been referred to, as describing the ghost of a dead lover revisiting the object of his earthly passion; and the ballad of Clerk Saunders, 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 1 Scott's "Border Minstrelsy," vol. iii. p. 175. 2 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 "Ye're welcome, ye're welcome, my ain gude lord, But where away are my twa sons? "O they are putten to a deeper lear, You ain twa sons will no be hame "O sorrow, sorrow, come mak my bed; "The hallow days o' Yule were come, 1 When in and cam her ain twa sons, And their hats made o' the birk.1 "It neither grew in syke nor ditch, But at the gates o' Paradise That birk grew fair eneuch. "Blow up the fire now, maidens mine, For a' my house shall feast this night, “O eat and drink, my merry men a’, 66 For my twa sons they are come hame And she has gane and made their bed, And she's happit2 them wi' her gray mantil, "Up then crew the red, red cock, Peblis to the Play, verse vi. 2 "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: The eldest to the youngest said, ''Tis time we were away. "The cock, he hadna crawed but once, When the youngest to the eldest said, "The cock doth craw, the day doth daw, Gin we be mist out o' our place, 66 6 And fare ye weel, the bonny lass That kindles my mother's fire.' The eeriest ballads, however, are probably those which penetrate the interior of the elfin world, and reveal the stratagems by which its unearthly inhabitants gratify their well-known fondness for human beings. Reference has already been made to ballads in which an elfin knight or a spirit of the waters is described as wooing a woman to destruction; and the effect of progressive civilization was illustrated in eliminating the supernatural elements of the legend. There are also some ballads relating the endeavours of female elves to wile 1 "O, cocks are crowing a merry midnight, Clerk Saunders. 2 The last four verses are taken from The Wife of Usher's Well, as being finer than the corresponding verses in The Clerk's twa Sons o Owsenford. Legends of men to their mysterious dwelling-place. both these kinds are numerous in the early literature of the Teutonic nations; and, indeed, tales of an essentially identical import are scattered throughout all Aryan mythology, possibly 'traceable to a primeval metaphor, which spoke, on the one hand, of the Day being charmed by the awful beauty of the Night away to her invisible home, and, on the other hand, of the Night or the Dawn disappearing in the embrace of the Day.1 Let us take an example of the legends in which the charmer is a mermaid. In all these the plot is essentially similar. The hero is fascinated by the glance or gesture or song of the mermaid, and dies or is lured into the water, while a shout of elfin revelry is heard, or some other sign of elfin merriment is observed, over the success of her charm. Herd has preserved an imperfect specimen in Clerk Colvill, or the Mermaid; and another, entitled The Mermaid, of more poetical merit, though of more modern appearance, was obtained by Finlay from the recitation of a lady, who informed him that it had once been popular on the Carrick coast. It is worth quoting: 'To yon fause stream, that near the sea Hides mony an elf an' plum, And rives wi' fearfu' din the stanes, A witless knicht did come. "The day shines clear,-far in he's gane Whar shells are silver bright, 1 See Cox's "Mythology of the Aryan Nations," vol. i. pp. 394-415. 2 Finlay's "Scottish Ballads," vol. ii. p. 81. |