Algernon Charles Swinburne

“ He was, however, far ahead of his time in perceiving that a loose roughness of texture was essential to the original form of every genuine Border ballad, and an examination of the MS. of the "Earl of Mar's Daughter" shows, by its innumerable alterations and reconsiderations of the text, that Swinburne laboured with the utmost courage and assiduity to recover the primitive diction and to remove what some one has called "the plague of marketable neatness" which disfigures the usual recast of a romantic ballad. ”

“ But what a closer study of the MS. shows is that Swinburne, conscious of much that is vulgar and modern in Buchan's version, was setting himself the task of re-composing the ballad in language more severely archaic. This was actually done, to some extent, by William Allingham in the Ballad Book of 1864, and it is possible that Allingham's partial success induced Swinburne to lay aside his project. ”

“ And of your talking let me be;
Mind ye not on your turtle-doo
That ye brought hame wi' ye?"
"O whatten a man are ye," she said,
"Fu' sair this marvels me;
I doubt ye are some keen warlock
That wons out ower the sea. ”