178 THE Scoto-NORSE PERIOD IN DUMFRIESSHIRE. 
literature is the ballad. That reaches its climax in the group of 
ballads associated with Yarrow-—the most remarkable group in 
Scottish ballad literature. Now, in the ballad of the Borders you 
have action, daring. It has all the Norse qualities of love of 
adventure. Dr Nansen has singled out as the two characteristics 
of Norwegians-—love of adventure and love of independence. 
The ballads of the South, curiously enough, as has been shown by 
Professor Veitch, can be nearly all paralleled with Norse folk 
songs. Inthe ballads of Yarrow you have the steady tendency to 
the place of the duel or the conflict. | There has arisen a curious 
dispute as to who was the far-off unknown singer whose strains 
first gave the keynote to the music that was to be for ever asso- 
ciated with 
‘ ‘‘The dowie holms of Yarrow.”’ 
Now, the “holm ’”’ in Norse history has a peculiar association. 
The holm was at first an island, and the “ holm-gang ’’ was a duel 
fought on an island. In some cases the combatants were actually 
tied together, with knives in their hands to fight with, and the last 
man of “win out.’’? Such were the rude beginnings of trial by 
combat. The idea of having these combats at first on an island 
was to prevent interference with the combatants. By-and-bye it 
became customary to have them beside meadows or rivers with 
enclosures—the lists—so that onlookers could not get in and the 
combatants could not get out. It does seem that there is a pro- 
bability that this mysterious singer might very easily have been a 
skald celebrating some far-off “holm-gang’’ or duel, and thus 
giving the earliest tragic association to “the dowie holms_ of 
Yarrow.’’ The association of the sister vale of Ettrick with a 
modern bard is historic enough, as Professor Veitch has pointed 
out, even in his name a well-defined Scandinavian title. The 
physical aspect of the Scandinavian is that of a tall, fair-haired, 
blue-eyed figure—a type that is to be found all over the south of 
Scotland, so much so, that a Norse writer has said that in travel- 
ling in the north of England and Dumfriesshire you meet, at 
almost every town, men who might pass as Scandinavians. In 
Hogg you have many of the characteristics which, for those who 
take kindly to theories of re-incarnation, might form a possible 
case for the incarnation of a Norse skald. The mysterious 
Teribus and teri-odin—-chorus of the Hawick Common Riding 
festival—is a tempting theme in this connection, but we refrain. 
Bees 
