Another point of great importance in the matter of internal evidence, is the isolatedness of these ballads in respect of English traditionary literature. The Scottish muse has not always gone hand in hand with the English in point of time, but she has done so in all other respects. Any literature we had from the beginning of the seventeenth century downwards, was always sensibly tinged by what had immediately before been in vogue in the south. Nor is it easy to see how a people occupying part of the same island, and speaking essentially the same language, should have avoided this communion of literary taste; but the ballads in question are wholly unlike any English ballads. Look over Percy, Evans, or Mr Collier's suite of Roxburghe Ballads, giving those which were popular in London during the seventeenth century, and you find not a trace of the style and manner of these Scottish romantic ballads. Neither, it would appear, had one of them found its way into popularity in England before the time of Percy; for, had it been otherwise, he would have found them either in print or in the mouths of the people. [ [29] ]
Upon all of these considerations, I have arrived at the conclusion, that the high-class romantic ballads of Scotland are not ancient compositions—are not older than the early part of the eighteenth century—and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind.
Whose was this mind, is a different question, on which no such confident decision may for the present be arrived at; but I have no hesitation in saying that, from the internal resemblances traced on from Hardyknute through Sir Patrick Spence and Gil Morrice to the others, there seems to me a great likelihood that the whole were the composition of the authoress of that poem—namely, Elizabeth Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie.
It may be demanded that something should be done to verify, or at least support, the allegation here made as to the peculiar literary character of the suspected ballads. This is, of course, a point to be best made out by a perusal of the entire body of this class of compositions, and scarcely by any other means. Still, it is a difference so striking, that even to present one typical ballad of true rustic origin, could not fail to make a considerable impression on the reader, after he has read specimens of those which are here attributed to a higher source. Be it observed, when an uneducated person speaks of knights, lords, and kings, or of dames and damosels, he reduces all to one homely level. He indulges in no diplomatic periphrases. It is simply, the king said this, and the lord said that—this thing was done, and that thing was done—the catastrophe or dénouement comes by a single stroke. This we find in the true stall-ballads. A vulgar, prosaic, and drawling character pervades the whole class, with few exceptions—a fact which ought to give no surprise, for does not all experience shew, that literature of any kind, to have effect, requires for its production a mind of some cultivation, and really good verse flowing from an uninstructed source is what never was, is not now, and never will be? With these remarks, I usher in a typical ballad of the common class—one taken down many years ago from the singing of an old man in the south of Scotland:
JAMES HATELIE.
It fell upon a certain day,
When the king from home he chanced to be,
The king's jewels they were stolen all,
And they laid the blame on James Hatelie.
And he is into prison cast,