The Living Age

that the "Dowie Dens" as compiled by Sir Walter Scott "was a mixed, therefore incongruous, reference to the incident of the earlier ballad, and to a later incident in the relations of the families of Scott of Thirlestane and Scott of Tuschielaw." The incident of one man fighting nine, being killed treacherously, and thrown into the Yarrow, is the same in both versions, but the position of the single man who fought is essentially different.

In the introduction to the "Dowie Dens" in the "Minstrelsy" Sir Walter Scott alludes to the hero of the ballad as being a brave knight named Scott, of Kirkhope or Oakwood Castle, called the Baron of Oakwood, and says that according to tradition he was treacherously murdered by the brother either of his wife or of his betrothed bride. In the older version as furnished by Welsh the first stanzas dispel this illusion:

At Dryhope lived a lady fair,

The fairest flower in Yarrow; And she refused nine noble men For a servan' lad in Gala.

Her father said that he should fight
The nine lords all to-morrow;
And he that should the victor be,

Would get the Rose of Yarrow.

Here, at once, is the reason for the unequal contest, and also for the conduct of the lady's brother, who sprang upon the young man from behind a bush when he was fighting the nine lords or "lairds," and slew him treacherously. Then the body was thrown ignominiously into the Yarrow, and the lady recounts her dream:

The lady said, "I dreamed yestreen,

I fear it bodes some sorrow,
That I was pu'in' the heather green,

On the scroggy braes o' Yarrow." (Welsh's version.) The older ballad omits the beautiful stanza given by Herd in his fragment, and embodied by Scott:

O gentle wind that bloweth south From where my love repaireth, Convey a kiss from his dear mouth, And tell me how he fareth,

but contains the couplet

But only saw the cloud o' night, Or heard the roar of Yarrow,

which Logan introduced into his song of "The Braes of Yarrow," published in 1770. Professor Veitch descants on the epithet "scroggy braes" with much relish of its appropriateness. "Scroggy," he says, "is better than all. This expresses exactly the look of the stunted trees and bushes on the braes of Yarrow-two and a half centuries ago, when the forest was decaying-such as only a native minstrel could have seen or felt. "The scroggy braes'-this was never said before in Scottish ballad or minstrel song-yet it is so true and so ancient!" Whether this old ballad settles the vexed question of the heroship of the ballad, and whether the heroine was wife or betrothed, seems to us a small matter, but to have recovered an early version of so favorite a theme, and one immortalized by the associations cast round it by Scott and Wordsworth, is a matter of genuine congratulation, while the lights thrown on the various versions and their details are exceptionally interesting and instruc

tive.

From The Athenæum.

A POETIC TRIO.

It occurs to me that now, when we have so recently lost the last of the three women whose names were once so often linked together by the reading publicDora Greenwell, Christina Rossetti, an.1 Jean Ingelow (I am naming them in the order in which they died)—you might like to print some of the letters which passed between them before they had met each other face to face, after which mate. Their first meeting took place they naturally became much more intisome time not very long after the dates of the following letters. I must premise that these ladies lived in the days when the cry, "Go spin, ye jades, go spin!" was still not infrequently heard if a woman wished to devote herself to any

much, and really think they are likely to reach the class for which they were written. The poor men here are all of the seafaring class, or I should have given those verses away. Do you know that I

have finished a bag for you? I shall send

5, Upper Albany St., London, N. W. 31 December, 1863. My Dear Miss Greenwell,-Your very kind gift reproaches me for so late an acknowledgement, but indeed I have been so busy as to feel excused for not having till now thanked you for it. Even now I have not made myself acquainted with its contents, but I must soon do so, having just and which are a mere luxury. They never

it, I think, by railway, for my brother is
coming to-morrow as usual, and he will
convey it as far as London. The pattern
is of my own invention! Is the kettle-
holder worked yet? I shall be so proud of it.
When I next see Miss Rossetti I shall ask
for proof that she can do hemming and
sewing.
It is a pleasure to me that
you like those little stories. They have
not much in them, but it was an amuse-
ment to me to write them; writing for
children is so completely its own reward;
it obliges one to be simple and straightfor-
ward, and clears away some of the mysti-
cal fancies in which one is apt to indulge,

succeeded in clearing off a small batch of
work for the S. P. C. K.

do us any good, and I am often humilated
by meeting with sensible fellow creatures
who ask me what some of them mean.
There has been so much leisure
here that my new volume is all but fin-
ished. It is, however, not to be printed
yet. I am, believe me,

Very affectionately yours,
JEAN INGELOW.

branch of art, and all three were anxious to show that though they wrote poetry they were none the less proficient in the usual womanly crafts.

