'Rise up, rise up, my seven bauld sons,
And put on your armour so bright,
And take better care of your youngest sister,
For your eldest 's awa' the last night.'

In English variants, it is the sour serving-man or false bower-woman who
gives the alarm and sets the chase in motion. But there are other
differences that enter into the very essence of the story, and express
the diverse feeling of the Scottish and the English ballad. In the
latter there is a pretty scene of entreaty and reconciliation; the
lady's tears soften the harsh will of the father, and stay the lifted
blade of the lover, and all ends merry as a marriage bell. But in the
Scottish ballads fathers and lovers are not given to the melting mood.
In sympathy with the scenery and atmosphere, the ballad spirit is with
us sterner and darker; and just as the materials of that tender little
idyll of faithful love, _The Three Ravens_, are in Scottish hands
transformed into the drear, wild dirge of _The Twa Corbies_, the gallant
adventure of the _Child of Elle_ turns inevitably to tragedy by Douglas
Water and Yarrow. But how much more true to this soul of romance is the
choice of the northern minstrel! Lady Margaret, as she holds Lord
William's bridle-rein while he deals those strokes so 'wondrous sair' at
her nearest kin, is a figure that will haunt the 'stream of sorrow' as
long as verse has power to move the hearts of men:

'"O choose, O choose, Lady Marg'ret," he cried,
"O whether will ye gang or bide?"
"I 'll gang, I 'll gang, Lord William," she said,
"For you 've left me no other guide."

He lifted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a buglet horn hung down by his side,
And slowly they both rade away.

O they rade on, and farther on,
By the lee licht o' the moon,
Until they cam' to a wan water,
And there they lichted them doon.

"Hold up, hold up, Lord William," she said,
"For I fear that ye are slain."
"'Tis naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak
That shines in the water so plain."'

The man who can listen to these lines without a thrill is proof against
the Ithuriel spear of Romance. He is not made of penetrable stuff, and
need waste no thought on the Scottish ballads.

To close the tale comes that colophon that as naturally ends the typical
ballad as 'Once upon a time' begins the typical nursery tale:

'Lord