in suavity of diction. From this, and other examples of the same kind, of which several might be quoted, we must often expect to find the remains of Minstrel poetry, composed originally for the courts of princes and halls of nobles, disguised in the more modern and vulgar dialect in which they have been of late sung to the frequenters of the rustic ale-bench. It is unnecessary to mention more than one other remarkable and humbling instance, printed in the curious collection entitled, a Ballad Book, where we find, in the words of the ingenious Editor, a stupid ballad printed as it was sung in Annandale, founded on the well-known story of the Prince of Salerno's daughter, but with the uncouth change of Dysmal for Ghismonda, and Guiscard transformed into a greasy kitchenboy.

"To what base uses may we not return!"

Sometimes a still more material and systematic difference appears between the poems of antiquity, as they were originally composed, and as they now exist. This occurs in cases

where the longer metrical romances, which were in fashion during the middle ages, were reduced to shorter compositions, in order that they might be chanted before an inferior audience. A ballad, for example, of Thomas of Erceldoune, and his intrigues with the Queen of Faery-Land, is, or has been, long current in Teviotdale, and other parts of Scotland. Two ancient copies of a poem, or romance, on the same subject, and containing very often the same words and turns of expression, are preserved in the libraries of the Cathedral of Lincoln and Peterborough.* We are left to conjecture whether the originals of such ballads have been gradually contracted into their modern shape by the impatience of later audiences, combined with the lack of memory displayed by more modern reciters, or whether, in particular cases, some ballad-maker may have actually set himself to work to retrench the old details of the minstrels, and regularly and systematically to modernize, and, if the phrase be permit

* Volume iii. of the Minstrelsy, pp. 174, 180.

We are

ted, to balladize, a metrical romance. assured, however, that Roswal and Lilian was sung through the streets of Edinburgh two generations since; and we know that the Romance of Sir Eger, Sir Grime, and Sir Greysteil, had also its own particular chant, or tune. The stall-copies of both these romances, as they now exist, are very much abbreviated, and probably exhibit them when they were undergoing, or had nearly undergone, the process of being cut down into ballads.

Taking into consideration the various indirect channels by which the popular poetry of our ancestors has been transmitted to their posterity, it is nothing surprising that it should reach us in a mutilated and degraded state, and that it should little correspond with the ideas we are apt to form of the first productions of national genius; nay, it is more to be wondered at that we possess so many ballads of considerable merit, than that the much greater number of them which must have once existed, should have perished before our time.

Having given this brief account of ballad poetry in general, the purpose of the present prefatory remarks will be accomplished, by shortly noticing the popular poetry of Scotland, and some of the efforts which have been made to collect and illustrate it.

It is now generally admitted that the Scots and Picts, however differing otherwise, were each by descent a Celtic race; that they advanced in a course of victory somewhat farther than the present frontier between England and Scotland, and about the end of the eleventh century subdued and rendered tributary the Britons of Strathcluyd, who were also a Celtic race like themselves. Excepting, therefore, the provinces of Berwickshire and the Lothians, which were chiefly inhabited by an Anglo-Saxon population, the whole of Scotland was peopled by different tribes of the same aboriginal race,—a race passionately addicted to music, as appears from the kindred Celtic nations of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish, preserving each to this day a style and character of music peculiar to their own

country, though all three bear marks of general resemblance to each other. That of Scotland, in particular, is early noticed and extolled by ancient authors, and its remains, to which the natives are passionately attached, are still found to afford pleasure even to those who cultivate the art upon a more refined and varied system.

This skill in music did not, of course, exist without a corresponding degree of talent for a species of poetry, adapted to the habits of the country, celebrating the victories of triumphant clans, pouring forth lamentations over fallen heroes, and recording such marvellous adventures as were calculated to amuse individual families around their household fires, or the whole tribe when regaling in the hall of the chief. It happened, however, singularly enough, that while the music continued to be Celtic in its general measure, the language of Scotland, most commonly spoken, began to be that of their neighbours the English, introduced by the multitude of Saxons who thronged to the court of Malcolm Canmore and his successors;