32 Hartley Burr Alexander 



"His hawks they flie so eagerly, 

 There's no fowl dare him come nigh." 



Down there comes a fallow doe, 



As great with young as she might go. 



She lift up his bloody head, 



And kist his wounds that were so red. 



She got him up upon her back, 

 And carried him to earthen lake. 



She buried him before the prime, 



She was dead herself ere even-song time. 



I have quoted these two ballads as representing extremes, but 

 even so we see evidences of that fusion clearly marked in the 

 mass of the ballad literature. In the dramatic form of presenta- 

 tion, in the repetition and refrain, we see the Celtic spirit ; and 

 even the dominant Saxon note, of terse irony or brawny green- 

 sward vigor, is continuously surprised into delicacies of diction 

 and a buoyant tenderness for nature surely Celtic; it is as if the 

 poet's robuster purpose were startled into beauty by roguishly 

 winsome sprites of fancy only half acclimated to his mood and 

 still eyed a little askance. The character appears, in its perfect 

 fusion, as well as in any ballad I recall, in the almost pert tragedy 

 of the song called from its refrain, Fine Flowers in the Valley: 



She sat down below a thorn, 



Fine flowers in the 1' alley; 

 And there she has her sweet babe born, 



And the green leaves they grow rarely. 



" Smile na sae sweet, my bonnie babe. 

 And ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead." 



She 's ta'en out her little penknife, 

 And twinn'd the babe o' its sweet life. 



She 's howket a grave by the light o' the moon, 

 And there she 's buried her sweet babe in. 



As she was going to the church 

 She saw a sweet babe in the porch. 



374 



