her side of Spey, that, in the
year 1592, the _Bonnie Earl o' Moray_ fell so far away as Donibristle,
in Fife. The mystery of the _Burning of Frendraught_ took place in 1630;
the tragedy of _Mill o' Tiftie's Annie_--one of the few dramas in which
the balladist is content to take his characters from humble life--is
dated, from the tombstone in Fyvie churchyard, in the year following,
and is placed in Gordon country, and under the shadow of the Setons that
became Gordons. _The Bonnie House o' Airlie_ treats of one of the
incidents of the Civil War, and, for a wonder, in the true ballad
fashion; and it turns, as the balladists are apt to do, a crooked and
misliking look on the 'gleyed Argyll'; while that fine Deeside ballad,
_The Baron o' Bracklay_, deals with an encounter between Farquharsons
and Gordons in the period of the Restoration.

After this, however, we hardly meet with a ballad having the antique
ring about it, even on the Highland Line. The fine gold had become dim,
or mixed with later clay. The mood and condition of the nation had
changed. The 'end of the auld sang' of the Scottish Parliament was the
end also of the ballad. There was an outburst of national feeling,
expressed in song and music, over the Jacobite risings of last century;
Allan Ramsay rose like a star at its beginning, and Burns shone out
gloriously towards its close. But the expression was lyrical, and not
narrative. The ballad of the old type no longer grew naturally and
freshly by edge of copse and shaw. The collector had his eye upon it,
and was already collecting, comparing, and classifying--and, what was
worse, correcting, restoring, and improving.

CHAPTER III

BALLAD STRUCTURE AND BALLAD STYLE

'Strike on, strike on, Glenkindie,
O' thy harping do not blinne,
For every stroke goes o'er thy harp,
It stounds my heart within.'

_Glenkindie._

The old ballads were made to be sung; or, at least, to be chanted. An
inquiry whether the traditional ballad airs preceded the words, or _vice
versa_, would probably lead us to no more certain conclusions than that
of whether the egg came before the fowl or the fowl before the egg. Both
ballads and ballad airs have come down to us greatly changed and
corrupted; and probably it is the airs that have suffered most from
neglect and from alteration. Notation of the simple and plaintive and
sweet old melodies appropriated in the ears and lips of the people to
the