ngs. He inherited the popular beliefs. His
great-grandmother on one side was a notorious witch; his grandfather on
the other side had "spoken with the fairies." His poetry, such as it is,
is fluent and spontaneous. Motherwell's, on the contrary, is the work of
a ballad fancier, a student learned in lyric, reproducing old modes with
conscientious art. His balladry is more condensed and skilful than
Hogg's, but seems to come hard to him. It is literary poetry trying to
be _Volkspoesie_, and not quite succeeding. Many of the pieces in the
southern English, such as "Halbert the Grim," "The Troubadour's Lament,"
"The Crusader's Farewell," "The Warthman's Wail," "The Demon Lady," "The
Witches' Joys," and "Lady Margaret," have an echo of Elizabethan music,
or the songs of Lovelace, or, now and then, the verse of Coleridge or
Byron. "True Love's Dirge," _e.g._, borrows a burden from
Shakspere--"Heigho! the Wind and Rain." Others, like "Lord Archibald: A
Ballad," and "Elfinland Wud: An Imitation of the Ancient Scottish
Romantic Ballad," are in archaic Scotch dialect with careful ballad
phrasing. Hogg employs the broad Scotch, but it is mostly the vernacular
of his own time. A short passage from "The Witch of Fife" and one from
"Elfin Wud" will illustrate two very different types of ballad manner:

"He set ane reid-pipe till his muthe
And he playit se bonnileye,
Till the gray curlew and the black-cock flew
To listen his melodye.

"It rang se sweit through the grim Lommond,
That the nycht-winde lowner blew:
And it soupit alang the Loch Leven,
And wakenit the white sea-mew.

"It rang se sweit through the grim Lommond,
Se sweitly but and se shill,
That the wezilis laup out of their mouldy holis,
And dancit on the mydnycht hill."

"Around her slepis the quhyte muneschyne,
(Meik is mayden undir kell),
Hir lips bin lyke the blude reid wyne;
(The rois of flouris hes sweitest smell).

"It was al bricht quhare that ladie stude,
(Far my luve fure ower the sea).
Bot dern is the lave of Elfinland wud,
(The Knicht pruvit false that ance luvit me).

"The ladie's handis were quhyte als milk,
(Ringis my luve wore mair nor ane).
Hir skin was safter nor the silk;
(Lilly bricht schinis my luve's halse bane)."

Upon the whole, the most noteworthy of Motherwell's original additions to
the stores of romantic verse were his poems on subjects from Norse le