REVIEWS THE BALLADS OF SCOTLAND. 299 



Country Wager,' as altered versions of ' Fine Mowers i' tlie Valley,' 

 ' May Collean,' and ' The Broomfield Hill.' I am also inclined to 

 give England credit for ' Hugh of Lincoln,' claiming for Scotland in 

 return, an original right of property in ' The Heir of Linne.' It is 

 possible that, if thorough restitution were to be made, the exchange 

 would be on a much larger scale ; but the above instances are suffi- 

 cient to show that, independent of the pure Border ballads, a good 

 deal of popular poetry has passed from England into Scotland, and 

 vice versa, and in the process of time has become acclimated in the 

 soil of transference." 



And as our Editor thus boldly discriminates between ballads of 

 English and Scottish origin ; so also he freely excises and cancels, 

 with the view of producing a standard text of Scottish Ballad poetry, 

 divested of the patch-work borrowed from other ballads of early date, 

 and free from those modern interpolations, which, like the " new 

 piece on an old garment," only make the rent worse. But after all 

 the deteriorating influences of oral tradition, the vulgarising changes of 

 a sorry reciter adapting himself to a rude auditory, and of the artificial 

 tastes of later transcribers in displacing the racy homeliness of the 

 older minstrelsy for polished phrases suited to ears polite ; it is with 

 great justice that Professor Aytoun remarks : " The marvel is, that 

 wfe can still show so many fine ballads upon such a variety of subjects, 

 considering the many changes which have taken place in Scotland 

 since the period of their production." 



This indeed is singularly interesting on many accounts. Since the 

 oldest of these ballads were written Scotland has become one with her 

 "auld enemy of England ;" has changed from Catholic to Protestant, 

 from a transitional episcopacy, with its tulcan Bishops and Abbots, to 

 a rigid and severely minute discipline of Presbyteries and Synods ; 

 back, again to an enforced Episcopacy, with Stuart dragonnades, and a 

 death-defying fidelity to the Covenants and League, which finally se- 

 cured the restoration of Presbytery, as a fruit of the Revolution settle- 

 ment. But in spite of all these changes, popular tradition has been 

 faithful to its poetic trust ; while the genius which begat such historic 

 lays, has survived to produce under strangely altered circumstances 

 the like memorials of Union jealousies, Jacobite revolutions, and the 

 changing manners of the eighteenth century. Commenting on some 

 of the most marked characteristics of Scottish ballad-poetry. Profes- 

 sor Aytoun remarks : " A large portion of these ballads was undoubt- 



