REVIEWS — ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 469 



humorous political pasquinades, like Lady Nairn's " Laird of Cock- 

 pen," and Mrs. Cockburn's clever Jacobite burlesque of Prince Char- 

 lie's manifesto, to the tune of " Clout the Cauldron." Since then, 

 however, Mr. Robert Chambers, long since distinguished among the 

 editors and collectors of Scottish songs and ballads, has commenced 

 the publication of a series of " Edinburgh Papers," the first of which, 

 under the title at the head of this article, startles us with the novel 

 theory that the romantic Scottish ballads — instead of belonging to 

 the ancient era hitherto ascribed to them, — are forgeries of a compara- 

 tively recent date, and that the authorship of the choicest and most 

 popular of them is another of our fair Scottish songsters of the eight- 

 teenth century : Lady Wardlaw, of Pitreavie, who died in 1727. The 

 theory is at once so startling, and so comprehensive in its bearings on 

 the whole question of the transmission of early popular poetry by 

 meaas of oral tradition, that we must place our critical iconoclast's 

 arguments and illustrations at some length before the reader. If his 

 line of argument is admitted, Mr. Chambers claims for this hitherto 

 unheeded poetess, not only " Hardy hiute,''' — the modernness of which 

 both in form and thought no one will dispute, — but what Coleridge 

 has designated the grand old ballad of Sir Fatriclt Spence ; and the 

 authorship of these being conceded, he next proceeds to assign to the 

 same gifted lady's pen, the favourite version of " Gil 31orrice," in 

 Percy's "Reliques," and then, in all probability, " JEdward, Edward," 

 " Gilderoy" " Youny Waters,''' and in short, all the tender and roman- 

 tic Scottish ballads of Percy's Collection, and nearly all others marked 

 by a corresponding refinement and tenderness. 



I shall lead the reader — says Mr. Chambers, — through the steps by which I 

 arrived at my present views upon the subject. 



In 1*719, there appeared, in a folio sheet, at Edinburgh, a heroic poem styled 

 Hardyknute, written in affectedly old spelling, as if it had been a contemporary 

 description of events connected with the invasion of Scotland by Haco, king of 

 [Norway, in 1263. A corrected copy was soon after presented in the Evergreen of 

 Allan Ramsay, a collection professedly of poems written before 16o6, but into 

 which we know the editor admitted a piece written by himself. Hardyhnute was 

 afterwards reprinted in Percy's Reliques, still as an ancient composition ; yet it 

 was soon after declared to be the production of a Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie, 

 who- died so lately as 1'727. Although, to modern taste, a stiff and poor composi- 

 tion, there is a nationality of feeling about it, and a touch of chivalric spirit, that 

 has maintained for it a certain degree of popularity. Sir "Walter Scott tells us it 

 was the first poem he ever learned by heart, and he believed it would be the last 

 he should forget. 



