"'Come, tell me, dearest mother, what makes my father stay,
Or what can be the reason that he's so long away?'
Oh! 'hold your tongue, my darling son, your tears do grieve me sore;
I fear he has been murdered in the fair of Turloughmore.'"
The third and principal source consists of the Anglo-Irish ballads, written during the last twenty or thirty years.
Of this highest class, he who contributes most and, to our mind, best is Mr. Ferguson. We have already spoken of his translations—his original ballads are better. There is nothing in this volume—nothing in Percy's Relics, or the Border Minstrelsy, to surpass, perhaps to equal, "Willy Gilliland." It is as natural in structure as "Kinmont Willie," as vigorous as "Otterbourne," and as complete as "Lochinvar." Leaving his Irish idiom, we get in the "Forester's Complaint" as harmonious versification, and in the "Forging of the Anchor" as vigorous thoughts, mounted on bounding words, as anywhere in the English literature.
We must quote some stray verses from "Willy Gilliland":—
"Up in the mountain solitudes, and in a rebel ring,
He has worshipped God upon the hill, in spite of church and king;
And sealed his treason with his blood on Bothwell bridge he hath;