alled in Europe; for, although the
Scandinavian peninsula has a glorious garland of its own, and Spain and
England are both rich in traditionary story, our northern ballad poetry
is wider in its compass, and far more varied in the composition of its
material. The high and heroic war-chant, the deeds of chivalrous
emprise, the tale of unhappy love, the mystic songs of fairy-land,--all
have been handed down to us, for centuries, unmutilated and unchanged,
in a profusion which is almost marvellous, when we reflect upon the
great historic changes and revolutions which have agitated the country.
For such changes, though tending essentially towards the production of
the ballad, especially in the historical department, cannot possibly be
favourable to its preservation; and no stronger proof of the intense
nationality of the people of Scotland can be found than this--that the
songs commemorative of our earlier heroes have outlived the Reformation,
the union of the two crowns, the civil and religious wars of the
revolution, and the subsequent union of the kingdoms; and, at a
comparatively late period, were collected from the oral traditions of
the peasantry. Time had it not in its power to chill the memories which
lay warm at the nation's heart, or to efface the noble annals of its
long and eventful history. There is a spell of potency still in the
names of the Bruce and the Douglas.

By whom those ballads were written, is a question beyond solution. A
large portion of them were, we know, composed long before the Press was
in existence--some, probably, may date so far back as the reign of
Alexander the Third--and to their own intrinsic merit are they indebted
for preservation. But we are in ignorance of the authorship even of
those which are much nearer to our own immediate period. Much of the
Jacobite minstrelsy, and of the songs commemorative, of the Fifteen and
the Forty-five, is anonymous; and we cannot tell whether those ditties,
which have still the power to thrill our hearts so strangely, were
written by gentle or by simple, in the hall or by the cottage fire.
After all, it matters not. The poet of Otterbourne will be greater
without a name, than fifty modern versifiers whom it would be odious to
particularise, notwithstanding the blazon of their Christian and
patronymic prefix. Better to live for ever innominate in a song, than
to be quoted for a life-time by one's friends, as a self-marked and
immolated driveller.

"G