arranged in a four-lined stanza of alternate eights and sixes, thus:

"Up then crew the red, red cock,
And up and crew the gray;
The eldest to the youngest said
''Tis time we were away.'"[4]

This is the stanza usually employed by modern ballad imitators, like
Coleridge in "The Ancient Mariner," Scott in "Jock o' Hazeldean,"
Longfellow in "The Wreck of the Hesperus," Macaulay in the "Lays of
Ancient Rome," Aytoun in the "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." Many of
the stylistic and metrical peculiarities of the ballads arose from the
fact that they were made to be sung or recited from memory. Such are
perhaps the division of the longer ones into fits, to rest the voice of
the singer; and the use of the burden or refrain for the same purpose, as
also to give the listeners and bystanders a chance to take up the chorus,
which they probably accompanied with a few dancing steps.[5] Sometimes
the burden has no meaning in itself and serves only to mark time with a
_Hey derry down_ or an _O lilly lally_ and the like. Sometimes it has
more or less reference to the story, as in "The Two Sisters":

"He has ta'en three locks o' her yellow hair--
Binnorie, O Binnorie--
And wi' them strung his harp sae rare--
By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie."

Again it has no discoverable relation to the context, as in "Riddles
Wisely Expounded"--

"There was a knicht riding frae the east--