class the very simplicity of strength and sweetness in this wild
minstrelsy. The mere recitation or reading of the ballad, with such
unacademic and living comment as shall help the imagination of the
hearer to leap into a vivid realization of the swiftly shifted scenes,
the sympathy to follow with eager comprehension the crowded, changing
passions, the whole nature to thrill with the warm pulse of the rough
old poem, is perhaps the surest way to drive the ballad home, trusting
it to work within the student toward that spirit--development which is
more truly the end of education than mental storage. For these
primitive folk-songs which have done so much to educate the poetic
sense in the fine peasantry of Scotland,--that peasantry which has
produced an Ettrick Shepherd and an Ayrshire Ploughman,--are
assuredly,

"Thanks to the human heart by which we live,"

among the best educators that can be brought into our schoolrooms.



BALLADS OF SUPERSTITION.


THE WEE WEE MAN.

As I was wa'king all alane,
Between a water and a wa',
There I spy'd a wee wee man,
And he was the least that e'er I saw.