. .

"But if you are a carl's daughter,
As I take you to be,
Where did you get the gay clothing
In greenwood was on thee?"

"My mother she 's a poor woman,
But she nursed earl's children three,
And I got it from a foster-sister,
To beguile such sparks as thee."'

Of the ballads descriptive of old country sports and merry-making that
have come down to us, the most famous are _Christ's Kirk on the Green_
and _Peblis to the Play_. They lead us back to times when life in
Scotland was not such a 'serious' thing as it afterwards became--when,
under the patronage of the Court or of the Church, Miracle-plays or
Moralities were played on the open sward in such places of resort for
gentle and simple as Falkland and Stirling and Peebles and Cupar; and
the strain of the more solemn mumming was relieved for the benefit of
the common folks, by rough jests, horse-play, and dancing, in which
their betters freely joined. No doubt it was a piece of sage church and
state policy to keep the minds of the people off the dangerous questions
that began to be stirring in them, by aid of these scenes of 'dancing
and derray,' and of almost Rabelaisian fits of mirth and laughter, the
savour of which remained long after they had been placed under the ban
of a sterner ecclesiastical rule.

Leslie in Fife and Leslie in Aberdeen are competitors for having given
the inspiration to _Christ's Kirk on the Green_, to which Allan Ramsay
afterwards added a second part in the same vein. But whether these
passages of boisterous merriment, in which 'licht-skirtit lasses and
girning gossips' play their part happed under the green Lomond or at
Dunideer, there can be no question of the national popularity which the
piece long enjoyed. Pope declared that a Scot would fight in his day for
its superiority over English ballads; and the author of _Tullochgorum_,
in a letter to Robert Burns, tells us that at the age of twelve he had
it by heart, and had even tried to turn it into Latin verse. In _Peblis
to the Play_, the fun is not less nimble although it is a whit more
restrained; there is an infectious spirit of spring-time and gaiety in
the strain that sings of the festal gathering at Beltane, when burgesses
and country folks fared forth 'be firth and forest,' all 'graithed full
gay' to take part in the sports. 'All the wenches of the west' were up
and stirring by cock-crow, selecting, rejecting, or comparing t