Highways and Byways in the Border. Andrew LangЧитать онлайн книгу.

PREFACE

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      At the time of his death, my brother had proceeded but a little way in this task which he and I began together, and I must frankly own my inability to cope with it on the lines which he would doubtless have followed. It is probable, for example, that his unrivalled knowledge of "the memories, legends, ballads, and nature of the Border" would have led him to show various important events in a light different from that in which my less intimate acquaintance with the past has enabled me to speak of them; whilst, as regards the Ballad literature of the Border, I cannot pretend to that expert knowledge which he possessed, I do not think, therefore, it is fitting that I should attempt to carry out his intention to deal more fully with those of the Ballads which are most closely connected with places treated of in this volume.

      To him, more perhaps than to any other Borderer, every burn and stream, every glen and hill of that pleasant land was

      ". . . lull ot ballad notes,

      Borne out of long ago."

      It is many a year since he wrote those verses wherein he spoke of

      " Old songs that sung themselves to me,

      Sweet through a boy's day-dream."

      But it was not alone in a boy's day-dream that they sounded. To the end, they echoed and re-echoed in his heart, and no voice ever spoke to him so eloquently as that of Tweed,—by whose banks, indeed, in a spot greatly loved, had it been permitted he would fain have slept his long sleep.

JOHN LANG.

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      The artist wishes to call attention to the fact that his drawings were made during the long drought of 1911, when all the rivers were exceptionally low.