Walter Scott 
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border 

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Fair Helen, again, is a poem of great tender ness and beauty; and The Flowers of the Forest has a haunting charm of its own in a more delicate and modern way. But another brief ballad (also lamenting F lodden) was worthier than the last, we think, of a place in Palgrave’s famous anthology. The Laird olmujrhead is very brief, and it is practically unknown. We have set it next to The Flowers of the Forest in the present volume, so that the reader can make his own comparison. It is unknown to the anthologist; yet for simple truth and almost Shakespearean sincerity and power of expression it is surely worthy of a place in any representative collection of English poetry. There is very little poetry outside Shakespeare in which such words as budge and pith are used with natural force and passion; and when a poet uses them as to the manner born it means, in certain rare circumstances, that he is writing from the heart of a language, perhaps from the heart of a people, and sometimes he will produce something as stirring as the Laird of Muirhead.