ench student of our literature has said,
'The roses of these poets are splendid, but too full blown; they have
expended all their strength, all their beauty, all their fragrance; no
store of youth is left in them; they have given it all away.'

As has happened repeatedly in our literary history, simplicity in art,
as a source both of strength and of beauty, was almost forgotten; or its
tradition was only remembered among the humble and nameless balladists.
The only ones, says M. Jusserand, who escape the touch of decadence,
are 'those unknown singers, chiefly in the region of the Scottish
border, who derive their inspiration directly from the people'; who
leave books alone and 'remodel ballads that will be remade after them,
and come down to us stirring and touching,' like that ride of the Percy
and the Douglas which, spite of his classic tastes, stirred the heart of
the author of the _Art of Poesy_ 'like the sound of a trumpet.'

Thus, like Antaeus, poetry sprang up again, fresh and strong, at the
touch of its native earth; 'although declining in castles, it still
thrilled with youth along the hedges and copses, in the woods and on the
moors'; banished from court, it found refuge in the wilderness and sang
at poor men's hearths and at rural fairs, where the King himself, if we
may believe tradition, went out in romantic quest of it and of
adventure, clad as a _gaberlunzie man_. In the _Complaynt of Scotland_,
published in 1549, we have an enticing picture of the extent to which
ballad lore and ballad music entered into the lives of the country
people on the eve of the Reformation troubles. At the gatherings of the
shepherds, old tales would be told, with or without stringed
accompaniment--of _Gil Quheskher_ and _Sir Walter, the Bauld Leslye_,
pieces now probably lost to us irrecoverably; of the familiar _Tayl of
Yong Tamlane_; of _Robene Hude_ and _Litel Ihone_, whose fame, like that
of the prophecies of Thomas of Ercildoune, had already been firmly
established for a couple of centuries; of the _Red Etin_, whose place
in folklore is well ascertained; and of the _Tayl of the Thre Vierd
Systirs_, in which one can snuff the ingredients of the caldron in
_Macbeth_. There were dances, founded on the same themes--_Robin Hood_,
_Thom of Lyn_, and _Johnie Ermstrang_; and between whiles the women sang
'sueit melodious sangis of natural music of the antiquite, such as _The
Hunting of Cheviot_ and _The Red Harlaw_.' But of all th