REVIEWS — ROMANTIC SCOTTISH BALLADS. 477 



nuscripts" of Ireland, — is of a later date: 1760-1795; thougli the 

 Hardyknute vellum, " found in a rault at Dunfermline," has a susidI- 

 cious resemblance to the parchments subsequently recovered from the 

 ancient chest of St. Mary RedclifF, at Bristol. 



Mr. Chambers quotes incidentally, but -without the slightest com- 

 ment, the very important statement by Percy, whicli accompanies the 

 first hint of Lady Wardlaw's authorship of HardyJcnute, in the second 

 edition of the "Reliques:" 



" This account was transmitted from Scotland by Sir David Dal- 

 rymple (Lord Hailes), who yet was of opinion that part of the ballad 

 may be ancient, but retouched and much enlarged by the lady above 

 mentioned. Indeed, he had been informed that the late William 

 Thomson, the Scottish musician, who published the Orpheus Caledo- 

 nius, 1733, declared he had heard fragments of it repeated in his 

 infancy before Mrs. "Wardlaw's copy was heard of." 



It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that Lord Hailes 



the author of " The Annals of Scotland," as well as the first editor of 

 the famous Bannatyne MS., — is one whose opinion relative to the 

 antiquity of an ancient poem, or any part of it, ought to carry the 

 very greatest weight. Mr.' Chambers only assigns to Lady Ward- 

 law an " improving revisal of Gil MorriceP being compelled thereto 

 by the imperfect Child Maurice known to have existed in Percy's 

 folio MS., supposed to be of Queen Elizabeth's time. But is he jus- 

 tified in assigning more to the modern authoress of HardyJcnute, after 

 the clear and definite opinion to the contrary of perhaps the very 

 highest contemporary authority ; excepting in regard to the prolix 

 amount of new matter with which the original antique nucleus may have 

 been overlaid. Of the poems collected by Sir Walter Scott in his 

 " Minstrelsy of the Scottisli Border," forty-three make their appear- 

 ance for the first time in print. Two or three are of questionable 

 antiquity or genuineness ; but of the great majority no doubt has ever 

 been entertained ; though it is not questioned that, even on the lowest 

 estimate of their age, many of them must have been orally transmitted 

 through seven or eight generations. 



The greater number of the stanzas oi HardyJcnute are undoubtedly 

 spurious manufactures of the eighteenth, century ; and betray the 



* In a svibseqnent note, Percy adds information about the pretended discovery of the 

 HardyJcnute M.S., but this in no way affects the previously quoted opinion of Lord Hailes 

 relative to parts of the ballad being ancient. 

 VOL. IV. HH 



