e gae me, O!"'

Although Yarrow be the favoured haunt on Scottish soil--may we not also
say on the whole round of earth?--of the Romantic Ballad, and has
coloured them, and taken colour from them, for all time, yet there are
other streams and vales that only come short of being its rivals.
'Leader Haughs,' for instance, which the harp of Nicol Burne, the 'Last
Minstrel' who wandered and sang in the Borderland, has linked
indissolubly with Yarrow braes, know of ballad strains well-nigh as
sweet as those of the neighbour water. But cheerfulness rather than
sadness is their prevailing note. _Auld Maitland_, the lay which James
Hogg's mother repeated to Scott, has its scene on Leader side, and at
the 'darksome town'--a misnomer in these days--of Lauder. Long before
the time of that tough champion, St. Cuthbert and True Thomas had
wandered and dreamed and sang by Leader. It was a Lord Lauderdale who
rode to Traquair to court, after the older fashion, Katherine Janferie:

'He toldna her father, he toldna her mither,
He toldna ane o' her kin;
But he whispered the bonnie may hersel',
And has her favour won.'

He it was, according to the old ballad, who rode to the bridal at the
eleventh hour, with four and twenty Leader lads behind him:

'"I comena here to fight," he said,
"I comena here to play;
But to lead a dance wi' the bonnie bride,
And mount and go my way"';

and it was Lord Lochinvar (although 'he who told the story later' has
taught us so differently) who played the inglorious part of the deserted
bridegroom. Scott himself drank in the passion for Border romance and
chivalry on the braes of Sandyknowe, between Leader and Eden waters, not
far from Smailholm and Dryburgh, and Huntly Bank and Mellerstain, and
Rhymer's Tower and the Broom o' the Cowdenknowes. According to Mr. Ford,
the ballad which takes its name from this last-mentioned spot is
traditionally assigned to a Mellerstain maid named Crosbie, whose words
were set to music by no less famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So
that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and
of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and
'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral
laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ballad romance:

'The hills were high on ilka side,
And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,
And aye as she sang her voice it rang