us pools of this fateful river; always the
woman is left to weep over her lost and 'lealfu' lord.' In the Dow Glen
it is the 'Border Widow,' upon whose bower the 'Red Tod of Falkland' has
broken and slain her knight, whose grave she must dig with her own
hands:

'I took his body on my back,
And whiles I gaed and whiles I sat;
I digged a grave and laid him in,
And happed him wi' the sod sae green.

But think nae ye my heart was sair
When I laid the moul's on his yellow hair;
O think nae ye my heart was wae
When I turned about awa' to gae.

Nae living man I 'll love again,
Since that my lovely knight is slain;
Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair
I 'll chain my heart for evermair.'

An echo of this, but blending with poignant grief a masculine note of
rage and vengeance, is the lament of Adam Fleming for Burd Helen, who
dropped dead in his arms at their trysting-place in 'fair Kirkconnell
Lea,' from the shot fired across the Kirtle by the hand of his jealous
rival:

'O thinkna ye my heart was sair,
When my love drapt doun and spak nae mair!
There did she swoon wi' meikle care
On fair Kirkconnell Lea.

O Helen fair, beyond compare!
I 'll make a garland o' thy hair
Shall bind my heart for evermair
Until the day I dee.'

Still older, and not less sad and sweet, is the lilt of _Willie Drowned
in Yarrow_, the theme amplified, but not improved, in Logan's lyric:

'O Willie 's fair and Willie 's rare,
And Willie wondrous bonnie;
And Willie hecht to marry me
If e'er he married ony.'

Gamrie, in Buchan, contends with the 'Dowie Howms' as the scene of this
fragment; but surely its sentiment is pure Yarrow:

'She sought him east, she sought him west,
She sought him braid and narrow;
Syne in the cleaving o' a craig
She found him drowned in Yarrow.'

But best-remembered of the Yarrow Cycle is _The Dowie Dens_. One cannot
analyse the subtle aroma of this flower of Yarrow ballads. In it the
song of the river has been wedded to its story 'like perfect music unto
noble words.' It is indeed the voice of Yarrow, chiding, imploring,
lamenting; a voice 'most musical, most melancholy.' A ballad minstrel
with a master-touch upon the chords of passion and pathos, with a
feeling for dramatic intensity of effect that Nature herself must have
taught him, must have left us these wondrous picture