and the 'Three Corbies' croaking the most grim and dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of ballad poetry, as they feast on the new-slain knight:
'Ye 'll sit on his white hause bane,
And I 'll pike oot his bonnie blue een;
Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair
We 'll theak our nest when it is bare.
O mony a ane for him maks mane,
But nae ane kens whaur he is gane,
O'er his white banes when they are bare
The wind shall sigh for evermair.'
But things that have neither sense nor life utter aloud words of menace and accusation. Lord Barnard's horn makes the forest echo with the warning notes, 'Away, Musgrave, away!' Binnorie embalms the tradition of the 'singing bone' which pervades the folklore of the Aryan peoples, and is found also in China and among the negro tribes of West Africa. A harper finds the body of the drowned sister, and out of her 'breast-bane' he forms a harp which he strings with her yellow hair. According to a northern version of the ballad, he makes a plectrum from 'a lith of her finger bane.' On this strange instrument the minstrel plays before king and court, and the strings sigh forth:
'Wae to my sister, fair Helén!'
In other ballads, the yearning or remorse of the living draw the dead from their graves. In the tale of The Cruel Mother, we seem to see the workings of the guilty conscience, which at length 'visualised' the victims of unnatural murder. The bride goes alone to the bonnie greenwood, to bear and to slay her twin children:
'She 's wrapped her mantle about her head,
All alone, and alonie O!
She 's gone to do a fearful deed
Down by the greenwood bonnie O!'
The crime and shame are hid; but peace does not come to her:
'The lady looked o'er her high castle wa',
All alone and alonie O!
She saw twa bonnie bairnies play at the ba'
Down by yon greenwood bonnie O!
The mother's yearning awakens within her, and she promises them all manner of gifts if they will only be hers. But the voices of the ghost-children rise and pronounce judgment on her: