In the second volume of the "Minstrelsy" were included what Scott calls
his "first serious attempts in verse," viz., "Glenfinlas" and "The Eve of
St. John," which had been already printed in Lewis' "Tales of Wonder."
Both pieces are purely romantic, with a strong tincture of the
supernatural; but the first--Scott himself draws the distinction--is a
"legendary poem," and the second alone a proper "ballad."
"Glenfinlas," [25] founded on a Gaelic legend, tells how a Highland
chieftain while hunting in Perthshire, near the scene of "The Lady of the
Lake," is lured from his bothie at night and torn to pieces by evil
spirits. There is no attempt here to preserve the language of popular
poetry; stanzas abound in a diction of which the following is a fair
example:

"Long have I sought sweet Mary's heart,
And dropp'd the tear and heaved the sigh:
But vain the lover's wily art
Beneath a sister's watchful eye."

"The Eve of St. John" employs common ballad stuff, the visit of a
murdered lover's ghost to his lady's bedside--

"At the lone midnight hour, when bad spirits have power"--

but the poet, as usual, anchors his weird nightmares firmly to real names
and times and places, Dryburgh Abbey, the black rood of Melrose, the
Eildon-tree, the bold Buccleuch, and the Battle of Ancram Moor (1545).
The exact scene of the tragedy is Smailholme Tower, the ruined keep on
the crags above his grandfather's farm at Sandynowe, which left such an
indelible impression on Scott's childish imagination.[26] "The Eve" is