WITH THE WOODLANDERS. 15 



for the benefit of their fellow-creatures did benefit 

 them, there might be something to be said in their 

 favour; but their only object seems to be that of 

 benefiting themselves. New-comers and their fads, 

 many of them mischievous and very inconvenient 

 ones, are not in touch with the people, and they 

 never will be. 



Some of the folk-lore and the innocent devices 

 employed by the lasses at certain times are harm- 

 less enough in all ways. Not one of the girls 

 would plead guilty to the slightest suspicion of 

 romance in their composition, indeed the word is 

 only used by them to denote all that is wild and 

 extravagant, and yet, unconsciously to themselves, 

 they are full of it. Their surroundings foster it. 

 Some of the songs we have listened to for the 

 lasses can sing, or could all told of love and 

 happy marriage, or of disappointed affections and 

 early graves. Very often, still, I find myself break- 

 ing out into a stave of a good honest greenwood 

 song. 



But there is a darker side to what I am writing 

 about, for forest blood runs hotly, as it has ever 

 done. One spot that I know well a deep sullen 



