the hands of the peripatetic ballad-mongers who
still haunt fairs and sing in the streets, and in the memories of
multitudes of country folks who know scarce any other literature bearing
the magic trademark of Old Romance.

CHAPTER V

THE ROMANTIC BALLAD

'O they rade on, and farther on,
By the lee licht o' the moon,
Until they cam' to a wan water,
And there they lichted them doon.'

_The Douglas Tragedy._

It may look like taking a liberty with the chart of ballad poetry to
label as 'romantic' a single province of this kingdom of Old Romance. It
is probably not even the most ancient of the provinces of balladry, but
it has some claim to be regarded as the central one in fame and in
wealth--the one that yields the purest and richest ore of poetry. It is
that wherein the passion and frenzy of love is not merely an element or
a prominent motive, but is the controlling spirit and the absorbing
interest.

As has been acknowledged, it is not possible to make any hard and fast
division of the Scottish ballads by applying to them this or any other
test; and mention has already been made, on account of the mythological
or superstitious features they possess, of a number of the choicest of
these old lays that turn essentially upon the strength or the weakness,
the constancy or the inconstancy, the rapture or the sorrow of earthly
love. Love in the ballads is nearly always masterful, imperious,
exacting; nearly always its reward is death and dule, and not life and
happiness. But as it spurns all obstacles, it meets its fate
unflinchingly. No sacrifices are too great, no penance too dire, no
shame or sin too black to turn aside for an instant the rush of this
impetuous passion, which runs bare-breasted on the drawn sword.

It is not to the ballads we must go for example--precept of this or of
any kind there is none--in the _bourgeois_ and respectable virtues; of
the sober and chastened behaviour that comes of a prudent fear of
consequences, of a cold temperament and a calculating spirit. The good
or the ill done by the heroes and heroines of the Romantic Ballad is
done on the spur of the moment, on the impulse of hot blood. Whether it
be sin or sacrifice, the prompting is not that of convention, but of
Nature herself. Love and hate, though they may burn and glow like a
volcano, are not prodigal of words. It is one of the marks by which we
may distinguish the characters in the ballads