love to
'spier at her brither John'; and when she stoops from horseback to kiss
this sinister kinsman at parting, he thrusts his sword into her heart.
The rosy face of the bride is wan, and her white bodice is full of blood
when the gay bridegroom greets her, and he is left 'tearing his yellow
hair.' More often, death itself does not sunder these lovers dear:

'Lady Margaret was dead lang e'er midnicht,
And Lord William lang e'er day.'

And when they are buried, there springs up from their graves, as has
happened in all the ballad lore and _maerchen_ of all the Aryan nations:

'Out of the one a bonnie rose bush,
And out o' the other a brier,'

that 'met and pleat' in a true lovers' knot in emblem of the immortality
of love, as love was in the olden time.

These are all hackneyed phrases and incidents of the old balladists, the
merest counters, borrowed, worn, and passed on through bards
innumerable. But what fire and colour, what strength and pathos,
continue to live in them! They smell of 'Flora and the fresh-delved
earth'; they are redolent of the spring-time of human passion and
thought. For the most part they belong to all ballad poetry, and not to
the Scottish ballads alone. But there are other touches that seem to be
peculiar to the genius of our own land and our own ballad literature;
and, as has been said, one can with no great difficulty note the
characteristic marks of the song of a particular district and even of an
individual singer. The romantic ballads of the North, for example,
although in no way behind those of the Border in strength and in
tenderness, are commonly of rougher texture. They lack often the grace
which, in the versions sung in the South, the minstrel knew how to
combine with the manly vigour of his song; they are content with
assonance where the other must have rhyme; and in many long and popular
ballads, such as _Tiftie's Annie and Geordie_, there is scarcely so much
as a good sound rhyme from beginning to end. One sometimes fancies that
these Aberdonian ballads bear signs of being 'nirled' and toughened by
the stress of the East Wind; they are true products of a keen, sharp
climate working upon a deep and rich, but somewhat dour and stiff,
historic soil.

Whether they come from the north or the south side of Tay, whether they
use up the traditional plots and phrases, or strike out an original line
in the story and language, our ballads have all this precious qua