...lies, Like Eden's dread probationary tree, Knowledge of good and evil is from thee." COWPEB. "T KNETV a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." So wrote that bold and intelligent seventeenth-century politician, Andrew Fletcher of Saltown, in a...

...their history; and perhaps Fletcher of Saltoun (1655-1716) was thinking on these lines when he observed that 'if a man were permitted to make all the ballads,...need not care who should make the laws of a nation'. In fact the laws of a nation have often been put into verse, mainly no doubt because they were thus...

...And history is the basis of myth in modern life. Nearly three hundred years ago Andrew Fletcher said, "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads,...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." We have gone from ballads to headlines and histories, but the interpreters of our past still affect...

...often-quoted and always misquoted saying of a stout Scotch republican of two centuries ago, Andrew Fletcher: " I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." Indeed, who is there among us that can repeat the language of any law? and who that cannot repeat multitudes...

...style of music, he averred, could upset a state. The poet Fletcher is often quoted to the same effect: "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads,...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." Happily, nothing is as simple as this. Yet music, drama, and art, whether high or low, make one feel...

...writes — " I said I knew a very wise man, so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads he...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." This may be rudely paraphrased, that it is more important to make the songs of a nation than to frame...

...leisure hours to strengthening or exhilarating strains. A wise friend of Fletcher of Saltoun remarked that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads,...need not care who should make the laws of a nation. In a manner somewhat similar, one might assert that the chronicles of a nation, or a community, are...

...great consequence. I said, I knew a very wise man so much of Sir Chr-'s sentiment, that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he...need not care who should make the laws of a nation. And we find that most of the antient legislators thought they could not well reform the manners of...

...Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun (1653-1716) wrote in a letter to the marquis of Montrose, the earl of Rothes, "I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." Today it's television that makes "all the ballads." It comes into the home where the child is born....

...story-telling transactions (Fisher, 1984). Gerbner often quotes Scottish patriot Andrew Fletcher's observation that "If a man were permitted to make all the ballads,...need not care who should make the laws of a nation." Such a romantic notion is not easily testable, but that makes it no less compelling. The stories of...