Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847

Then, scattered, on blood and on ravaging bent,
Through all parts of the city chance-guided they went.
And he sung how Odysseus at once made his way
To where the proud towers of Deiphobus lay.

With bold Menelaus he thitherward strode,
In valour in equal to War's fiery god,
Then fierce was the fight—dread the deeds that were done,
Till, aided by Pallas, the battle he won.
So sung the rapt Minstrel the blood-stirring tale,
But the check of Odysseus waxed deadly and pale;
While the song warbled on of the days that were past,
His eyelids were wet with the tears falling fast.[54 - We are indebted for the above extract to the Homeric Ballads, published some years since in Fraser's Magazine. We hope that some day these admirable translations may be collected together and published in a separate form.]"

If we go on twaddling thus about the Greeks and Romans, we shall lose the thread of our discourse, and possibly be found tripping on the subject of Wolf's Prolegomena. Let us, therefore, get back as fast as we can to the Moderns.

Unless the poet is imbued with a deep sympathy for his subject, we would not give sixpence for his chance of producing a tolerable ballad. Nay, we go further, and aver that he ought when possible to write in the unscrupulous character of a partisan. In historical and martial ballads, there always must be two sides; and it is the business of the poet to adopt one of these with as much enthusiasm and prejudice, as if his life and fortunes depended upon the issue of the cause. For the ballad is the reflex of keen and rapid sensation, and has nothing to do with judgment or with calm deliberative justice. It should embody, from beginning to end, one fiery absorbing passion, such as men feel when their blood is up, and their souls thoroughly roused within them; and we should as soon think of moralising in a ballad as in the midst of a charge of cavalry. If you are a Cavalier, write with the zeal of a Cavalier combating for his king at Naseby, and do not disgust us with melancholy whinings about the desolate hearths of the Ironsides. Forget for a time that you are a shareholder in a Life Assurance Company, and cleave to your immediate business of emptying as many saddles as possible. If you are out—as perhaps your great-grandfather was—with Prince Charles at Prestonpans, do not, we beseech you, desert the charging column of the Camerons, to cry the coronach over poor old Colonel Gardiner, fetched down from his horse by the Lochaber axe of the grim Miller of Invernahyle. Let him have the honourable burial of a brave man when the battle is over; but—whilst the shouts of victory are ringing in our ears, and the tail of Cope's horse is still visible over the knowe which rises upon the Berwick road—leave the excellent Seceder upon the sod, and toss up your bonnet decorated with the White Rose, to the glory and triumph of the clans! If you are a Covenanter and a Whig, we need not entreat you to pepper Claverhouse and his guardsmen to the best of your ability at Drumclog. You are not likely to waste much of your time in lamentations over the slaughtered Archbishop: and if you must needs try your hand at the execution of Argyle, do not mince the matter, but make a regular martyr of him at once. In this way should all ballads be written; and such indeed is the true secret of the craft as transmitted to us by the masters of old.

We have warned you against moralising: let us now say a word or two on the subjects of description and declamation. Upon one or other of these rocks, have most of our modern ballad-writers struck and foundered. What can be in worse taste than the introduction of an elaborate landscape into the midst of a poem of action, or an elaborate account of a man's accoutrements when he is fighting for life or death? A single epithet, if it be a choice one, can indicate the scene of action as vividly and far more effectively than ten thousand stanzas; and, unless you are a tailor and proud of your handiwork, what is the use of dilating upon the complexion of a warrior's breeches, when the claymore is whistling around his ears? Nevertheless, even our best ballad-writers, when their soul was not in their task, have fallen into this palpable error. None of Sir Walter's ballads commences more finely than "The Gray Brother,"—none has been more spoiled in its progress by the introduction of minute description. We pass from the high altar of Saint Peter to the bank of the Eske, and there we are regaled with a catalogue of the modern seats and villas, utterly out of place and inconsistent with the solemn nature of the theme. But "The Gray Brother" is a mere fragment which Scott never would complete—owing, perhaps, to a secret consciousness, that he had already marred the unity of the poem by sketching in a modern landscape behind his antique figures. Give him, however, a martial subject—let his eye but once kindle, and his cheek flush at the call of the trumpet, and we defy you to find his equal. Read—O ye poetasters who are now hammering at Crecy—read the "Bonnets of Dundee," and then, if you have a spark of candour left, you will shove your foolscap into the fire. Or tell us if you really flatter yourselves that, were your lives prolonged to the perpetuity of the venerable Parr, you ever would produce ten stanzas worthy of being printed in the same volume with these:—

"The Coronach's cried on Bennachie,
And down the Don and a',
And Hieland and Lawland may mournfu' be,
For the sair field of Harlaw.

