Yet, even now, we are not at the end of this most fortunate
discovery. It would appear that there was little demand for works
of learning and religion in Scotland, or at least at Fairport; for
the parchment sheet contains fragments of a Ballad in the Scots
tongue. None but a poor and struggling printer would then have
lent his types to such work, and fortunate for us has been the
poverty of your great ancestor. Here we have the very earliest
printed ballad in the world, and, though fragmentary, it is the
more precious as the style proves to demonstration, and against the
frantic scepticism even of a Ritson, the antique and venerable
character of those compositions. I send you a copy of the Ballad,
with the gaps (where the tooth of time or of the worm, edax rerum,
hath impaired it) filled up with conjectural restorations of my
own. But how far do they fall short of the original simplicity!
Non cuivis contingit. As the title is lacking, as well as the
imprint, I have styled it


THE FRAGMENT OF THE FAUSE LOVER
AND THE DEAD LEMAN.

O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the shore and sea,
And still it was his dead Lady
That kept him company.

O Willie rade, and Willie gaed
Atween the [loch and heather],
And still it was his dead Lady