The song and the story, the recitation and the book read aloud are, in town and in village, mansion and farmhouse, amongst the universal resources of the winter nights now, as they or their equivalents have at all times been. The narratives of "old adventures, and valiaunces of noble knights, in times past," the stories of Sir Bevys of Southampton and Sir Guy of Warwick, of Adam Bell, Clymme of the Clough, and William of Cloudesley, with other ancient romances or historical rhymes, which formed the recreation of the common people at their Christmas dinners and bride-ales long ago, may have made way for the wild legend of the sea, or fearful anecdote—
"Of horrid apparition, tall and ghastly,
That walks at dead of night, or takes its stand
O'er some new opened grave, and, strange to tell,
Evanishes at crowing of the cock;"
and for the more touching ballads which sing of the late repentance of the cruel Barbara Allan,—
"O mither, mither, mak my bed,
O mak it saft and narrow;
Since my love died for me to-day,
I'll die for him to morrow;"
or how the
"Pretty babes, with hand in hand,
Went wandering up and down;
But never more could see the man
Returning from the town;"
or how "there came a ghost to Margaret's door," and chilled the life-blood in her veins, by his awful announcement,—
"My bones are buried in a kirk-yard,
Afar beyond the sea;
And it is but my sprite, Marg'ret,
That's speaking now to thee;"
or may have been replaced, in higher quarters, by the improved narrative literature of the present day, and the traditions or memories which haunt all homes. But the spirit of the entertainment itself is still the same, varied only by circumstances in its forms.
