CONTENTS

OF VOLUME FOURTH.

PART III.

MINSTRELSY OF THE SCOTTISH BORder.

IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT BALLAD.

Thomas the Rhymer. In three Parts. Part I.

110

Part II.

129

War-Song of the Royal Edinburgh Light Dragoons,

230

On a Visit paid to the Ruins of Melrose Abbey, by the

Countess of Dalkeith, and her son, Lord Scott,

379

Archie Armstrong's Aith,

381

MINSTRELSY

OF THE

SCOTTISH BORDER:

CONSISTING OF

HISTORICAL AND ROMANTIC BALLADS,

COLLECTED

IN THE SOUTHERN COUNTIES OF SCOTLAND; WITH A FEW OF MODERN DATE, FOUNDED UPON

LOCAL TRADITION.

VOL. IV.

The songs, to savage virtue dear,
That won of yore the public ear,
Ere polity, sedate and sage,

Had quench'd the fires of feudal rage.

WARTON.

A

ESSAY

ON

IMITATIONS OF THE ANCIENT

BALLAD.'

THE invention of printing necessarily occasioned the downfall of the Order of Minstrels, already reduced to contempt by their own bad habits, by the disrepute attached to their profession, and by the laws calculated to repress their license. When the Metrical Romances were very many of them in the hands of every one, the occupation of those who made their living by reciting them was in some degree abolished, and the minstrels either disappeared altogether, or sunk into mere musicians, whose utmost acquaintance

[This essay was written in April 1830, and forms a continuation of the "Remarks on Popular Poetry," printed in the first volume of the present series.-ED.]