He it was, according to the old ballad, who rode to the bridal at the eleventh hour, with four and twenty Leader lads behind him:
'"I comena here to fight," he said,
"I comena here to play;
But to lead a dance wi' the bonnie bride,
And mount and go my way"';
and it was Lord Lochinvar (although 'he who told the story later' has taught us so differently) who played the inglorious part of the deserted bridegroom. Scott himself drank in the passion for Border romance and chivalry on the braes of Sandyknowe, between Leader and Eden waters, not far from Smailholm and Dryburgh, and Huntly Bank and Mellerstain, and Rhymer's Tower and the Broom o' the Cowdenknowes. According to Mr. Ford, the ballad which takes its name from this last-mentioned spot is traditionally assigned to a Mellerstain maid named Crosbie, whose words were set to music by no less famous a hand than that of David Rizzio. So that here at least we have a vague echo of the name of a balladist and of a ballad-air composer. Between them, the maid of Mellerstain and 'Davy' have harmonised most musically, albeit with some touch of moral laxity, the spirit of pastoral and of ballad romance:
'The hills were high on ilka side,
And the bucht i' the lirk o' the hill,
And aye as she sang her voice it rang
Out ower the head o' yon hill.
There cam' a troop o' gentlemen,
Merrily riding by,
And ane o' them rade out o' the way
To the bucht to the bonnie may.'
Nowhere has the ballad inspiration and the ballad touch lingered longer than by Eden and Leader and Whitadder. Lady Grizel Baillie (who also wonned in Mellerstain) had them—
'There once was a may and she lo'ed nae men,
And she biggit her bonnie bower doun in yon glen'—
and it still lives in Lady John Scott, who has sung of The Bonnie Bounds of Cheviot as if the mantle of the Border minstrels had fallen upon her.
After all, the ballads of Yarrow and Ettrick, of the Merse and Teviotdale, owe their superior fame as much as anything to the happy chance that the Wizard of Abbotsford dwelt in the midst of them, and seizing upon them before they were forgotten, made them and the localities classical. Other districts have in this way been despoiled to some extent of their proper meed of honour. Fortune as well as merit has favoured the Border Minstrelsy in the race for survival and for precedence in the popular memory. But Galloway, a land pervaded with romance, claims at least one ballad that can rank with the best. Lord Gregory has aliases and duplicates without number. But the scene is always Loch Ryan and some castled island within sight of that arm of the sea, whither the love-lorn Annie fares in her boat 'wi' sails o' the light green silk and tows o' taffetie,' in quest of her missing lord:
'"O row the boat, my mariners,
And bring me to the land!
For yonder I see my love's castle
Close by the salt sea strand."'