MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORDER. 
of the present... The manners show the 
science of the antiquary, and the lively 
touch of the poet. And this, according 
to our judgment, is the very definition 
of a good modern ballad. But our rea- 
ders shall taste for themselves. 
“ °Tis night—the shade of keep and spire 
-Obscurely dance on Evan’s stream, 
Aad on the wave the warder’s fire 
Is chequering the moon-light beam. 
© Fades slow their light ; the east is grey; 
The weary warder Jeaves his tower ; 
Steeds snort; uncoupled stag-hounds hay, 
_ And merry hunters quit the bower. 
«© The draw-bridge fulls—they hurry out— 
Clatters each plank and swinging chain, 
As, dashing o’er, the jovial route 
rge the shy steed, and slack the rein. 
«¢ First of his troop, the chief rode on ; 
. His shouting merry-men throng behind ; 
The steed of princely Hamilton 
Was fleeter than the mountain wind. 
« From the thick conse the roe-bucks bound, 
The startling red-deer seuds the plain, 
For the hoarse bugle’s warrior sound 
Has rouzed their mountain haunts again, 
« Through the huge oaks of Evandale, 
Whose limbs a thousand vears have worn, 
“What sullen roar comes down the gale, 
And drowns the hunter’s pealing horn? 
«© Mightiest of all the beasts of chace, 
That roam in woody Caledon, 
Crashing the forest in his race, 
The Mountain Bull comes thundering on- 
« Bierce, on the hunters’ quiver'd band, 
He rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 
Spurns, with black hoof and horn, the sand, 
And tosses high his mane of snow. 
« Aim’d well, the chieftain’slancc has flown ; 
Struggling, in blood the savage lies ; 
His roar is sunk in hollow grean— 
Sound, merry huantsmen! sound the pryse*/” 
Could the chieftaln himself have re- 
counted his hunting feats with more 
animation? But the approach of Ha- 
milton after the deed is done, is yet more 
highly wrought—we, like our hero, are 
irresistibly hurried on by the impetuous 
current of the verse, 
“¢ But who, o’er bush, o’er stream and rock, 
. Rides headione, with resistless speed, 
Whose bloody poniard’s frantic stroke 
Drives to the leap his jaded steed ; 
_ €¢ Whose cheek is pale, whose eye- balls glare, 
___ As one, some visioned sight that saw, 
Whose hands are bloody, loose his hair ?— 
—'Tis he! ’tis he! ’us Bothwellhaugh. 
537 
«< From gory selle,t and reeling steed, 
Sprung the fierce horseman with a bound, 
And, recking from the recent deed, 
He dashed his carbine on the grqund.” 
The transition from the past to the 
present at the conclusion of the tale, 
when, 
“© For the loud bugle, pealing high, 
The blackbird whistles down the vale, 
And sunk in ivied ruins lie 
The banner'd towers of Evandale,” 
is natural and pleasing, and affords a 
most happy conclusion. 
Dr. Jamieson’s «* Water Kelpie,” a 
singular poem, the chief design of which 
was, “to give a specimen of Scottish 
writing more nearly approaching to the 
classical compositions of our ancient 
bards, than that which has been followed 
for seventy or eighty years past,” de- 
serves to be brought into comparison 
with Burns’s Halloween, which, if it 
does not equal in humour, it probably 
does in faithful delineation of vulgar 
superstitions, while it excels that poem 
in decorum, and in accurate imitation 
of ancient language. A copious glossary 
is annexed, of the necessity for which, 
as well as of the genuine descriptive 
merit of the piece, our readers slfall’ 
judge. 
“* Ouhan lads and lasses wauk the clais, 
Narby yon whinny hicht, 
The sound of me their daffin lays ; 
Thai dare na mudge for fricht. 
Now in the midst of them I scream, 
Quhan toozlin’ on the haugh ; 
Than quhihher by thaim doun the stream, 
Loud nickerin in a lauch. 
*« Sicklike’s my fun, of wark quhan run ; 
But I do meikle mair : 
Tn pool ox ford can nane be smur'd 
Gin Kelpie be nae there. 
Fow lang, I wat, I ken the spat, 
Quhair ane sall meet his deid: * 
Nor wit nor pow’r put aff the hour, 
For his wanweird decreed.” 
The volume closes with thé “ War 
Song” of the Edinburgh light dragoon 
volunteers, which we might have been 
tempted to blame as misplaced ; but the 
merit of the piece, and the spirit of the 
day, disarm our criticism. What indeed 
can Mr. Scott do better, after exhausting 
the patrimonial poetry of his ancestors, 
than seriously set about making new, 
which he has talents to render so greatly 
superior to the old? : 
7 Pryse—The note blown at the death of the game. 
’ ’ . 
+ Selle—Saddle. A word used by Spenser, and other aticient authors, 
