d of joint-stock of ideas, epithets,
images; and freely borrowed and exchanged among themselves not merely
refrains and single lines, but whole verses, passages, and situations.
Always frugal in the employment of ornament in his text, the balladist
never troubled to invent when he found a descriptive phrase or figure
made and lying ready to his hand. Plagiarism from his brother bards was
a thing that troubled him no more than repeating himself. He lived and
sang in times before the literary conscience had been awakened or the
literary canon had been laid down--or at least in places and among
company where the fear of these, and of the critic, had never
penetrated; and he borrowed, copied, adapted, without any sense of shame
or remorse, because without any sense of sin. He has his conventional
manner of opening, and his established formula for closing his tale. In
portraiture, in scenery, in costume, he is simplicity itself. The
heroine of the ballad, and, for that matter, the hero also, as a rule,
must have 'yellow hair.' If she is not a Lady Maisry, it is a wonder if
she be not a May Margaret or a Fair Annie, although there is also a
goodly sprinkling of Janets, and Helens, and Marjories, and Barbaras in
the enchanted land of ballad poetry. Sweet William has always been the
favourite choice of the balladist, among the Christian names of the
knightly wooers. Destiny presides over their first meeting. The king's
daughters

'Cast kevils them amang,
To see who will to greenwood gang';

and the lot falls upon the youngest and fairest--the youngest is always
the fairest and most beloved in the ballad. The note of a bugle horn,
and the pair see each other, and are made blessed and undone. Like Celia
and Oliver in the Forest of Arden they no sooner look than they sigh;
they no sooner sigh than they ask the reason; and as soon as they know
the reason they apply the remedy. Or, mounted on 'high horseback,' the
lover comes suddenly upon the lady among her sisters or her
bower-maidens 'playin' at the ba'.'

'There were three ladies played at the ba',
Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!
There cam' a knight and played o'er them a',
Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.

The knight he looted to a' the three,
Hey wi' the rose and the lindie O!
But to the youngest he bowed the knee
Where the primrose blooms so sweetly.'

He sends messages that reach his true love's ear, through t