"The Banks of Yarrow:"

"Late at e'en, drinking the wine,
And ere they paid the lawing,
They set a combat them between,
To fight it in the dawing."

With this, an indirect, allusive way of telling the story, which Goethe
mentions in his prefatory note to "Des Sängers Fluch," as a constant note
of the "Volkslied." The old ballad-maker does not vouchsafe explanations
about persons and motives; often he gives the history, not expressly nor
fully, but by hints and glimpses, leaving the rest to conjecture;
throwing up its salient points into a strong, lurid light against a
background of shadows. The knight rides out a-hunting, and by and by his
riderless horse comes home, and that is all:

"Toom[9] hame cam the saddle
But never cam he."

Or the knight himself comes home and lies down to die, reluctantly
confessing, under his mother's questioning, that he dined with his
true-love and is poisoned.[10] And again that is all. Or

"--In behint yon auld fail[11] dyke,
I wot there lies a new-slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

"His hound is to the hunting game,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,