latina Aberdonensis).

BALLAD is, in ordinary use, a term for any

narrative poem, usually in the simple measure

of which a notable example is :

Lord William was buried in St Mary's kirk,

Lady Margret in Mary's quire;

Out o' the lady's grave grew a bonny red rose,
And out o' the knight's a briar.

Such poems may be written in the most civilised ages, by the most cultivated authors-by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, or Sir Charles Hanbury Williams. But these and similar compositions are mere mimicries of what is more technically styled the ballad - the narrative Volks-lied, or popular tale in verse. Every Volks-lied, of course, or traditional poem is not a narrative ballad ; it may be a personal lyric, or a begging song (quête), as in our songs of the Hogmanay season, the ancient Rhodian swallow song, and many French examples. The word 'ballad,' then, is here used for a traditional and popular narrative poem, usually of unknown authorship.

The sources whence we derive the Scottish and English ballads may be either printed books, or broadsheets, or manuscripts, or oral tradition. Very old printed sources of certain ballads exist. 'A Gest of Robyn Hode' may be anywhere from 1492 to 1534, the year of the death of Wynkyn de Worde,' the printer. Even after the renovations of printers and reciters, 'a considerable number of Middle English forms remain,' and Professor Child conceived that 'the little epic' may have been 'put together' (out of ballads) 'as early as 1400, or before. There are no firm grounds on which to base an opinion.' Nothing is certainly known as to the date of Robin Hood himself, if he was a real character. In Piers Plowman (c. 1377) Sloth says that he knows rhymes of Robin Hood better than his paternoster. It is not, then, perhaps, too arbitrary to regard Robin Hood ballads as a popular genre, and of considerable antiquity, in the middle of the fourteenth century, though the ballads as extant are later. Printed as early as the end of the fifteenth century, ballads continued to be published and hawked about, as by Shakespeare's Autolycus, to clowns who loved ballads but even too well.' Many of these would be modern, things written on public events and prodigies by persons of the lowest literary standing. Others would be really ancient traditional ballads, of unknown date and authorship. Collections of the broadsheets were made by amateurs, as by Mr Pepys; and there were manuscript collections, such as the famous folio edited with elegance by Bishop Percy, and with accuracy by Mr Furnivall. The eighteenth century saw the collections of Allan

Ramsay, Herd, Pinkerton, and others (the editors often altering at will, except Ritson and, probably, Herd); while the nineteenth century opened with Scott's Border Minstrelsy, followed by Motherwel Buchan, Jamieson, Kinloch, and others. Foreign savants have also made vast collections in almost every European land, and to these have been added gatherings out of Asiatic and savage regions.

The authorship of the traditional ballads has been matter of controversy. The present writer's contribution on ballads to the Encyclopædia Br tannica was written in 1875, and has been criticised by Mr T. F. Henderson in Scottish Vernacular Literature (1898). Space does not afford room for a reply, nor is it necessary to specify the modifications which are here made in the older statement. We must begin by discriminating between at least three classes: (1) The historical ballads of relatively modern date, such as 'The Bonny Earl o' Moray' and 'The Queen's Marie, which cannot be earlier than the reigns of James VI. and Mary Stuart respectively. (2) Such ballads as 'The Boy and the Mantle,' 'King Arthur and King Cornwall,' and 'The Marriage of Sir Gawain.' Concerning these, Professor Child says that they are clearly not of the same rise, and not meant for the same ears, as' the ballads in his first volume. 'They would come down by professional rather than domestic tradition, through minstrels rather than knitters and weavers.' Thus Professor Child distinguishes between ballads chanted by professional minstrels and ballads chanted by the populace for the populace. As to the authorship of the ballads of professional minstrels, it was more or less literary. 'The Boy and the Mantle' implies knowledge of a romance extant in three MSS. of the thirteenth century, a piece translated into Norse prose in 1217-63. The data occur in Perceval le Gallois' of the second half of the twelfth century, and also in the Welsh Triads. These data, briefly, are magical tests of chastity; and one of them is as old as an Egyptian popular tale recounted by Herodotus (ii. 111. Such magical tests are, of course, in origin purely popular, or even savage, but the setting and circumstances of this ballad are literary, being directly derived from the early medieval Arthurian romances. From the same sources, and with adaptations from a chanson de geste of Charle magne's voyage to Jerusalem, come Sir Gawain's Marriage' and 'King Arthur and King Cornwall There are in these pieces popular data of worldwide diffusion, such as impossible feats to be performed under peril of death, but the source of the ballads, as they stand, is literary: they are based