scruple in prosing a ballad or softening down over-abundant dialect.
This is rank sacrilege in the eyes of the rigid orthodox in matters
folk-lorical. My defence might be that I had a cause at heart as sacred
as our science of folk-lore--the filling of our children's imaginations
with bright trains of images. But even on the lofty heights of folk-lore
science I am not entirely defenceless. Do my friendly critics believe
that even Campbell's materials had not been modified by the various
narrators before they reached the great J.F.? Why may I not have the
same privilege as any other story-teller, especially when I know the
ways of story-telling as she is told in English, at least as well as a
Devonshire or Lancashire peasant? And--conclusive argument--wilt thou,
oh orthodox brother folk-lorist, still continue to use Grimm and
Asbjörnsen? Well, they did the same as I.

Then as to using tales in Lowland Scotch, whereat a Saturday Reviewer,
whose identity and fatherland were not difficult to guess, was so
shocked. Scots a dialect of English! Scots tales the same as English!
Horror and Philistinism! was the Reviewer's outcry. Matter of fact is my
reply, which will only confirm him, I fear, in his convictions. Yet I
appeal to him, why make a difference between tales told on different
sides of the Border? A tale told in Durham or Cumberland in a dialect
which only Dr. Murray could distinguish from Lowland Scotch, would on
all hands be allowed to be "English." The same tale told a few miles
farther North, why should we refuse it the same qualification? A tale in
Henderson is English: why not a tale in Chambers, the majority of whose
tales are to be found also south of the Tweed?

The truth is, my folk-lore friends and my Saturday Reviewer differ with
me on the important problem of the origin of folk-tales. They think that
a tale probably originated where it was found. They therefore attribute