day's journey of a royal personage, abundantly
testify. In the days of the Jameses few of the crowd could read, and
still fewer had the chance of reading. A ballad flying from voice to
voice across the country, sung at the ingle-neuk, repeated from one to
another in the little crowd at a "stairhead," in which the grossest
humorous view was the best adapted for the people, represented popular
literature. But most things that went on were visible to the crowding
population. They saw the foreign visitors, the ambassadors, the knights,
each with his distinguishable crest, who came to meet in encounter of
arms the knights of the Scottish Court. All that went on they had their
share in, and a kind of acquaintance with every notability. The public
events were a species of large emblazoned history which he who ran could
read.

These ballads above referred to came to singular note, however, in one
of the many discussions between England and Scotland which were carried
on by means of the frequent envoys sent to James from his uncle. The
Borders, it appears, were full of this flying literature sent forth by
unknown writers, and spread probably by, here and there, a wandering
friar, more glad of a merry rhyme than disconcerted by a satire against
his own cloth, or with still more relish dispersing over the countryside
reports of King Henry's amours and divorces, and of the plundering of
abbeys and profane assumption of sacred rights by a monarch who was so
far from sanctified. Popular prophecies of how a new believing king
should be raised up to disconcert the heretics, and on the northern side
of the Border of the speedy elevation of James to the throne of England,
and final victorious triumph of the Scottish side, flew from village to
village, exciting at last the alarm of Henry and his council, who made
formal complaint of them at the Scottish Court, drawing from James a
promise that if any of his subjects should be found to be the authors of
such productions they should suffer death for it--a heavy penalty for
literary transgression. In Scotland farther north it was another kind of
ballad which was said and sung, or whispered under the breath with many
a peal of rude laughter, the Satires of "Davy Lindsay" and many a lesser
poet--ludicrous stories of erring priests and friars, indecent but
humorous, with lamentable tales of dues exacted and widows robbed, and
all the sins of the Church, the proud bishop and his lemans, the
avar