SEPTEMBER 175 



' Now William Smail in prison is placed, 



Right-fal-ooral-ooral-ee, 

 Now William Smail in prison is placed, 



Right-fal-ooral-ee ; 

 And there he will not make a feast, 

 For bread and water will he taste, 

 For a matter o' six months at laste, 

 Right-fal-ooral-ee. 



' Now there 's a moral in this tale, 



Right-fal-ooral-ooral-ee, 

 Now there 's a moral in this tale, 



Right-fal-ooral-ee ; 

 The law agin ye will prevail, 

 And you '11 be cotched like William Smail, 

 And carried off to Bookenham jail, 



Right-fal-ooral-ee.' 



Now, I do not know how old this song may be, but it 

 has all the best traits of ballad literature. The topo- 

 graphy is as tersely set forth, the weather as scrupu- 

 lously described, the leading characters sketched in as 

 firmly, as they are in that splendid and undoubtedly 

 ancient lay, ' Jamie Telfer o' the Fair Dodhead.' De- 

 pend upon it, if this bard had lived near the Debatable 

 Land, and, instead of mere deer-stealing had for a 

 theme the Border raiding, with its dash of chivalry 

 and patriotism to gild the sordid business of it, he 

 would have been the 'darling of Sir Walter Scott and 

 Bishop Percy. He engages all our sympathies with 

 unlucky Bill, who, as the ' yoongest of them/ was pro- 

 bably least to blame ; still, one feels the propriety of 

 ceasing, as soon as he is convicted, to speak of him 

 familiarly as Bill; it is more than the exigencies of 



