Excerpt from Early Scottish Ballads: With Essay on Scottish Ballad Literature By Percy, Scott, Hogg, and others, sometimes with more taste than reverence, and often with out either - but as they came from the mouths of the early singers themselves, long before they were committed to the press. The tempta tion to amend such compositions where the rhythm halts, or the rhyme does not nle, and where, as in many instances, the correct reading is hopelessly lost, is great and trying to the self control of most editors; but in this respect Motherwell set an example of fidelity which the Editor of the present volume has scrupulously. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.