Here we have the same style of luxurious description of which we have already seen so many examples—so different from the usually bald style of the real homely ballads of the people. It is, further, very remarkable that in Clerk Saunders it is seven brothers of the heroine who come in and detect her lover; and in the Douglas Tragedy, when the pair are eloping, Lord William spies his mistress's
... seven brethren bold
Come riding o'er the lee.
Both of these ballads, indeed, shew a structure and a strain of description and sentiment justifying the strongest suspicions of their alleged antiquity, and pointing to the same source as the other pieces already noticed.
The ballad of Fause Foodrage, which Sir Walter Scott printed for the first time, describes a successful conspiracy by Foodrage and others against King Honour and his queen. The king being murdered, the queen is told, that if she brings forth a son, it will be put to death likewise; so she escapes, and, bringing a male child into the world, induces the lady of Wise William to take charge of it as her own, while she herself takes charge of the lady's daughter. The unfortunate queen then arranges a future conduct for both parties, in language violently figurative:
'And ye maun learn my gay gos-hawk,
Right weel to breast a steed;
And I sall learn your turtle-dow
As weel to write and read.
'And ye maun learn my gay gos-hawk,