“He turned his charger as he spake
Upon the river shore,
He gave the bride-reins a shake,
Said ’Adieu for evermore,
My love! 
And adieu for evermore!’”

Here Scott catches the very air of popular poetry, and the dovetailing is done with most happy skill.  “Proud Maisie is in the Wood” is a fine example of the ballad manner of story-telling by implication.[14]

As regards their subject-matter, the ballads admit of a rough classification into the historical, or quasi-historical, and the purely legendary or romantic.  Of the former class were the “riding-ballad” of the Scottish border, where the forays of moss-troopers, the lifting of blackmail, the raids and private warfare of the Lords of the Marches, supplied many traditions of heroism and adventure like those recorded in “The Battle of Otterburn,” “The Hunting of the Cheviot,” “Johnnie Armstrong,” “Kinmont Willie,” “The Rising in the North” and “Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas.”  Of the fictitious class, some were shortened, popularized, and generally degraded versions of the chivalry romances, which were passing out of favor among educated readers in the sixteenth century and fell into the hands of the ballad-makers.  Such, to name only a few included in the “Reliques,” were “Sir Lancelot du Lake,” “The Legend of Sir Guy,” “King Arthur’s Death” and “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.”  But the substance of these was not of the genuine popular stuff, and their personages were simply the old heroes of court poetry in reduced circumstances.  Much more impressive are the original folk-songs, which strike their roots deep into the ancient world of legend and even of myth.

In this true ballad world there is a strange commingling of paganism and Catholic Christianity.  It abounds in the supernatural and the marvelous.  Robin Hood is a pious outlaw.  He robs the fat-headed monks, but will not die unhouseled and has great devotion to Our Blessed Lady; who appears also to Brown Robyn, when he is cast overboard, hears his confession and takes his soul to Heaven.[15] When mass has been sung and the bells of merry Lincoln have rung, Lady Maisry goes seeking her little Hugh, who has been killed by the Jew’s daughter and thrown into Our Lady’s draw-well fifty fathom deep, and the boy answers his mother miraculously from the well.[16] Birds carry messages for lovers[17] and dying men,[18] or show the place where the body lies buried and the corpse-candles shine.[19] The harper strings his harp with three golden hairs of the drowned maiden, and the tune that he plays upon them reveals the secret of her death.[20] The ghosts of the sons that have perished at sea come home to take farewell of their mother.[21] The spirit of the forsaken maid visits her false lover at midnight;[22] or “the dead comes for the quick,"[23] as in Burger’s weird poem.  There are witches, fairies, and mermaidens[24] in the ballads:  omens, dreams, spells,[25] enchantments, transformations,[26] magic rings and charms, “gramarye"[27] of many sorts; and all these things are more effective here than in poets like Spenser and Collins, because they are matters of belief and not of make-believe.