himself, whencesoever the seed may have
come, it has found kindly soil, and drawn from thence a strength and
colour such as few other lands and ballad literatures can match.

But to suggest that not even our Historical Songs of fight and of foray
against our 'auld enemies' of England are genuine, unalloyed products of
the national spirit; to hint that _Kinmont Willie_, _The Outlaw Murray_,
or _The Battle of Otterburn_ itself is an exotic--that were a somewhat
dangerous exercise of the art of analytic criticism, in the presence of
a Scottish audience. In truth, no poetry of any tongue or land is more
powerfully dominated by the sense of locality--is more expressive of the
manners of the time and mood of the race--than those rough Border lays
of moonlight rides, on reiving or on rescue bound, and of death fronted
boldly in the press of spears or 'behind the bracken bush.' These are
not tales of the infancy of a people. Scotland had already attained to
something of national unity of blood and of sentiment before they came
to birth. For generations and centuries she had to keep her head and her
bounds against an enemy as watchful and warlike as herself, and many
times as strong. Blows were struck and returned, keen and sudden as
lightning. The 'hammer of the Scots,' wielded by the English kings, had
smitten, and under its blows the race had been welded together and
wrought to a temper like steel, supple upon occasion to bend, but
elastic and unbreakable, and with a sharp cutting edge.

Heroes conquered or fell; and sometimes a minstrel was by to sing the
exploit. Patriotism and the joy of combat are leading notes in these
Historic Ballads. The annals of Scotland are full of family and clan
feuds--the quarrels of kites and crows. But, with a fine and true
instinct, the best of these ballads avoid taking account of the
bickerings in the household. It is when they sing of 'patriot battles
won of old,' where Scot and Southron met, 'red-wat shod,' that the
strain rises to its clearest, and 'stirs the heart like the sound of a
trumpet.' Nor is it always the events that are most noised in the
history-book that are best remembered in the ballads. The old singers
and their audiences delighted more in personal episode than in filling a
big canvas; their genius was dramatic rather than epic. _Hardyknut_,
with its commemoration of the battle of Largs and the Northmen, although
accepted by the _literati_ of the early Georgian era as a g