of Yarrow; Leader haughs and Ettrick shaws; the clear streams that flow
past ruined abbey and peel-tower, through green folds of the Cheviots
and the Lammermuirs, that for hundreds of years were the chosen homes of
Border war and romance. Next after these come the banks of Clyde and
Forth; Annan Water and the streams of Ayr and Galloway; and ballads and
ballad localities, differing somewhat, in theme and structure, in mood
and metre, from those of the South, as Aberdonian differs from Borderer,
and the Men of the Mearns from the Men of the Merse, are found scattered
thinly or sprinkled thickly over the whole North, by Tay, and Dee, and
Spey.

These latter streams are partly without and partly within the Highland
Line, across which, as unacquainted with a language that has its own
rich and peculiar store of legend and ballad poetry, we do not propose
to penetrate; sufficient field for exploration is provided by the Scots
ballads in Scots. But when these were in the making, the Highland Line
must have run down much lower into the Lowlands than it does to-day; the
retreating Gaelic had still outposts in Buchan, and even in Fife, and
Ayr, and Galloway. In the ballads of the North-eastern Counties, the
feuds of Highland chiefs and the raids of Highland caterans make
themselves seen and felt, too visibly and not too sympathetically, in
the ditties of their Lowland neighbours. 'The Hielandmen' play the part
that the English clans from Bewcastle and Redesdale play in the Border
ballads. The 'Red Harlaw' in those boreal provinces was a landmark and
turning-point in history and poetry, as Bannockburn or Flodden was in
the South. By Hangingshaws or Hermitage Castle they knew little of the
Highlander, being too much absorbed in their own quarrels; on Donside
and in the Lennox they knew him better than they liked him; and it was
not until a comparatively recent period of literary history that the
kilted warrior began to take his place as a heroic and imposing figure
in the poetry and prose of the Scottish vernacular.

Making all allowance for borrowings and influences drawn from without,
may we not still say that the Scottish ballad owes nearly all that is
best in it--the sweetness not less than the strength of this draught of
old poetry and passion--to the land and to the folk that gave it birth?
A land thrust further into the gloom and cold of stormy seas than the
Southern Kingdom; a land whose spare gifts are but the more esteeme