They saddled a hundred milk-white steeds,
They hae saddled a hundred black,
With a chafron of steel on each horse's head,
And a good knight upon his back.

They hadna ridden a mile, a mile,
A mile, but barely ten,
When Donald came branking down the brae,
Wi' twenty thousand men.

Their tartans they were waving wide,
Their glaives were glancing clear,
The pibrochs rung frae side to side,
Would deafen you to hear.

The great Earl in his stirrups stood,
That Highland host to see;
'Now here a knight that's stout and good,
May prove a jeopardie.

'What would ye do, my squire so gay,
That rides beside my rein,
Were ye Glenallan's Earl this day,
And I were Roland Cheyne?

'To turn the rein were sin and shame,
To fright were wondrous peril:
What would ye do now, Roland Cheyne,
Were ye Glenallan's Earl?'

'Were I Glenallan's Earl this tide,
And ye were Roland Cheyne,
The spear should be in my horse's side,
The bridle upon his mane.

'If they hae twenty thousand blades,
And we twice ten times ten,
Yet they hae but their tartan plaids,
And we are mail-clad men.

'My horse shall ride through ranks sae rude,
As through the moorland fern,
Then ne'er let gentle Norman blude
Grow cauld for Hieland kerne!'"

Scott was no declaimer. Although bred a barrister, he estimated the faculty of speech at its proper value, and never thought of making his heroes, on the eve of battle, address their soldiery in a harangue which would do credit to a President of the Speculative Society. In certain positions, eloquence is not only thrown away, but is felt to be rank impertinence. No need of rhetorical artifice to persuade the mob to the pumping of a pickpocket, or, in case of a general row, to the assault of an intoxicated policeman. Such things come quite naturally to their hands without exhortation, and it is dangerous to interfere with instinct. The Homeric heroes are, of any thing, a little too much given to talking. You observe two hulking fellows, in all their panoply of shield and armour, drawing nigh to one another at the fords of the Scamander, each with a spear about the size of a moderate ash-tree across his shoulder. The well-greaved Greek, you already know, is deep in the confidences of Minerva; the hairy Trojan, on the contrary, is protected by the Lady Venus. You expect an immediate onslaught; when, to your astonishment, the Greek politely craves some information touching a genealogical point in the history of his antagonist's family; whereat the other, nothing loath, indulges him with a yarn about Assaracus. Tros being out of breath, the Argive can do nothing less than proffer a bouncer about Hercules; so that, for at least half an hour, they stand lying like a brace of Sinbads—whilst Ajax, on the right, is spearing his proportion of the Dardans, and Sarpedon doing equal execution among the unfortunate Achivi on the left. Nor, until either warrior has exhausted his patriarchal reminiscences, do they heave up the boss and the bull-hide, or make play for a thrust at the midriff. Now, unless the genealogy of their opponents was a point of honour with the ancients—which it does not appear to have been—these colloquies seem a little out of place. In the middle ages, a knight would not enter the lists against an opponent of lesser rank; and in such a case, explanation is intelligible. But in battle there was no distinction of ranks, and no man cared a stiver about the birth and parentage of another. Genealogies, in fact, are awkward things, and should be eschewed by gentlemen in familiar discourse, as tending much less towards edification than offence. Many people are absurdly jealous on the subject of their coffined sires; nor is it wise in convivial moments to strike up an ancestral ditty to the tune of—

"Green grows the grass o'er the graves of my governors."

It was an unfortunate accident of this kind which led to the battle of the Reidswire.

"Carmichael bade him speak out plainly,
And cloke no cause for ill nor gude;
The other, answering him as vainly,
Began to reckon kin and blude.
He rase, and raxed him, where he stude,
And bade him match him with his marrows:
Then Tynedale heard them reason rude,
And they loot off a flight of arrows."

Scott's heroes are unusually terse and taciturn. They know their business better than to talk when they should be up and doing; and accordingly, with them, it is just a word and a blow.

"But no whit weary did he seem,
When, dancing in the sunny beam,
He marked the crane on the Baron's crest;
For his ready spear was in its rest.
Few were the words, and stern and high,
That marked the foemen's feudal hate;
For question fierce and proud reply,
Gave signal soon of dire debate.
Their very coursers seem'd to know,
That each was other's mortal foe,
And snorted fire, when wheel'd around,
To give each knight his vantage ground.