longed so grandly, and hoped so nobly for the sight of their native hills. I am not using the language of exaggeration when I say that the deeds, the sufferings, particularly the exile into Brittany, and the songs of the Cymri of the Tweed, grew into mediæval gest and romance; that the breath of those uplands gave inspiration to the literature of Europe in the twelfth century; as the ballad epics of the unknown minstrels of the Borders freshened it once again in the early part of this century of ours. The old songs and ballads of the Borderland, especially the Yarrow, are, as is well known, marked by an intense pathos, even sadness. The scenery no doubt had something to do with this, and the tragic deeds and the home sorrows that followed these have also their part in the result. But I cannot help thinking that the first source of the pathos and the sorrow, so far as human story is concerned, is to be sought further back than even the time of Scottish history. The wilds of the Yarrow, the Ettrick, the Teviot, and the Tweed were the last resort, the last hope of a far-back decaying nationality-that of the Cymri of Strathclyde. Their bards, Taliessin and Merdyn (or Merlin) poured out impassioned wailings over what seemed an inevitable fate. Here and there these strains are touched with a gleam of hope which was never realised, yet with a true Celtic fervour they clung to their native hills, subdued at heart, yet resolute and tenacious. And down even to the thirteenth century, and well on in Scottish history, they had preserved some fragments of their nationality, for their name still lingered at the Battle of the Standard (1138), and their customs were distinct and peculiar, for we still hear of the laws of the "Bretts and the Scotts."

What a strange and persistent thing is race! Not that it may always exist and prolong itself intact; but that, when fused or absorbed in other race and nationality its spirit yet remains the traits by which it was distinguished re-assert themselves, give tone and colour to all that is to follow, as sometimes (like the Rhone in the Lake of Geneva) two streams joining, the very colour of the waters is preserved in their united course over long stretches, and, though mingled, their separate characters are not lost. Is it not Mr. Grant Allen who has laid it down that wherever we find the true artistic sense, the music, the magic, the charm, the witching grace that cannot be defined, whether in music, poetry, or painting, there you are sure to find the trace of some Celtic strain? This has the most direct illustration here. Surely the poems and prophecies attributed to Thomas the Rhymer do indeed look like the out-bursting once more of the Cymri seer and romancer, the more too that his prophecies take on a romantic

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patriotic character. 'Such a man could not but see,' says Professor Veitch, 'that the traditional oppression of the ancient Britons was about to be repeated on their Saxon successors; he believed and hoped in a final deliverance; and he readily adapted to his own time the floating legends of Cymric sufferings, temporary deliverance, and at least unsubdued hopes'Atween Craik Cross and Eildon-tree,

Is a' the safety that shall be.'

Yet, as in the case of the Britons, the triumph was to be one of spirit, of phantasy, of imagination, and of a superior existence. In the Eildon hill, where King Arthur and his knights, passive, yet immortal, lay waiting for a new order of things, was the door into the world of Faërie. The sweet belief in that world was to be a salve for the woes of this one: nature itself was pledged to aid. Thus the Celtic phantasy re-arises to enrich with ideas and ideals which the reverses of earthly fortune cannot take away. 'Man is man and master of his fate.'

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In the poetic fragments connected with the Rhymour,' says Professor Veitch, 'not only is there a feeling for the softer side of natural beauty; there is obviously a sense, and an æsthetic one, of the wilder side; of the dark recesses of the mountain, and of the mysterious caverns among the moors. These the Saxon imagination had peopled with fierce and unlovely shapes for ages before. This finds its highest and best expression in Beowulf, and in the powers of evil dwelling in solitary meres and places which he assailed and overcame. The Rhymour was destined to make his journey in the dark ways, by the foundations of the hills and the deep sources of the springs, and to do it in company with one who, unlike the forms of the older faith, possessed something of the weakness and tenderness of humanity.

The montenans* of dayes three

He herd bot swoghynge + of the flode.

At the laste, he sayde, "Fulle wa" es mee
Almost I dye, for fawte of fode.'

