is feast which
he spreads in our sight, our author only lets us taste a morsel--a
couple of lines taken apparently from a lost ballad on the fate of the
Chevalier de la Beaute, rubbed down by the rough Scottish tongue to
'Bawty,' at Billie Mire in 1517.

The great religious and social upheaval that had already changed the
face of England reached Scotland in a severer form. There was an escape
of the _odium theologicum_ which always and everywhere is fatal to the
tenderer flowers of poetry and romance. Men's minds were too deeply
moved, and their hands too full to look upon ballads otherwise than
askance and with disfavour. The Wedderburns and other zealous reformers
set themselves to match the traditional and popular airs to 'Gude and
Godlie Ballates' of their own invention. The wandering ballad-singer
could no longer count on a welcome, either in the castles of the nobles
or with the shepherds of the hills. Instead of getting, like Henry the
Minstrel, his deserts in 'food and clothing,' these were apt to come to
him in the shape of the stocks or the repentance-stool. He had lost
caste and character, from causes for which he was not altogether
responsible. An ill name had been given to him; and doubtless he often
managed to merit it. His type, as it was found on both sides of the
Border, is Autolycus, whom Shakespeare must often have met in the flesh
about the 'footpath ways,' and at the rustic merrymakings of
Warwickshire. Autolycus, too, has known the court, and has found his
wares go out of fashion and favour with the great, and has to be content
with cozening the ears and pockets of simple country folk. One cannot
help liking the rogue, although he is as nimble with his fingers as with
his tongue. He has the true balladist's love for freedom and sunshine
and the open country. He will not be tied by rule; according to his
moral law,

'When we wander here and there
We then do go most right.'

His memory and his mouth, like his wallet, are full of snatches of
ballads; and they cover a multitude of sins.

Though no undoubted Scottish specimen was drawn from this pedlar's pack,
we know, from the plays of the Elizabethan dramatists and other
evidence, that Border minstrelsy had already raised echoes in London
town, before King Jamie went thither with Scotland streaming in his
train. During the last troublous half century of Scotland's history as
an independent kingdom, the raw material of ballads was being