REVIEWS THE BALLADS OF SCOTLAND. 301 



And so they remain, these three drowned men, till the dawn approach- 

 es, with their mother tending on them in her short-lived joy, as seem- 

 ingly her living sons returned. She wraps her mantle about them, 

 and sitting down at their bedside, at length yields to sleep, ere the red 

 cock crows, which warns them to be gone. A slight emendation on 

 the text, as adopted by Professor Aytoun from the version given in 

 " The Border Minstrelsy," seems here almost indispensable ; as it is 

 obvious from the second last stanza that — in the homely simplicity of 

 this touching ballad, — before they depart, the dead sous hang up the 

 mantle with which their mother has happed them : 



And she has made to them a bed, 



She's made it large and wide ; 

 And she's happed her mantle them about, 



Sat down at the bedside. 



Up then crew the red cock, 



And up and crew the gray ; 

 The eldest to the youngest said : 



" Tis time we were away. 



" The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, 



The channerin' worm doth chide ; 

 Gin we be miss'd out o' our place, 



A sair pain we maun bide." 



" Lie still, lie still but a little wee while, 



Lie still but if we may ; 

 Gin my mother should miss us when she wakes, 



She'll go mad ere it be day" 



O its they've ta'en up their mother's mantle, 



And they've hung it on a pin : 

 " lang may ye hing, my mother's mantle, 



Eere ye hap us again !" 



In the curious mixture of the birch gathered at the gates of Paradise, 

 the pennance dreaded in case of their absence being discovered, and 

 the grave's "channerin' worm ;" there are striking illustrations of the 

 undefined admixture of ancient superstition with the difficulty, which 

 the popular mind still experiences, of conceiving any clear realization 

 of a disembodied spirit, or of death distinct from " the wormy grave." 

 The same homely pathos and tenderness mark the second part of 

 "Clerk Saunders," a noble lover who is slain in the arms of May 

 Margaret the King's daughter, and returns "a twelvemonth and a day'* 



VOL. IV. W 



