"What recks the death o' ane?
Last night I dreamed a dreary dream,
And I ken the day 's thy ain.

"My wound is deep, I fain would sleep;
Take thou the vanward o' the three,
And hide me by the bracken bush
That grows upon the lily lee.

"O bury me by the bracken bush,
Beneath the blooming brier;
Let never living mortal ken
A kindly Scot lies here."'

The Historical Ballad of Border chivalry touches its highest and
strongest note in these words; they will stand, like Tantallon, proof
against the tooth of Time as long as Scotland has a heart to feel and
ears to hear.

CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION

Though long on Time's dark whirlpool tossed,
The song is saved; the bard is lost.

_The Ettrick Shepherd._

Ballad poetry is a phrase of elastic and variable meaning. In the
national repertory there are Ballads Satirical, Polemical, and
Political, and even Devotional and Doctrinal, of as early date as many
of the songs inspired by the spirit of Love, War, and Romance. Among
them they represent the diverse strands that are blended in the Scottish
character--the sombre and the bright; the prose and the poetry. The one
or the other has predominated in the expression of the genius of the
nation in verse, according to the circumstances and mood of the time.
But neither has ever been really absent; they are the opposite sides of
the same shield. It is not proposed to enter here into the ballad
literature of the didactic type--the 'ballads with a purpose'--either by
way of characterisation or example. In further distinction from the
authors of the specimens of old popular song, the writers of many or
most of them are known to us, at least by name, and are among the most
honoured and familiar in our literature.

Towards the unlettered bards of the traditional ballads, who 'saved
other names, but left their own unsung,' the more serious and
self-conscious race of poets who wrote satire and allegory and homily on
the same model have generally thought themselves entitled to assume an
attitude of superiority and even of disapproval. The verse of those
self-taught rhymers was rude and simple, and wanting in those
conventional ornaments, borrowed from classic or other sources, which
for the time being were the recognised hallmarks of poesy; the moral
lessons it taught were not apparent, nor even discoverable. It is
curious to note how early this tone of