“Yestreen, when to the trembling string
        The dance gaed through the lighted ha’,
      To thee my fancy took its wing,
        I sat, but neither heard nor saw. 
      Tho’ this was fair, and that was bra’,
        And yon the toast of a’ the town,
      I sighed and said among them a’,
        Ye are na’ Mary Morison.”

That beginning, “Oh gin my love were a bonny red rose,” is a piece of rich and fantastic description.  One would think that nothing could surpass these in beauty of expression, and in true pathos:  and nothing does or can, but some of the old Scotch ballads themselves.  There is in them a still more original cast of thought, a more romantic imagery—­ the thistle’s glittering down, the gilliflower on the old garden-wall, the horseman’s silver bells, the hawk on its perch—­a closer intimacy with nature, a firmer reliance on it, as the only stock of wealth which the mind has to resort to, a more infantine simplicity of manners, a greater strength of affection, hopes longer cherished and longer deferred, sighs that the heart dare hardly heave, and “thoughts that often lie too deep for tears.”  We seem to feel that those who wrote and sung them (the early minstrels) lived in the open air, wandering on from place to place with restless feet and thoughts, and lending an ever-open ear to the fearful accidents of war or love, floating on the breath of old tradition or common fame, and moving the strings of their harp with sounds that sank into a nation’s heart.  How fine an illustration of this is that passage in Don Quixote, where the knight and Sancho, going in search of Dulcinea, inquire their way of the countryman, who was driving his mules to plough before break of day, “singing the ancient ballad of Roncesvalles.”  Sir Thomas Overbury describes his country girl as still accompanied with fragments of old songs.  One of the best and most striking descriptions of the effects of this mixture of national poetry and music is to be found in one of the letters of Archbishop Herring, giving an account of a confirmation-tour in the mountains of Wales.

“That pleasure over, our work became very arduous, for we were to mount a rock, and in many places of the road, over natural stairs of stone.  I submitted to this, which they told me was but a taste of the country, and to prepare me for worse things to come.  However, worse things did not come that morning, for we dined soon after out of our own wallets; and though our inn stood in a place of the most frightful solitude, and the best formed for the habitation of monks (who once possessed it) in the world, yet we made a cheerful meal.  The novelty of the thing gave me spirits, and the air gave me appetite much keener than the knife I ate with.  We had our music too; for there came in a harper, who soon drew about us a group of figures that Hogarth would have given any price for.  The harper was in his true place and attitude; a man and woman stood