304 REVIEWS — THE BALLADS OF SCOTLAND. 



dantlj consorted witli the feudal relations whlcli had constituted the 

 social bond throughout Europe for some five centuries, but ware- 

 then beginning to give place to the germs of modern rule and- 

 subjection. "When all hope of mercy was passed, tradition repre- 

 sents the Borderer to have said proudly to the King,, nearly in the 

 words of the ballad : — 



" To seek hot water beneath cauld ice^ 

 I trow it is a great follie ; 

 I have asked grace at a graceless face, 

 But there is nane for my men and me r 



"But bad I kenn'd, or I cam fra hame, 

 How thou unkind wad'st been to me, 

 1 would have kept the Border side. 

 In spite of all thy peers and thee. 



Thus varied are the themes and modes of treatment of the ballad^s^ 

 of Scotland, some of which have been the delight of fully fifteen 

 generations, and still retain an undiminished hold on the national 

 sympathies. 



Whether ballad-editors will ever be agreed as to a precise ver- 

 sion of our old favourites may admit of question ; but it is Gertain 

 that in this collection we have a carefully collected series of nearly 

 all that are worth preserving, brought together, after the most cau- 

 tious and discriminating rerision of each, by an editor who combiner 

 the jealous acumen of the critic, the taste of the national poet, and 

 the loving veneration of the antiquary. No better qualifications could 

 be brought to the task, and the results fully accredit their diligent 

 application. 



To show how great a latitude the compass of editorial diseretiois 

 can command, we shall refer to some of the changes that popular bal- 

 lads have undergone in the new editor's hands. In Professor Ay- 

 toun's version of " Clerk Saunders," for example, we have eight stan- 

 zas omitted, which appear in Sir Walter's edition of it, while in Heu 

 of these eleven others are introduced, derived from versions of Kin- 

 loch and Buchan ; and the whole is, for the first time, divided into 

 two parts. So again, in "The Wife of Usher's Well," considerable 

 changes and additions occur, derived and modified from stanzas recov- 

 ered by Mr. Eobert Chambers : while it is divorced from an alliance 

 which the latter had sanctioned between it and " The Clerks of Ow- 

 senford," and this Sugam is relieved of sundry stanzas which its new 



