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Gradually, amid much trepidation, she is led ever further into the water, till "she stepped to the chin," when her mysterious charmer tells her :

"Seven King's-daughters have I drowned there
In the water o' Wearie's Well;
And I'll mak you the eight o' them,

And ring the common bell."

The narrative, with which the ballad closes, of the courage and presence of mind by which the princess. escaped from the doom intended for her, is exceedingly spirited. On her asking for "ae kiss of his comely mouth,"

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"He louted him ower his saddle bow,
To kiss her cheek and chin;

She's ta'en him in her arms twa,

And thrown him headlong in.

"Sin' seven King's-daughters ye've drowned there, In the water o' Wearie's Well,

I'll mak you bridegroom to them a',

And ring the bell mysell." "

This ballad may be taken as representing the preChristian form of the legend it relates; and the same antiquity may be ascribed to the legend as it appears in Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, otherwise entitled The Gowans sae Gay,1 the difference between the two ballads being, that, in the former, the charmer is evidently a spirit of the waters,—a kelpie or merman,2—while, in

1 Buchan's "Ballads of the North of Scotland," vol. i. p. 22.

2 A fine Danish ballad on the same subject, The Merman and Marstig's Daughter, is translated into Scotch by Jamieson in his "Popular Ballads and Songs," vol. i. p. 210. Further on will be noticed those legends,

according to which a man is allured into the waters by a mermaid.

the latter, he is a knight of the elfin world. In The Demon Lover1 we recognize a later development of the legend from a reference to a well-known feature of the vulgar mediæval devil, discovered by the unfortunate princess in the mysterious wooer.

It is not

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They hadna sailed a league, a league,

A league but barely three,

Until she espied his cloven foot,

And she wept right bitterlie."

surprising, from the treatment which the creations of heathen fancy generally received at the hands of the Church, that the legend should have undergone this transformation of an elf of heathenism into the devil of Christianity. It seems, however, as if the advance of culture had rendered incredible the action of the demon introduced into this ballad; and accordingly in James Herries2 the fatal charmer becomes

1 Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," vol. iii. p. 194.

The

2 Buchan's "Ballads of the North of Scotland," vol. i. p. 214. appearance of the ghost of a lover, whom the false fair one had "killed under trust," and who leads her to destruction much in the same way as the charmer in the above ballads, forms the subject of the imperfect but impressive ballad Sir Roland, preserved in Motherwell's "Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern," vol. i. p. 273, Amer. edit. Though Professor Child unhesitatingly pronounces this to be a modern composition, yet, even if this be the case, the author is evidently not the creator of his story, which is merely a modification of the legend we are considering. Motherwell suggests to the "". 'sanguine antiquarian" the identity of Sir Roland with the

ballad from which Shakspere quotes:

"Child Rowland to the dark tower came,

His word was still."

King Lear, Act III. Sc. 4.

But Jamieson has hit on the most probable source of this quotation, which belongs perhaps to the same cycle of ballads as those mentioned in the text ("Popular Ballads and Songs," vol. i. p. 217).

the ghost of a former lover : while, as if to laugh modern spiritualism out of countenance, even this superstition gives way, among the ballad-singers themselves; and at last in May Colvin, though there is a vanishing trace of the legendary features of its original, the supernatural character of the lover wholly disappears in the vulgar seducer and murderer of ordinary life.

What, then, has been the result of the legendary ballads in Scottish life? Undoubtedly they have contributed, with other causes, to quicken the feeling awakened in the presence of objects which, from the mystery enshrouding them, appear to be preternatural. That this feeling is peculiarly prominent in the Scottish mind will be made evident, in the sequel, from the multiform legends which it has strewn around every hill and glen and stream in Scotland, as well as from the developments of Scottish character in the national history; but a significant indication of its prominence is afforded by the fact, that the Scottish dialect contains a term whose precise use is the expression of this feeling. The import of this fact will be felt in attempting to translate the word eery by an English equivalent. The word, indeed, expresses a great variety of emotions. From the faint tremor in the presence of what is felt to be uncanny on account of its uncommonness and our consequent ignorance as to its possible operation, eeriness ranges the whole gamut of emotions excited by what is mysterious, up to the subduing dread with which the soul is smitten by the appearance of supernatural power. Let us trace some of the principal

1 Herd's "Scottish Songs," vol. i. p. 93 (Glasgow reprint, 1869).
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varieties of this feeling, as they are represented in different ballads of Scotland.

As expressive of that vague eeriness without positive fear, which forms the faintest stage of the feeling, The Wee Wee Man1 may be cited,-a ballad in which we seem to hear an indistinct echo, dying in some far-off nook among the Aryan settlements, of the primeval fancy which is repeated in the ancient Greek legends of Philytas, who had to wear lead on his shoes lest the wind should blow him away, and of Archestratus, who weighed only an obolus,2 as well as in the numerous modern versions of the German Däumling (Thumbling), our own Tom Thumb. The hero of this ballad, though his legs were "scant a shathmont's length," resembled the dwarfs of most legendary stories in the superhuman power with which he was endowed.

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He has tane up a meikle stane,

And flang 't as far as I could see;
Ein thouch I had been Wallace wicht,
I dought na lift it to my knee."

Like Tom Thumb, moreover, this mysterious little man was on terms of familiar intercourse with the fairy world. For the minstrel and he, riding on together, light at last upon a "bonny green," such as the fairies are known to choose for their revels; and there comes forth "a lady

1 First given to the world, I believe, in Herd's "Scottish Songs." 2 See Grimm's "Kinder und Hausmärchen," vol. iii. p. 71.

3 It is a curious circumstance, that Sir Walter Scott found The Wee Wee Man introduced in one version of The Young Tamlane-a ballad the legend of which, as we shall afterwards find, is of the same origin with that of Thumbling ("Border Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 334).

sheen" with four-and-twenty others in her train, all clad in "glistening green," the orthodox hue of fairy costume. On passed, with a pleasing wonder, the cheery procession, till they reached "a bonny ha," the roof of which was of "the beaten gowd," and the floor of crystal. Here burst upon the view a scene of elfin revelry; but it is well known that the fairies shrink from exposing their festivities to mortal eye, and that, whenever they become aware of mortal presence, they vanish from sight in some mysterious way. This was the result upon the advent of the mortal minstrel with his unearthly little guide.

"When we cam there, wi' wee wee knichts

Were ladies dancing, jimp and sma';
But in the twinkling of an eie

Baith green and ha war clein awa.” 1

As expressing eeriness of a similar mild form, The Elfin Knight may be adduced. Opening in a manner that recalls the ballad of Lady Isabel and the ElfKnight mentioned above, it introduces us to a knight of the fairy world, who, by some preternatural motion, is brought to a maiden's side by her mere wish.

"The Elfin Knight sits on yon hill;

He blaws his horn baith loud and shrill.

1 The dénouement in Motherwell's version is different, and connects The Wee Wee Man perhaps more definitely with the legend of Thumbling, and with that of Thomlin or Tamlane, which is to be afterwards described.

"There were pipers playing in every neuk,

And ladies dancing, jimp and sma';

And aye the owreturn o' their tune

Was, 'Our wee wee man has been lang awa !'"

Child's "English and Scottish Ballads," vol. i. pp. 129 and 277.

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