"My tongue is mine ain," true Thomas said;
70 ["A gudely gift ye wad gie to me!]
I neither dought to buy nor sell,
At fair or tryst where I may be.
"I dought neither speak to prince or peer,
Nor ask of grace from fair ladye."—
75 "Now hold thy peace!" the lady said,
"For as I say, so must it be."—
He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair of shoes of velvet green;
And till seven years were gane and past,
80 True Thomas on earth was never seen.
[70]. The traditional commentary upon this ballad informs us, that the apple was the produce of the fatal Tree of Knowledge, and that the garden was the terrestrial paradise. The repugnance of Thomas to be debarred the use of falsehood, when he might find it convenient, has a comic effect. SCOTT.
THE YOUNG TAMLANE.
The Tayl of the Yong Tamlene is mentioned in the Complaynt of Scotland, (1548,) and the dance of Thom of Lyn is noticed in the same work. A considerable fragment of this ballad was printed by Herd, (vol. i. 215,) under the title of Kertonha', a corruption of Carterhaugh; another is furnished in Maidment's New Book of Old Ballads, (p. 54,) and a nearly complete version in Johnson's Museum, (p. 423,) which, with some alterations, was inserted in the Tales of Wonder, (No. 58.) The present edition, prepared by Sir Walter Scott from a collation of various copies, is longer than any other, but was originally disfigured by several supposititious stanzas here omitted. Another version, with Maidment's fragment, will be found in the Appendix to this volume.
"Carterhaugh is a plain, at the conflux of the Ettrick and Yarrow in Selkirkshire, about a mile above Selkirk, and two miles below Newark Castle; a romantic ruin which overhangs the Yarrow, and which is said to have been the habitation of our heroine's father, though others place his residence in the tower of Oakwood. The peasants point out, upon the plain, those electrical rings, which vulgar credulity supposes to be traces of the Fairy revels. Here, they say, were placed