compose a ballad in a style long obsolete. This is not the method
of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as
Hardyknute show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or
skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.

We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard Mary
Hamilton as an old example of popular perversion of history in
ballad, not as "one of the very latest," and also "one of the very
best" of Scottish popular ballads.

Rob Roy shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but
his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and
James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian
spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. Indeed a
kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet
was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.

Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They
are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin,
composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused
among and altered by popular reciters. In England they soon won
their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled
and moralized by the hack editors.

No ballad has a stranger history than The Loving Ballad of Lord
Bateman, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray.
Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the
essence. Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is beloved by the
Turk's daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by
her released. The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he