The Sir Tristrem attributed to Thomas the Rhymour (Sir Walter Scott maintained this authorship, and argued that it was probably written in 1250) preserved the traditions then held in Lowland Scotland which had been handed down directly from the Cymric people of Strathclyde; and he held that it is the original and prolific source of the subsequent French and German romances regarding Sir Tristrem. Mr. Ellis says, 'Our ancestors appear to be indebted to a Scottish poet for the earliest model of a pure English style.'

The question whether this Sir Tristrem was an original, or had been derived from versions in French or Icelandic (for there was undoubtedly an early Icelandic as well as a French version) has been debated, and Professor Veitch, after careful consideration, inclines to the view that it was either an original or taken from the Icelandic, as the order of events in both these versions is much the same. This is a very doubtful point; though the latter view finds some support in the fact also that the glamour and phantasy which formed such noticeable elements in the Cymric poetry are wanting, and instead we have more of the Scandinavian character, narrative power and epical clearness; but this certainly does not apply to the series of poems in the Thornton MSS. in the Library of Lincoln Cathedral, which records the prophet's communings with the Queen of Faërieland and the prophetic utterances he learned from her, of which this is a specimen :

'At Threeburn Grange,§ on an after day,
There shall be a long and bloody fray;

Where a three-thumbed knight by the reins shall hald
Three king's horses, baith stout and bauld,
And the three burns three days shall rin,

Wi' the blude o' the slain that fa' therein.'

* Duration, the space of.

French faute, want (of food).

+ Soughing, pulsing, as of moving water.

§ Professor Veitch has this note: Probably grains, branches of a burn towards the head.'

The prophecies are all delivered in figures, obscure and dark, with touches of fine fancy and feeling for nature.

And do we not find in the ballads and songs of Yarrow and of Tweed some survival of the qualities which made the Cymri great, which have sufficed to preserve their name and fame; and do not these same traits look out upon us anew as with some sense of surprise, in the poems and romances of Sir Walter Scott, and in such inexpressibly beautiful and ideal fancy and picture as we find in James Hogg's Kilmeny' and in the weird and bold and highly imaginative 'Witch of Fife,' both of them founded on the conception of worlds and powers strange and supernatural, lying close to the ordinary and natural, and, indeed, springing from them.

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This is a note that is oft recurring. We have a very fine instance of it in the famous and powerful ballad of the Young Tamlane '—one of the most perfect and typical of its time: We must cite a few of the verses in illustration :—

'When I was a boy just turned of nine,

My uncle sent for me,

To hunt and hawk, and ride with him

And keep him companie.

Our shape and size we can convert
To either large or small :

An old nutshell's the same to us
As is the lofty hall.

We sleep in rosebuds soft and sweet,

We revel in the stream:

We wanton lightly on the wind,
Or glide on a sunbeam."

When Professor Veitch proceeds to speak of the ruined Castles and Peel towers that dot the Borderland he is not only eloquent, but brings to bear on the subject all the close knowledge of the scholar and man of patient research. The rough and bloody episodes of the middle ages he traces to social and political conditions in great part. There was not much unity, because there was too little dependence on the Scottish Crown. 'In some parts of the Lowlands, particularly near the Border, to say nothing of the Debateable Land which lay between the Esk and the Sark, the tenure of land was not always recognised by the owner as flowing from or dependent on the Scottish Crown.' The only title was too often continued occupancy alone. This in many cases placed the laird and his retainers beyond the reach of any law, save the might that lay in their broadswords. Necessarily and almost naturally, this lack of recognition of one sovereign power, led to clans and combinations of families for mutual protection, and hence the rise and maintenance of feuds through generations-feuds that now to us seem often only bloody and disgraceful. This accounts for much of the turbulent, revengeful and apparently bloodthirsty nature of the ballads of this period and down even to the times of the Stuarts and the Rebellions. Here is a very characteristic note, by which we see that even the Church could not do other than recognise the title by which these lords held their places. It was customary in these counties for long, to leave the right hand of male children unchristened, that it might deal the more deadly, in fact, the more unhallowed blow to the enemy. By this rite they were devoted to bear the family feud or enmity.'*

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* Minstrelsy, vii., 144.