BORDER ESSAYS.* LOVERS of Scotch and English poetry alike will

find much to interest them in these gathered-up essays of the late Pro- fessor Veitch. We say lovers of poetry advisedly, for though the notes on "The Vale of Manor and the Black Dwarf" range over another &id of literature, and other papers refer more particularly to historical events, still the main interest, we think, is centred in " The Yarrow of Wordsworth and Scott," and the discussion on the old ballad named "The Dowie Dens of Yarrow." Speaking of " Yarrow stream," Pro- fessor Veitch says :—" Around this stream—this valley with its hills, its ruined towers, its storied names—there has grown, through the last three centuries at least, a fulness of stirring associations and of imaginative feeling, a wealth of romantic ballad and pathetic song, such as is not paralleled in Scotland." It seems as if all the old associations, the memories linked with that quiet valley and the Border stream, had been gathered up, a rich harvest of poetic fancy, by Wordsworth. Even the poem written when Yarrow was yet unvisited adds to the sheaf. Many of us have to be satisfied with the thought :—

" Enough if in our hearts we know There's such a place as Yarrow."

The poet has transferred his own vision to us. We defer com- pleter knowledge until we, too, stand in Wordsworth's com- pany, as it were, eleven years later, when he first saw the Yarrow. The little company, including, according to Professor Veitch, Hogg, William Laidlaw, and Dr. Anderson, found their way to the stream through "one of the greenest, purest, most pathetic glens in the Borderland." We can imagine that the charm of the lonely scenery, the fulfilment of more youthful suggestions and anticipations, the flood of memories, historical and traditional, filled the poet at first with that emotion, that "pensive recollection" which is akin to sadness:— "But thou, that didst appear so fair

To fond imagination,

Dost rival in the light of day Her delicate 'Creation ; o Border Lays By John Veltch, N.A. London: W. Blackwood and Sona. Meek loveliness is round thee spread, A softness still and holy;

The grace of forest charms decayed, And pastoral melancholy."

Scott is probably responsible for the expression " pastoral melancholy." It is a reminiscence of the ballad of the "Dowie

Dens," dowie meaning melancholy, and the various versions of the " Braes of Yarrow " were obviously equally familiar to

Wordsworth. He has woven the essence of the old ballads into the substance of his poems. The "genuine image" that he has seen will dwell with him in after days, the memory will not be wholly melancholy, the sunshine that played on

the "ever-youthful waters" will cast its rays on his fancy. Professor Veitch tells us that—

"There are few valleys whose scenery is capable of greater contrasts at different times, and under different atmo- spheric conditions. It can smile and cheer in sunshine ; it can softly soothe in its green pastoral calm; or when the stream steals through the misty haughs, it can sadden, even depress, by suggestions of awe, gloom, and indefiniteness. On the same day even, the stream is in the sunny noon clear and sparkling ; in the gloaming it wears a wan pathetic look. A sudden mountain shower will shroud iv in gloom ; to be followed by a sudden out- burst of sunshine, which renders its green sloping braes at once golden and glad."

For the last time Wordsworth and Scott visited the stream they have both immortalised seventeen years later, when Words- worth and his daughter Dora were staying at Abbotsford. It was late in September, and autumnal days were gathering round the two, outwardly and inwardly :- " Grave thoughts ruled wide on that sweet day,

Their dignity installing In gentle bosoms, while sere leaves Were on the bough, or falling."

The landscape and the stream were still the same, still lighted by gleams of sunshine, the visitors alone were "changed and changing." Natural shadows were spreading over the head of the Minstrel of the Border ; it was Scott's last sight of his beloved Yarrow. The old traditions preserved in ballad and story, the raids and combats and feuds, so intimately con- nected with "the Forest," the district'of the Yarrow and the Ettrick, had filled his fancy and fired his imagination. Pro- fessor Veitch thinks that a deep undercurrent of sadness " tinges his descriptions of scenery,—especially of the Border district." He thinks this "background of pathos" is partly due to the brooding over a stirring but irrevocable past, and partly to the colourless monotony of the moors and glens, the long winter, the dead bracken, the dark stretches of heather.

A vivid imagination must always feel emotion in gazing on any scene rich in memories of past days, and such emotion will be felt in the deeper side of man's nature; he will recall with passionate sadness that- " There hath past away a glory from the earth."

