About the middle o' the night,

The cocks began to craw;
And at the dead hour o' the night,
The corpse began to thraw.

«O whae has done the wrang, sister, Or dared the deadly sin?

Whae was sae stout, and fear'd nae dout, As thraw ye o'er the linn ?"

46

Young Benjie was the first ae man

I laid my love upon;

He was sae stout, and proud-hearted,
He threw me o'er the linn.”—

"Sall we young Benjie head, sister,
Sall we young Benjie hang,
Or sall we pike out his twa gray een,
And punish him ere he gang?".

"Ye maunna Benjie head, brothers, Ye maunna Benjie hang,

But ye maun pike out his twa gray een, And punish him ere he gang.

"Tie a green gravat round his neck,

And lead him out and in,

And the best ae servant about

your house

To wait young Benjie on.

"And aye, at every seven years' end,
Ye'll tak him to the linn;

For that's the penance he maun dree,
To scug1 his deadly sin."-

Scug-Shelter, or expiate.

VOL. III.

B

LADY ANNE.

THIS ballad was communicated to me by Mr Kirkpatrick Sharpe of Hoddom, who mentions having copied it from an old magazine. Although it has probably received some modern corrections, the general turn seems to be ancient, and corresponds with that of a fragment, containing the following verses, which I have often heard sung in my childhood :—

"She set her back against a thorn,

And there she has her young son born;
'O smile nae sae, my bonny babe!

An

ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead.'—

An' when that lady went to the church,
She spied a naked boy in the porch.

"O bonny boy, an ye were mine,
I'd clead ye in the silks sae fine.'-
'O mother dear, when I was thine,
To me ye were na half sae kind.” ” 1

Stories of this nature are very common in the annals of popular superstition. It is, for example, currently

1 [Mr Motherwell has received, from recitation in the west of Scot. land, a fuller, and less poetical, copy of this piece

believed in Ettrick Forest, that a libertine, who had destroyed fifty-six inhabited houses, in order to throw the possessions of the cottagers into his estate, and who added, to this injury, that of seducing their daughters, was wont to commit to a carrier in the neighbourhood the care of his illegitimate children, shortly after they were born. His emissary regularly carried them away, but they were never again heard of. The unjust and cruel gains of the profligate laird were dissipated by his extravagance, and the ruins of his house seem to bear witness to the truth of the rhythmical prophecies denounced against it, and still current among the peasantry. He himself died an untimely death; but the agent of his amours and crimes survived to extreme old age. When on his death-bed, he seemed much oppressed in mind, and sent for a clergyman to speak

"She leaned her back unto a thorn,
And there she has her two babes born.
She took frae 'bout her ribbon belt,
And there she bound them hand and foot.
She has ta'en out her wee penknife,

And there she ended baith their life," &c.

Minstrelsy, 1827, p. 161.

But Mr Buchan produces what he considers as a perfect edition. See his second volume, p. 222, "The Cruel Mother." One verse will show how the burden is introduced :

"She's howkit a hole anent the meen, Edinbro', Edinbro',
She's howkit a hole anent the meen, Stirling for aye;

She's howkit a hole anent the meen,

There laid her sweet baby in;

So proper Saint Johnstown stands fair upon Tay "-ED.]

peace to his departing spirit: but, before the messenger returned, the man was in his last agony; and the terrified assistants had fled from his cottage, unanimously averring, that the wailing of murdered infants had ascended from behind his couch, and mingled with the groans of the departing sinner.