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century, though probably not in the form we possess them. It was not, however, till much later that any collection of ballads was made; and few, as we possess them, can be dated farther back than the reign of Elizabeth."

From Chevy Chase. (Prof. Child's edition.)
The Persè owt off Northombarlande,

And a vowe to God mayd he,
That he wold hunte in the mountayns
Off Chyviat, within days thre,
In the mauger1 of doughtè Dogles,
And all that ever with him be.

The fattiste hartes in all Cheviat

He sayd he wold kill, and cary them away:
"Be my feth" sayd the dougheti' Doglas agayn,

"I wyll let that hontyng yf that I may."

Then the Persè owt of Banborowe cam,

With him a myghteè meany;4

With fifteen hondrith archares bold off blood and bone,

The wear chosen owt of shyars thre.

He sayd, "It was the Duglas promys
This day to met me hear;

But I wyste5 he wold faylle, verament:"
A great oth the Persè swear.

At the laste a squyar of Northom belonde
Lokyde at his hand full ny;

He was war a" the doughetie Doglas comynge,
With him a myghttè meany.

The dougheti Dogglas on a stede

He rode att his men beforne;

His armor glytteryde as dyd a glede;8
A bolder barne9 was never born.

"Tell me whos men ye ar," he says,

"Or whos men that ye be:

Who gave youe leave to hunte in this Chyviat chays,

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The first mane that ever him an answear mayd,
Yt was the good lord Persè:

"We wyll not tell the whoys men we ar," he says,
Nor whos men thet we be;

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But we wyll hount hear in this chays,
In the spyt of thyne and of the.1

The fattiste hartes in all Chyviat

We have kyld, and cast2 to carry them a-way:" "Be my troth," sayd the doughtè Dogglas agayn, "Ther-for the ton3 of us shall de1 this day."

Then sayd the doughtè Doglas

Unto the lord Persè:

"To kyll all thes giltles men,
Alas, it wear great pittè!

But, Persè, thowe art a lord of lande,

I am a yerle callyd within my contrè;
Let all our men uppone a parti" stande,

And do the battell off the and of me."

Then bespayke a squyar off Northombarlonde,
Richard Wytharyngton was him nam;

"It shall never be told in Sothe-Ynglonde," he says,

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LESSON 15.

SCOTTISH POETRY.-"This is poetry written in the English tongue by men living in Scotland. These men, though calling themselves Scotchmen, are of good English blood. But the blood, as I think, was mixed with an infusion of Celtic blood.

Old Northumbria extended from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, leaving, however, on its western border a line of unconquered land which took in Lancashire, Cumberland, and Westmoreland in England, and over the border most of the western country between the Clyde and Solway Firth. This unconquered country was the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde, and it was dwelt in by the Celtic race. The present English part of it was soon conquered, and the Celts were driven out. But in the part to the north of the Solway Firth, the Celts were not driven out. They remained, lived with the Englishmen who were settled over the old Northumbria, intermarried with them, and became under Scot kings one mixed people. Literature in the Lowlands, then, would have Celtic elements in it; literature in England was purely Teutonic. The one sprang from a mixed, the other from an unmixed race. I draw attention to this, because it seems to me to account for certain peculiarities in Scottish poetry which color the whole of it, which rule over it, and are specially Celtic.

CELTIC ELEMENTS OF SCOTTISH POETRY.-The first of these is the love of wild nature for its own sake. There is a passionate, close, and poetical observation and description of natural scenery in Scotland, from the earliest times of its poetry, such as is not seen in English poetry till the time of Wordsworth. The second is the love of color. All early Scottish poetry differs from English in the extraordinary way in which color is insisted on, and at times in the lavish exag

geration of it. The third is the wittier, more rollicking humor in the Scottish poetry, which is distinctly Celtic in contrast with that humor which has its root in sadness, and which belongs to the Teutonic races. Few things are really more different than the humor of Chaucer and the humor of Dunbar, than the humor of Cowper and that of Burns. are the special Celtic elements in the Lowland poetry.

These

Its National Elements came into it from the circumstances under which Scotland rose into a separate kingdom. The first of these is the strong, almost fierce, assertion of national life. The English were as national as the Scots, and felt the emotion of patriotism as strongly. But they had no need to assert it; they were not oppressed. the Scotch resisted for their very life the efforts of England to conquer them. And the war of freedom left its traces on their poetry from Barbour to Burns and Walter Scott in the almost obtrusive way in which Scotland and Scottish liberty and Scottish heroes are thrust forward in their verse.

But for nearly forty years

But

Their passionate nationality appears in another form in their descriptive poetry. The natural description of Chaucer, Shakespeare, or even Milton is not distinctively English. in Scotland it is always the scenery of their own land that the poets describe. Even when they are imitating Chaucer, they do not imitate his conventional landscape. They put in a Scotch landscape, and, in the work of such men as Gawin Douglas, the love of Scotland and the love of nature mingle their influences together to make him sit down, as it were, to paint, with his eye on everything he paints, a series of Scotch landscapes. It is done without any artistic composition; it reads like a catalogue, but it is work which stands quite alone at the time he wrote. There is nothing even resembling it in England for centuries after.

ITS INDIVIDUAL ELEMENT.-There is one more special element in early Scottish poetry which arose, I think, out of its political circumstances. All through the struggle for free

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