Heroism, loyalty, endurance, when we hear their echoes even dimly, stir some chord that thrills in response; the poetic nature must be doubly impressionable, even more keenly alive and responsive to such thrilling. It exclaims with Shelley :—

" We look before and after,

And pine for what is not : Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught;

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought."

To quote once more from Professor Veitch :—" The introduc- tion to the second canto of " Marmion" lays bare the whole inner heart of Scott. It is devoted almost wholly to the Yarrow. It is the lifelong feeling of the man,—deep, loving, passionate. Regret for the past, vivid imagining of it, old memories strong as if they were present perceptions, the softening and subduing power of old story,—all this we find."

The ballad mentioned above, " The Dowie Dens of Yarrow," is the well-known one compiled by Sir Walter Scott from

several versions, and included in his Minstrelsy. Professor Veitch claims to have discovered an earlier ballad of the Yarrow

than either " Willy's drowned in Yarrow" or the "Dowie Dens," He traces its genealogy back to the early part of the

last century, a copy having been preserved in the family of the late " William Welsh, Peebleshire cottar and poet," and handed down through several generations. William Welsh recited the ballad when he was an old man to Professor Veitch, and wrote it out for him, "stating very explicitly that it was from the recitation of his mother and grandmother." The Professor is an authority on Scotch border poetry, and he

concludes that this version of "The Dowie Dens" is older than the earliest printed fragment by Herd, and probably as early as " Rare Willy's drowned in Yarrow," first printed by Allan Ramsay in 1724. He thinks that this early version clears up the incongruities that have puzzled various ballad editors, and that it is probably the fountain-head of both these Yarrow ballads, and that the " Dowie Dens" as com- piled by Sir Walter Scott " was a mixed, therefore incongruous, reference to the incident of the earlier ballad, and to a later incident in the relations of the families of Scott of Thirlestane and Scott of Tuschielaw." The incident of one man fighting nine, being killed treacherously, and thrown into the Yarrow, is the same in both versions, but the position of the single man who fought is essentially different.

In the introduction to the " Dowie Dens " in the Minstrelsy Sir Walter Scott alludes to the hero of the ballad as being a brave knight named Scott, of Kirkhope or Oakwood Castle, called the Baron of Oakwood, and says that according to tradition he was treacherously murdered by the brother, either of his wife or of his betrothed bride. In the older version as furnished by Welsh the first stanzas dispel this illusion :- " At Dryhope lived a lady fair, The fairest flower in Yarrow ; And she refused nine noble men For a semen' lad in Gala.

Her father said that he should fight The nine lords all to-morrow ; And he that should the victor be, Would get the Rose of Yarrow."

Here, at once, is the reason for the unequal contest, and also for the conduct of the lady's brother, who sprang upon the young man from behind a bush when he was fighting the nine lords or "lairds," and slew him treacherously. Then the body was thrown ignominiously into the Yarrow, and the lady recounts her dream :— " The lady said,' I dreamed yestreen,

I fear it bodes some sorrow, That I was pu'in' the heather green, On the scroggy braes o' Yarrow.' " (Welsh's version.)

The older ballad omits the beautiful stanza given by Herd in his fragment, and embodied by Scott :-- " 0 gentle wind that bloweth south From where my love repaireth, Convey a kiss from his dear mouth, And tell me how he fareth,"

but contains the couplet-

" But only saw the cloud o' night, Or heard the roar of Yarrow," which Logan introduced into his song of "The Braes of Yarrow," published in 1770. Professor Veitch descants on the epithet " scroggy braes " with much relish of its appro- priateness. " Scroggy," he says, "is better than all. This expresses exactly the look of the stunted trees and bushes on the braes of Yarrow—two and a half centuries ago, when the forest was decaying—such as only a native minstrel could have seen or felt. The scraggy braes '—this was never said before in Scottish ballad or minstrel song—yet it is so true and so ancient !" Whether this old ballad settles the vexed question of the heroship of the ballad, and whether the heroine was wife or betrothed, seems to us a small matter, but to have recovered an early version of so favourite a theme, and one immortalised by the associations cast round it by Scott and Wordsworth, is a matter of genuine congratulation, while the lights thrown on the various versions and their details are exceptionally interesting and instructive.