The Balladists

"O yon 's the mountain of hell," he cried,
"Where you and I must go."

He strack the tapmast wi' his hand,
The foremast wi' his knee;
And he brake the gallant ship in twain
And sank her in the sea.'

Other spells and charms not a few, for the winning of love and the slaking of revenge, are known to the old balladists. We hear of the compelling or sundering power of the bright red gold and the cold steel. Lovers at parting exchange rings, as in Hynd Horn, gifted with the property of revealing death or faithlessness:

'When your ring turns pale and wan,
Then I 'm in love wi' another man.'

Or, as in Rose the Red and Lily Flower, it is a magic horn, to be blown when in danger, and whose notes can be heard at any distance. These are examples of the 'Life Token' and the 'Faith Token,' known to the folklore of nearly all peoples who have preserved fragments of their primitive beliefs. The prophetic power of dreams is revealed in The Drowned Lovers, in Child Rowland, in Annie of Lochryan, and in a host of others. The spells used by witchcraft to arrest birth do not differ greatly in Willie's Lady– the 'nine witch-knots,' the 'bush of woodbine,' the 'kaims o' care,' and the 'master goat' – from those mentioned in its prototypes in Scandinavian, Greek, and Eastern ballads and stories; and in more than one it is the sage counsels of 'Billy Blin'' – the Brownie – that give the cue by which the evil charm is unwound. The Brownie – the Lubber Fiend – owns a department of legend and ballad scarcely less important than that possessed by his relatives, the Elfin folk and the Trolds; a shy and clumsy monster, but harmless and good-natured, and with a turn for hard manual labour that can be turned to useful account. Good and ill fortune, in the ballads, comes often by lot:

'We were sisters, sisters seven,
Bowing down, bowing down;
The fairest maidens under heaven;
And aye the birks a' bowing.

And we keest kevils us amang,
Bowing down, bowing down;
To see who would to greenwood gang,
And aye the birks a' bowing.'

The birk held a high place in the secret rites and customs of the Ballad Age. It was with 'a wand o' the bonnie birk' that May Margaret went through the mysterious process of restoring her plighted troth to Clerk Saunders; in other ballads it is done by passes of the hand, or of a crystal rod. When the 'Clerk's Twa Sons o' Owsenford' were brought back to earth by their mother's bitter grief and longing, they wore 'hats made o' the birk':

'It neither grew in syke or ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheugh;
But at the gate of Paradise
That birk grew green eneuch.'

Birds of the air carry a secret; there are tongues in trees that syllable men's names; and even inanimate things cry aloud with the voice of Remorse or of Doom. When the knight wishes to send a message, he speaks in the ear of his 'gay goshawk that can baith speak and flee.' When May Colvin returns home after the fatal meeting at the well, where her seven predecessors in the love of the 'Fause Sir John' had been drowned, the 'wylie parrot' speaks the words that were no doubt ringing in her brain:

'What hae ye made o' the fause Sir John
That ye gaed wi' yestreen?'

And in Earl Richard and other ballads, it is the 'popinjay' that proclaims guilt or fear from turret or tree. One remembers also 'Proud Maisie' walking early in the wood, and Sweet Robin piping her doom among the green summer leaves:

'"Tell me, my bonnie bird,
When shall I marry me?"
"When six braw gentlemen
Kirkward shall carry thee"';

and the 'Three Corbies' croaking the most grim and dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of ballad poetry, as they feast on the new-slain knight:

'Ye 'll sit on his white hause bane,
And I 'll pike oot his bonnie blue een;
Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair
We 'll theak our nest when it is bare.

O mony a ane for him maks mane,
But nae ane kens whaur he is gane,
O'er his white banes when they are bare
The wind shall sigh for evermair.'

But things that have neither sense nor life utter aloud words of menace and accusation. Lord Barnard's horn makes the forest echo with the warning notes, 'Away, Musgrave, away!' Binnorie embalms the tradition of the 'singing bone' which pervades the folklore of the Aryan peoples, and is found also in China and among the negro tribes of West Africa. A harper finds the body of the drowned sister, and out of her 'breast-bane' he forms a harp which he strings with her yellow hair. According to a northern version of the ballad, he makes a plectrum from 'a lith of her finger bane.' On this strange instrument the minstrel plays before king and court, and the strings sigh forth:

'Wae to my sister, fair Helén!'

In other ballads, the yearning or remorse of the living draw the dead from their graves. In the tale of The Cruel Mother, we seem to see the workings of the guilty conscience, which at length 'visualised' the victims of unnatural murder. The bride goes alone to the bonnie greenwood, to bear and to slay her twin children:

'She 's wrapped her mantle about her head,
All alone, and alonie O!
She 's gone to do a fearful deed
Down by the greenwood bonnie O!'

The crime and shame are hid; but peace does not come to her:

'The lady looked o'er her high castle wa',
All alone and alonie O!
She saw twa bonnie bairnies play at the ba'
Down by yon greenwood bonnie O!

The mother's yearning awakens within her, and she promises them all manner of gifts if they will only be hers. But the voices of the ghost-children rise and pronounce judgment on her:

'O cruel mither, when we were thine,
All alone and alonie O!
From us ye did our young lives twine,
Doon by yon greenwood bonnie O.'

Elsewhere in these old rhymes may be traced a superstitious belief, which was put in practice as a means of discovering guilt, at least as late as the middle of the seventeenth century – that of the Ordeal by Touch. In Young Benjie another test is applied to find the murderer; and at midnight the door of the death-chamber is set ajar, so that the wandering spirit may enter and reanimate for an hour the 'streikit corpse':

'About the middle of the night
The cocks began to craw;
And at the dead hour o' the night,
The corpse began to thraw.'

It sat up; and with its dead lips told the waiting brethren on whose head justice, tempered with a strange streak of mercy, should fall for the foul slaughter of their 'ae sister':

'Ye maunna Benjie head, brothers,
Ye maunna Benjie hang,
But ye maun pyke oot his twa grey een
Before ye let him gang.'

In Proud Lady Margaret, again, we have a form of the legend, told in many lands, and made familiar, in a milder form, by the classical German ballad of The Lady of the Kynast, of a haughty and cruel dame whose riddles are answered and whose heart is at length won by a stranger knight. She would fain ride home with him, but he answers her that he is her brother Willie, come from the other side of death to 'humble her haughty heart has gart sae mony dee':

'The wee worms are my bedfellows
And cauld clay is my sheets';