Miss Greenwell had challenged Miss Rossetti to produce a creditable sample of skilled needlework. Dora Greenwell's own Meisterstück was a wellmade workbag. This is Miss Rossetti's letter acknowledging the gift:

The last day of the year suggests more good wishes than I venture to express to you. Thank you for the friendly welcome acorded to my carte. I should be truly pleased to possess yours; but will not bore you with too urgent a request, as probably so many persons are in my case.

What think you of Jean Ingelow, the wonderful poet? I have not yet read the volume, but reviews with copious extracts have made me aware of a new eminent name having arisen among us. I want to know who she is, what she is like, where she lives. All I have heard is an uncertain rumor that she is aged twenty-one, and is one of three sisters resident with

their mother. A proud mother, I should
think. If our dear Scotts move away al-
together from the North, I fear my pros-
pect of making your personal acquaint-
ance must dwindle to the altogether vague.
Your kindness, however, has made us no
strangers, even should we never meet-
or, rather, never meet here; for on the last
day of the year the separations and meet-
ings of time should not alone be thought
of.
Yours cordially,

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.

Miss Ingelow must have been drawn into this competition very soon after the date of this letter, for on the 9th of February she wrote:

6, Denmark Place, Hastings. My Dear Miss Greenwell,-I have for some time been anxious to write to you, both to thank you for your kind note and for the poems you sent me. I like them

Miss Ingelow's workbag was a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. Garlands of flowers, done from those to be found in almost any pretty and well-cared-for garden, were wrought with narrow china ribbon of all colors and shades and blendings on a ground of black cloth

no work of the kind could have been better executed. Here my knowledge of this great sewing competition comes to an end. I have even forgotten whether Miss Rossetti's piece of work was ever sent, but my impression is that it was not. M.

From The London Standard. THE EARLY RISING FALLACY. Of late years it has been argued wisely and well that early rising is one of the chief causes of lunacy. Liers in bed in all ages have contended that it is one of the many effects of lunacy; there was not the smallest doubt about the mental

condition of a man who rose at daybreak from choice, but modern science

has discovered that it is not only an effect but a cause of insanity. Liers abed will be overjoyed to hear that those who rise at four all suffer the same fate as those who

Use fusees: All grow by slow degrees Brainless as chimpanzees,

Meagre as lizards;

Go mad and beat their wives,
Plunge, after shocking lives,
Razors and carving knives
Into their gizzards.

Such is the terrible fate of the rash individual who would dare to rise before the sun. The overweening conceit of the man who rises at daybreak has long been a source of wonder among observant psychologists, but now it is no longer a mystery; it is explained by the new early rising and insanity theory. Surely the conceited Pharisee, who struts like the cock he helps to the garden wall, is more deserving of pity than contempt, for are not his symptoms premonitory of the madness, incipient as yet in him, but freely promised in its fullness by the medical faculty to all those who waste the best hours of the day drinking the intoxicating morning air on an empty stomach? The picture

The Tsetse-Fly.-It used to be believed that the tsetse-fly disease, that plague of African travel, was due to a poison natural to the tsetse-fly, as the acrid secretions of ants or hornets are natural to those insects. A group of English bacteriologists have been investigating the disease, and it is now known that the tsetse-fly is the mere bearer of the disease. The fly itself is the prey of a minute animal organism, and when it sucks the blood of an ox, some of these parasites enter the wound and multiply incredibly in the blood-vessels. Specimens of the blood of affected animals have been shown under high magnification, and the tiny, eel-like parasites, not larger than blood-corpuscles, are seen

of the early riser in this interesting stage of incipient madness is highly edifying. It is of him and his ilk that the psalmist speaks when he says, "Behold, as wild asses of the desert go they forth to their work, rising betimes for their prey." Having risen with the sun, the Morning Pharisee has reached by breakfast time a sublime altitude from which he gazes down at the saner beings around him with a lofty contempt. He imagines that because he has secured the dewdrop before the lark has had a chance to plan the larceny, he is necessarily a poet of the first water-an exalted being above the littleness of expostulating with the man who appears when the coffee is cold. After all, what has he achieved? A dewdrop, wet feet, and a morbid craving for the picturesque and sensational in nature. In these days of cranks and crazes, there are thousands of crack-brained people who would barter away three hours of healthy sleep for a dewdrop and its undesirable train of evils. No one wonders at this, it is so common; the wonder is that these people have never found their way, until quite recently, into the treatises on the morbid pathological conditions of the brain.

in countless numbers. Under another microscope a drop of fresh blood was shown with the parasites actually alive and wriggling in disgusting activity. For comparison there were shown, alive and dead, similar parasites found infesting the blood of sewer rats in this country. Unfortunately, these parasites appear not to affect the health of the rats. The exhibition was a striking demonstration of the modern knowledge of diseases; most of these are now seen to be phases of the struggle for existence between small organisms like microbes and large organisms like man and the other vertebrates. And the victory is not always with the strong.-Saturday Review.