Perthshire in bygone days

586 PEETHSHEBE IN BYGONE DAYS.
land on missions of peace. In his long life he had served
four kings, and before he died he saw twenty-five of his
descendants wearing coronets. The troubles of life which
naturally arose from such an extended connection bore
heavily on him. His son was taken from his castle and
beheaded, for an affair in which historians agree that he
was only a remonstrating participant, his three daughters
were poisoned in his own house, while he could afford
them no protection ; and the turbulent spirit of the
parties alleged to be implicated smothered all attempts at
reprisal.
Lord Drummond's eldest daughter, Margaret, was born
about the year 1472, at Stobhall. Her story is complicated,
and has been much vexed by historical conflict ; but I find
it established by the evidence of all the historians who
have gone into the matter without prejudice, that she
became the affianced wife of James the Fourth, and lived
long with him in vain expectation of the time when she
would be publicly recognised as his queen. This view of
the matter was little disturbed until it was denied by
certain historians in the reign of the fourth George, whose
minds were naturally tinctured with the libertinism of the
period, and who viewed the keeping of a mistress as one
of the recognised institutions of civilised life ; an era when,
by tacit way-giving, the nation was prepared for any vice by
the example of its aristocracy, and when the broad wall
which separates moral rectitude from licensed wantonness
was razed to its foundation.
The ballad literature of a people may not be strictly
illustrative of its general history, but it invariably fixes,
for good or evil, on some great feature of it. This is pre-
eminently the case with the Scottish ballad. Our border
minstrelsy makes clear the turbulent character of the
dwellers on our southern marches, acquired, no doubt, by
their contiguity to the quondam foe. Our Jacobite ballads
are the spontaneous product of a loyalty that could not be
suppressed, whether right or wrong, in the direction it took.
As a conclusion from the same premisses, our love-songs
are truthful, and, if contemporary, are more to be de-
pended on in matters of domestic life than the opinions of
prejudiced historians, whose era dates after three hundred
years. " Tayis Bank," or " Lord Drummond's beautiful
Daughter," is one of the oldest ballads known to exist.
We are, as usual, much indebted to Mr. David Laing for