es, until a happy
chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither
from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint.
The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart:

'"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe,
Lie still as lang 's ye may;
For your father rides on high horseback,
And cares na for us twae."'

And again,

'"Gin my seven sons were seven young rats,
Runnin' upon the castle wa';
And I were a grey cat mysel',
Soon should I worry ane and a'."'

Wide, surely, is the gulf between the Original Woman of old romance and
the New Woman of recent fiction. The change, no doubt, is for the
better; and yet is it altogether for the better?

According to all modern canons, the conduct of these too-tardy
bridegrooms was brutal beyond words; and as for the heroines of the
Romantic Ballad, Mother Grundy, had she the handling of them, would use
them worse than ever did moody brother or crafty stepmother. But the
balladists and ballad characters had their own gauges of conduct. Their
morals were not other or better than the morals of their age. They
strained out the gnats and swallowed the camels of the law as given to
Moses; perhaps if they could look into modern society and the modern
novel they would charge the same against our own times and literature.
If they broke, as they were too ready to do, the Sixth Commandment, or
the Seventh, they made no attempt to glose the sin; they dealt not in
innuendo or _double entendre_. Beside the page of modern realism, the
ballad page is clean and wholesome. Human passion unrestrained there may
be; but no sickly or vicious sentiment. There is a punctilious sense of
honour; and if it is sometimes the letter rather than the spirit of vow
or promise that is kept, the knights and ladies in the ballads are no
worse than are the Pharisees of our day; and they are always ready to
pay, and generally do pay, the utmost penalty.

Thus, in that most powerful and tragic ballad, _Clerk Saunders_, May
Margaret ties a napkin about her eyes that she 'may swear, and keep her
aith,' to her 'seven bauld brothers,' that she had not seen her lover
'since late yestreen'; she carries him across the threshold of her
bower, that she may be able to say that his foot had never been there.
The story of the sleeping twain--the excuses for their sin; the reason
why ruth should turn aside vengeance--is told, in stacca