‘An’ thu sall marry a proud gunner,
An’ a proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be.’
(The Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie)
Rise up, rise up, brother Dives,
And go with us to see
A dismal place, prepared in hell,
To sit on a serpent’s knee.
(Dives and Lazarus)
or, merely flat and pedestrian:
There was slayne upon the English part
For sooth as I you say,
Of ninè thousand English men
Five hundred came away.
(Otterburn)
But it is always unmistakable and like no other thing in poetry; in proof of which let me offer one simple, practical test. If any man ever steeped himself in balladry, that man was Scott, and once or twice, as in Proud Maisie and Brignall Banks, he came near to distil the essence. If any man, taking the Ballad for his model, has ever sublimated its feeling and language in a poem
seraphically free
From taint of personality,