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which a tumultuary cataract takes its course. This wild place is said in former times to have afforded refuge to an outlaw, who was supplied with provisions by a woman, who lowered them down from the brink of the precipice above. His water he procured for himself, by letting down a flaggon tied to a string, into the black pool beneath the fall.

Note IV.

Or raven on the blasted oak,

That, watching while the deer is broke,

His morsel claims with sullen croak.-St. V. p. 148. Every thing belonging to the chase was matter of solemnity among our ancestors, but nothing was more so than the mode of cutting up, or, as it was technically called, breaking the slaughtered stag. The forester had his allotted portion; the hounds had a certain allowance; and, to make the division as general as possible, the very birds had their share also. "There is a little gristle," says Turberville," which is upon the spoone of the brisket, which we call the raven's bone; and I have seen in some places a raven so wont and accustomed to it, that she would never fail to croak and cry for it all the time you were in breaking up of the deer, and would not depart till she had it." In the very ancient metrical romance of Sir Tristrem, that peerless Knight, who is said to have been the very deviser of all rules of chase, did not omit this ceremony:

"The raven he yaf his yiftes

Sat on the fourched tree."

SIR TRISTREM, 2d Edition, p. 34.

The raven might also challenge his rights by the Book of Saint Albans; for thùs says Dame Juliana Berners:—

Slitteth anon

The bely to the side from the corbyn bone;

That is corbins fee, at the death he will be.

Jonson, in "The Sad Shepherd," gives a more poetical ac

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Doth cleave the brisket bone upon the spoon,
Of which a little gristle grows-you call it-
Robin Hood. The raven's bone.

Marian,

Now o'er head sat a raven

On a sere bough, a grown, great bird and hoarse,
Who, all the time the deer was breaking up,
So croaked and cried for it, as all the huntsmen,
Especially old Scathlocke, thought it ominous."

Note V.

Which spills the foremost foeman's life,

That party conquers in the strife.-St. VI. p. 150.

Though this be in the text described as a response of the Taghairm, or Oracle of the Hide, it was of itself an augury frequently attended to. The fate of the battle was often anticipated in the imagination of the combatants, by observing which party first shed blood. It is said that the Highlanders under Montrose were so deeply embued with this notion, that on the morning of the battle of Tippermoor, they murdered a defenceless herdsman, whom they found in the fields, merely to secure an advantage of so much consequence to their party.

Note VI.

Alice Brand-St. XII. p. 158.

This little fairy tale is founded upon a very curious Danish ballad, which occurs in the KIEMPE VISER, a collection of heroic songs, first published in 1591, and re-printed in 1695, inscribed by Anders Sofrensen, the collector and editor, to Sophia Queen of Denmark. I have been favoured with a literal translation of the original, by my learned friend Mr Robert Jamieson, whose deep knowledge of Scandinavian antiquities will, I hope, one day be displayed in illustration of the history of Scottish Ballad and Song, for which no man possesses more ample materials. The story will remind the readers of the Border Minstrelsy of the tale of the Young Tamlane. But this is only a solitary and not very marked instance of coincidence, whereas several of the other ballads in the same collection, find exact counterparts in the KIEMPE VIWhich may have been the originals will be a question for future antiquarians. Mr Jamieson, to secure the power of literal translation, has adopted the old Scottish idiom, which approaches so near to that of the Danish, as almost to give word for word, as well as line for line, and indeed in many verses the orthography alone is altered. As Wester Haf, mentioned in the first stanza of the ballad, means the West Sea, in opposition to the Baltic, or East Sea, Mr Jamieson inclines to be of opinion, that the scene of the dis-enchantment is laid in one of the Orkney or Hebride Islands. To each verse in the original is added a burden, having a kind of meaning of its

SER.

own, but not applicable, at least not uniformly applicable, to the sense of the stanza to which it is subjoined: this is very common both in Danish aud Scottish song.

THE ELFIN GRAY.

TRANSLATED FROM THE DANISH KÆMPE VISER, p. 143, AND FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1591.

Der ligger en vold i Vester Haf,
Der agter en bondè at higgè :
Hand förer did baadè hög og hund,

Og agter dar om vinteren at liggè.

(DE VILDE DIUR OG DIURENE UDI SKOFVEN.)

1.

There liggs a wold in Wester Haf,

There a husbande means to bigg,

And thither he carries baith hawk and hound,

There meaning the winter to ligg.

(The wild deer and daes i' the shaw out.)

2.

He taks wi' him baith hound and cock,
The langer he means to stay,

The wild deer in the shaws that are

May sairly rue the day.

(The wild deer, &c.),

3.

He's hew'd the beech, and he's fell'd the aik,

Sae has he the poplar gray :

And grim in mood was the growsome elf,
That be sae bald he may.

4.

He hew'd him kipples, he hew'd him bawks,
Wi' mickle moil and haste;

Syne speer'd the elf in the knock that bade,
"Wha's hacking here sae fast?"

5.

Syne up and spak the weiest elf,

Crean'd as an immert sma :

"It's here is come a christian man ;

I'll fley him or he ga."

6.

It's up syne started the firsten elf,

And glowr'd about sae grim:

"It's we'll awa' to the husbande's house,

And hald a court on him.

7.

"Here hews he down baith skugg and shaw,

And wirks us skaith and scorn:

His huswife he shall gie to me ;

They's rue the day they were born!"

8.

The elfen a'i' the knock that were

Gaed dancing in a string;

They nighed near the husband's house ;-
Sae lang their tails did hing.

9.

The hound he yowls i' the yard;

The herd toots in his horn;

The earn scraichs, and the cock craws,
As the husbande had gi'en him his corn.

1 This singular quatrain stands thus in the original: "Hunden hand giör i gaarden;

Hiorden tudè i sit horn;

Ernen skriger, og hanen galer,

Som bonden hafdè gifvet sit korn."

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