Ballads of the North Countrie. Edited, with Introduction and Notes,
by Graham R. Tomson. (Walter Scott.)—Uniform with Mr. Macquoid's "Jacobite Songs," and forming an additional volume to a handy and well got-up series of "Poetical Antho- logies" now being published, we have Mr. Tomson's interesting selection of Northern ballads. Reprinted for the most part from larger collections often not easily attainable, or deterrent by reason of their bulk, the present volume will have the merit, in common with so many recent publications, of making some of the chief treasures of our ballad literature known, or at least
knowable, to many who are good-naturedly willing to be charmed and interested if the means are thrown in their way. An interest in ballad poetry is not difficult to awaken or sustain. The subjects, whether drawn from ancient legends which never seem to lose their hold upon us, but crop up again and again in various forms in many kindred countries, or from more recent events which have had particular power to touch the heart and kindle the imagination, are brought before us in ballads so easily, so forcibly, so simply, and often so dramatically, that the romantic side of our natures is set aglow without any effort or prolonged strain. In the present volume, the ballads are classed according to the nature of their subject, the preference in number being rightly given to the romantic and supernatural, as possessing a wider and more varied interest than those of more recent and local origin. The notes are good, and neither too prominent nor too numerous. There is no glossary, but we hardly feel this deficiency in the same proportion as our want of exact know- ledge. It is hard, for example, to persuade ourselves, in reading these expressive and touching little lines,—
" He lighted at the ledge's yate And sat him on a pin,
And sang fu' sweet the notes o' lore Till a was cosh within,"
that some of us are ignorant of the exact meaning of "cosh," or that our ignorance greatly matters : it is harder still to imagine ourselves deliberately looking out the meaning, or coming away from the search with any heightened feeling of gratification in the knowledge acquired.
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