chivalrously sets out to rid the land of its ravages. On coming within sight of the monster, he challenges her to quit the land, or he will send a shaft at her head from his "arblast bow."

"O out of my stythe I winna rise,

(And it is not for the awe o' thee,) Till Kempion, the Kingis son,

Cum to the crag, and thrice kiss me.'

"He has louted him o'er the dizzy crag,
And gien the monster kisses ane;
Awa she gaed, and again she cam,

The fieryest beast that ever was seen."

Twice again she returns to announce the same condition, on which alone she will quit her place, receiving, the second time, two kisses, the third time, three; and at the three kisses the spell breaks, she is restored to her own shape:

"The loveliest ladye e'er could be!"

""O was it warwolf in the wood?

666

Or was it mermaid in the sea?

Or was it man or vile woman,

My ain true love, that mishaped thee?'

'It wasna warwolf in the wood,

Nor was it mermaid in the sea;

But it was my wicked stepmother,

And wae and weary may she be !'

"O, a heavier weird shall light her on,

Than ever fell on vile woman;

Her hair shall grow rough, and her teeth grow lang,

And on her four feet shall she

gang.

None shall take pity her upon

In Wormeswood aye shall she be won;
And relieved shall she never be,
Till St. Mungo come over the sea.'

" And sighing said that weary wight,

'I doubt that day I'll never see.'"1

More definitely eery still is the emotion excited by those ballads which refer to a return from the dead. Death is, under any circumstances, an irresistible stimulus of eery feeling, from the consciousness that it brings us to a limit of the natural world, and the irrepressible surmise, that there the beings of a preternatural world may possibly disclose themselves to mortal ken. The hope,-the belief,-is thus originated, that the soul, which has passed beyond the limits of earthly life, may yet not only take an interest in the fate of former friends, but even reveal itself to their sorrowing, longing eyes; and this belief finds expression, not only in the crude ghost stories of every region, but in numerous fictions throughout the prose and poetical literature of various countries.2 Of these the ballad poetry of Scotland furnishes not a few examples. The ballads of James Herries and Sir Roland have already

1 The concluding lines, in the measure of the metrical romances, are exceedingly interesting and valuable, since they can scarcely be explained except as a corrupted snatch of one of the romances, and, therefore, as exhibiting, in its arrested progress, the breaking down of one of those old poems of the high-born into a ballad of the people. See Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," vol. iii. p. 230.

2 The investigation of these legends has become a favourite inquiry in the Aminism of recent archæologists; and the reader will find an extraordinary collection of interesting information on the subject in Tylor's "Primitive Culture."

been referred to, as describing the ghost of a dead lover revisiting the object of his earthly passion; and the ballad of Clerk Saunders,1 which relates a similar imagination, may also be noticed here. In the two former ballads, however, the return from the dead does not form the principal theme; and the most affecting part of Clerk Saunders is the scene of the hero's assassination, while the account of the ghostly visit is marred by horrid details of the grave, confounding the dim imagination of the disembodied spirit's mysterious home with pictures of the charnel-house in which the body corrupts.

The best examples of ballads on this subject are to be found in the beautiful fragment, The Wife of Usher's Well, and in the more complete, but apparently composite poem, The Clerk's twa Sons o' Owsenford.

The former of these coincides so completely with the second part of the latter that there can be no doubt of the original identity of the two poems. The opening verses of the former, however, from their evident deficiency, afford just such an indication of the previous history of the two sons as stimulates curiosity to learn more; and it is probable that the first part of the latter is an originally independent ballad tacked on to the other, as a satisfaction to this curiosity. The independence of this ballad is further confirmed by the circumstance that it is evidently of English origin. It is a tragic

2

1 Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," vol. iii. p. 175.

1 Mr. Chambers, less probably, regards the former ballad as an imperfectly preserved fragment of the latter ("Scottish Ballads," p. 345). Professor Child and others point out, that we have a similar combination of two originally distinct ballads in Clerk Saunders.

story of two sons of an Oxford clerk, who fall in love each with a daughter of the Mayor of the parish in which they are ordained, and are sentenced to death by the Mayor for the shame which they bring upon his house. The father of the two sons, on hearing that they are "bound in prison strang," hastens to effect their pardon; and the second part of the ballad opens with a picture of their mother waiting for his return :—

"His lady sat on her castle wa',
Beholding dale and doun;

And there she saw her ain gude lord
Come walking to the toun.

"Ye're welcome, ye're welcome, my ain gude lord,
Ye're welcome hame to me;

But where away are my twa sons?
Ye suld hae brought them wi' ye.'

"O they are putten to a deeper lear,
And to a higher scule:

You ain twa sons will no be hame

Till the hallow days o' Yule.'

"O sorrow, sorrow,

come mak my

And, dule, come lay me doun;
For I will neither eat nor drink,

Nor set a fit on groun'!'

bed;

"The hallow days o' Yule were come,
And the nights were lang and mirk,1

1 "It fell about the Martinmas,

When nights are lang and mirk."

The Wife of Usher's Well.

When in and cam her ain twa sons,

And their hats made o' the birk.1

"It neither grew in syke nor ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheuch;
But at the gates o' Paradise
That birk grew fair eneuch.

"Blow up the fire now, maidens mine,
Bring water from the well;

For a' my house shall feast this night,
Since my twa sons are well.

"O eat and drink, my merry men a',
The better shall ye fare;

For my twa sons they are come hame
To me for evermair.'

"And she has gane and made their bed,
She's made it saft and fine;

And she's happit them wi' her gray mantil,
Because they were her ain.

"Up then crew the red, red cock,

And

up and crew the gray ;3

"Ane young man stert into that steid,

Als cant as ony colt,

Ane birken hat upon his heid,

With ane bow and ane bolt."

Peblis to the Play, verse vi. * "Can the English reader catch the strange tenderness and pathos of the word happed? It is one of the dearest to a Scottish ear, recalling infancy and the thousand instances of a mother's heart, and the unwearied care of a mother's hand. . . . Happed is the nursery word in Scotland, expressing the care with which the bed-clothes are laid upon the little forms, and carefully tucked in about the round sleeping cheeks."-Alexander Smith, in the Edinburgh Essays, p. 218.

3 So in Clerk Saunders:

"Then up and crew the milkwhite cock,

And up and crew the grey."