oundation in history. For reasons already mentioned, such
ballads were early current upon the border. Barbour informs us, that
he thinks it unnecessary to rehearse the account of a victory, gained
in Eskdale over the English, because

--Whasa liks, thai may her
Young women, when thai will play,
Syng it among thaim ilk day.--

_The Bruce_, Book XVI.

Godscroft also, in his History of the House of Douglas, written in the
reign of James VI., alludes more than once to the ballads current upon
the border, in which the exploits of those heroes were celebrated.
Such is the passage, relating to the death of William Douglas, Lord of
Liddesdale, slain by the Earl of Douglas, his kinsman, his godson,
and his chief[61]. Similar strains of lamentation were poured by the
border poets over the tomb of the Hero of Otterbourne; and over the
unfortunate youths, who were dragged to an ignominious death, from
the very table at which they partook of the hospitality of their
sovereign. The only stanza, preserved of this last ballad, is
uncommonly animated--

Edinburgh castle, towne and toure,
God grant thou sink for sinne!
And that even for the black dinoure,
Erl Douglas gat therein.

Who will not regret, with the editor, that compositions of such
interest and antiquity should be now irrecoverable? But it is the
nature of popular poetry, as of popular applause, perpetually to shift
with the objects of the time; and it is the frail chance of recovering
some old manuscript, which can alone gratify our curiosity regarding
the earlier efforts of the border muse. Some of her later strains,
composed during the sixteenth century, have survived even to the
present day; but the recollection of them has, of late years, become
like that of "a tale which was told." In the sixteenth century, these
northern tales appear to have been popular even in London; for the
learned Mr. Ritson has obligingly pointed out to me the following
passages, respecting the noted ballad of _Dick o' the Cow_ (p. 157);
"Dick o' the Cow, that mad demi-lance northern borderer, who plaid his
prizes with the lord Jockey so bravely."--Nashe's _Have with you to
Saffren-Walden, or Gabriell Harvey's Hunt is up_.--1596, 4to. _Epistle
Dedicatorie_, _sig._ A. 2. 6. And in a list of books, printed for, and
sold by, P. Brocksby (1688), occurs "Dick-a-the-Cow, containing north
country songs[62]." Could this collection have been found, it would
probably have thrown much