speak to me!"
But aye the louder he cried Annie,
The louder roared the sea.'

The shores and basin of the Forth have also their rowth of ballads; and
some of them have, like _The Lass of Lochryan_, the sound of the waves
and the salt smell of the sea mingled with their plaintive music. _Gil
Morice_ has been 'placed' by Carronside--Ossian's 'roaring Carra'--a
meet setting for the story. _Sir Patrick Spens_ cleaves to the shores of
Fife; though some, eager for the honour of the North, have claimed that
it is Aberdour in Buchan that is spoken of in the ballad. By the
powerful spell of this old rhyme, the king still sits and drinks the
blood-red wine in roofless Dunfermline tower; the ladies still haunt the
windy headland--Kinghorn or Elie Ness--with 'their kaims intil their
hands' waiting in vain the return of their 'good Scots lords'; the
wraith of Sir Patrick himself in misty days strides the silver strand
under the Hawes Wood, reading the braid letter. Near by is Donibristle;
and it keeps the memory of the 'Bonnie Earl of Moray,' slain here, hints
the balladist--though history is silent on the point--for pleasing too
well the Queen's eye at Holyrood.

Edinburgh, too, draws a good part of its romance from the ballad bard.
Mary Hamilton, of the Queen's Maries, rode through the Netherbow Port to
the gallows-foot:

'"Yestreen the Queen had four Maries,
The night she 'll hae but three;
There was Marie Seton, and Marie Beaton,
And Marie Carmichael, and me."'

The Marchioness of Douglas wandered disconsolate on Arthur's Seat and
drank of St. Anton's well:

'"O waly, waly, love be bonnie
A little time while it is new,
But when it 's auld it waxes cauld
And fades awa' like morning dew.

But had I wist before I kissed
That love had been so ill to win,
I 'd locked my heart within a kist
And fastened it wi' a siller pin"';

and across the hill lies the 'Wells o' Wearie.' Nowhere else has the
wail of forsaken love found such wistful expression--except in _The
Fause Lover_:

'"But again, dear love, and again, dear love,
Will you never love me again?
Alas! for loving you so well,
And you not me again."'

From Edinburgh wandered Leezie Lindsay, kilting her coats of green satin
to follow her Lord Ronald Macdonald the weary way to the Highland
Border; and to its plainstanes came the faithful Lady of Gicht to ransom
her Geordie: