The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship
The Romantic Scottish Ballads: Their Epoch and Authorship
Book Excerpt
atrick Spence] ... is not mentioned in history: but I am able to state that tradition has preserved it. In the little island of Papa Stronsay, one of the Orcadian group, lying over against Norway, there is a large grave or tumulus, which has been known to the inhabitants from time immemorial as "The grave of Sir Patrick Spence." The Scottish ballads were not early current in Orkney, a Scandinavian country; to it is very unlikely that the poem could have originated the name.' I demur to this unlikelihood, and would require some proof to convince me that the grave of Sir Patrick Spence in Papa Stronsay is not a parallel geographical phenomenon to the island of Ellen Douglas in Loch Katrine.
Probably, by this time, the reader will desire to know what is now to be known regarding Lady Wardlaw. Unfortunately, this is little, for, as she shrank from the honours of authorship in her lifetime, no one thought of chronicling anything about her. We learn that she was born Elizabeth Halket, being the second daught
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