al, in Shropshire, 'being used by maids to light the fire.'
Mr. Pitt's fires were lighted with half-pages torn out from incomparably
early and precious versions of certain Robin Hood and other ballads.
Percy notes that he was very young when he first got possession of the
MS., and had not then learned to reverence it. When he put it into
boards to lend to Dr. Johnson, the bookbinder pared the margins, and cut
away top and bottom lines. In editing the _Reliques_, Percy actually
tore out pages 'to save the trouble of transcribing.' In spite of all,
it remains a unique and inestimably valuable manuscript. Its writer was
presumably a Lancashire man, from his use of certain dialect words, and
was assuredly a man of slight education; nevertheless a national
benefactor.

[Footnote 12: Cp. _Love's Labour's Lost_:--

+Armado.+ Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

+Moth.+ The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages
since; but I think now 'tis not to be found.]

In speaking of manuscripts, we must not omit to mention the Scottish
collectors. Most of them went to work in the right way, seeking out aged
men and women in out-of-the-way corners of Scotland, and taking down
their ballads from their lips. If we condemn these editors for
subsequently adorning the traditional versions, we must be grateful to
them for preserving their manuscripts so that we can still read the
ballads as they received them. The old ladies of Scotland seem to have
possessed better memories than the old men. Besides Sir Walter Scott's
anonymous 'Old Lady,' there was another to whom we owe some of the
finest versions of the Scottish ballads. This was Mrs. Brown, daughter
of Professor Gordon of Aberdeen. Born in 1747, she learned most of her
ballads before she was twelve years old, or before 1759, from the
singing of her aunt, Mrs. Farquhar of Braemar. From about twenty to
forty years later, she repeated her ballads, first to Jamieson, and
afterwards to William Tytler, each of whom compiled a manuscript. The
latter, the Tytler-Brown MS., unfortunately is lost, but the ballads are
practically all known from the other manuscript and various sources.

Perhaps the richest part of our stock are the Scottish and Border
ballads. Beside them, most of our mawkish English ballads look pale and
withered. The reason, perhaps, may be traced to the effect of natural
surroundings on literature. The English ballads were printed or