Minto Crags, Lilliard's Edge, and all the Border high places. Here
Scott's poetic fancy was born; and he paid it only to the tribute that
was due when he made it the scene of the finest of the modern ballads of
its class, the _Eve of St. John_. As a shrine of pilgrimage for the
lover of ballad lore, Smailholm and Sandyknowe should rank next after,
if they should not take precedence of the Vale of Yarrow. Six years
before Scott's birth, while Burns was just a toddler, Bishop Percy's
_Reliques_ had seen the light. The chief gathering ground of this
celebrated collection was on the English side of the Border, but was not
confined to ballad poetry. But it brought to some of the choicest of our
ballads, such as _Sir Patrick Spens_, a fame and vogue such as they had
never before enjoyed in the world without; and it profoundly influenced
the poetic thought and taste of Scotland, as of every land where song
was loved and English speech was spoken. One effect was seen in the more
strictly Scottish collections of fragments of ballad verse that began
soon after to issue from the press. Herd's, the 'first classical
collection of Scottish songs and ballads,' as Scott calls it, appeared
in 1769; that of Lord Hailes 1770; and Pinkerton's in 1781 and 1783. The
publication in 1787 of the first volume of Johnson's _Museum_ was one of
the fruitful results to the national poetry and music of the visit of
Robert Burns to Edinburgh; but the impulse that brought it to the light
can be traced back by sure lines to Percy. Ritson's learned labours in a
still wider field came forth between 1780 and 1794; and Sibbald's
_Chronicle_ was of the same year as the _Border Minstrelsy_.

The age of ballad collection and collation had fairly set in. But this
does not deprive the _Minstrelsy_ of the praise that, with the beginning
of a new century, it ensured that the search for and rescue from
oblivion of the old ballads should thenceforth be a business which, not
alone the antiquary and the poet, but the whole people should make their
concern. Jamieson's _Popular Ballads_ followed in 1806; and, after a
pause, filled up with the appearance of fresh volumes and fresh editions
of the earlier collections, the works of Kinloch, Motherwell, and Buchan
came with a rush, in the years 1827-8.

Of these, and other repertories of the national ballads, the number is
legion, and the merits and methods as varied and diverse. There is not
space to discuss and compare t