ness are very far from being
characteristics of the Scottish ballads. Of ballad themes in general, it
has been said that they concern themselves mainly with the tragedy and
the pathos of the life of feudal and early times; while, on the other
hand, the folk-song reflects the sunnier hours of the days of old. This
is peculiarly true of the Scottish ballads. The best of them are dipped
in gloom of the grave. They breathe the very soul of 'the old, unhappy
far-off times.' Even over the true lovers, Fate stands from the first
with a drawn sword; and the story ends with the 'jow of the deid bell'
rather than with the wedding chimes. Superstitious terrors, too, add a
shadow of their own to these tragedies of crossed and lawless love and
swift-following vengeance. In this respect, the Scottish ballads are
more nearly akin to the popular poetry of Denmark and other countries
across the North Sea, than to that of our neighbours across the Tweed.
There are a score of ballads that agree so closely in plot and
structure, and even in names and phrases, with Norse or German versions,
that it is impossible to doubt that they have been drawn directly from
the same source. Either they have been transplanted thither in the many
descents which the Northmen made on Scotland, as is witnessed not only
by the chronicles, but by existing words, and customs, and place-names
scattered thickly around our coasts; or, what may perhaps be as strongly
argued, both versions may have come from an older and common original.

Celtic influences are also present, although scarcely, perhaps, so
directly manifest as might have been expected, considering that the
Celtic race and speech must at one time have been spread almost
universally over Scotland; they appear rather in the spirit than in the
plot and scene and characters of the typical Scottish ballad. They
supply, unquestionably, a large portion of that feeling of mystery, of
over-shadowing fate, and melancholy yearning--that air of another world
surrounding and infecting the life of the senses--which seems to
distinguish the body and soul of Scottish ballad poetry from the more
matter-of-fact budget of the English minstrels.

But it has to be remembered that the matrix of the ballads that have
taken first place in the love and in the memory of Scotland was the
region most remote and isolated from the Highlands and the Highlanders
during the ballad-making era. This is the basin of the Tweed--the howms