The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
and Christy cannot. Old Grahame's retort is
literally the parent of Du Manner's jest of the
"
small Briton I can't sing,
and I can't speak
French, but I can punch your head." Christy
says he cannot fight his brother-in-arms to which
;
his father replies
:
" What's that thou sayest, thou limmer loon
Or how dare thou stand to speak to me
If thou do not end this quarrel soon,
Here is my hand, thou shalt fight me."
Christy faces the dilemma, and resolves to fight
Bewick rather than his father, but will " ne'er
come home alive " "
if he
"
kills his bully
(brother). He wounds Bewick mortally, and
falls on his sword.
Infidelity is not a common theme in English
ballads ;
in two of the best 1 not only adultery
appears, but also the ancient practice of mutilating
the offender. On the other hand, a true
wife is found in Brown Adam* and a wife
wrongly suspected by her husband in the almost
unsurpassed ballad of Child Maurice* which is
also another witness to the comparative neglect
of the value of fatherhood. The story
is that on
which Home's Douglas, a famous eighteenthcentury
play, was founded and a ; phrase from
1
Old Robin of Portingale, and Little Musgrave and Lady
Barnard. (First Series, 13 and 19.)
2 First Series, 100.
3 First Series, 165.
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