'We were sisters, sisters seven, Bowing down, bowing down; The fairest maidens under heaven; And aye the birks a' bowing.
And we keest kevils us amang, Bowing down, bowing down; To see who would to greenwood gang, And aye the birks a' bowing.'
The birk held a high place in the secret rites and customs of the Ballad Age. It was with 'a wand o' the bonnie birk' that May Margaret went through the mysterious process of restoring her plighted troth to Clerk Saunders; in other ballads it is done by passes of the hand, or of a crystal rod. When the 'Clerk's Twa Sons o' Owsenford' were brought back to earth by their mother's bitter grief and longing, they wore 'hats made o' the birk':
'It neither grew in syke or ditch, Nor yet in ony sheugh; But at the gate of Paradise That birk grew green eneuch.'
Birds of the air carry a secret; there are tongues in trees that syllable men's names; and even inanimate things cry aloud with the voice of Remorse or of Doom. When the knight wishes to send a message, he speaks in the ear of his 'gay goshawk that can baith speak and flee.' When May Colvin returns home after the fatal meeting at the well, where her seven predecessors in the love of the 'Fause Sir John' had been drowned, the 'wylie parrot' speaks the words that were no doubt ringing in her brain:
'What hae ye made o' the fause Sir John That ye gaed wi' yestreen?'
And in _Earl Richard_ and other ballads, it is the 'popinjay' that proclaims guilt or fear from turret or tree. One remembers also 'Proud Maisie' walking early in the wood, and Sweet Robin piping her doom among the green summer leaves:
'"Tell me, my bonnie bird, When shall I marry me?" "When six braw gentlemen Kirkward shall carry thee"';
and the 'Three Corbies' croaking the most grim and dismal notes in all the wide, wild range of ballad poetry, as they feast on the new-slain knight:
'Ye 'll sit on his white hause bane, And I 'll pike oot his bonnie blue een; Wi' ae lock o' his yellow hair We 'll theak our nest when it is bare.
O mony a ane for him maks mane, But nae ane kens whaur he is gane, O'er his white banes when they are bare The wind shall sigh for evermair.'
But things that have neither sense nor life utter aloud words of menace and accusation. Lord Barnard's horn makes the forest echo with the warning notes, 'Away, Musgrave, away!' _Binnorie_ embalms the tradition of the 'singing bone' which pervades the folklore of the Aryan peoples, and is found also in China and among the negro tribes of West Africa. A harper finds the body of the drowned sister, and out of her 'breast-bane' he forms a harp which he strings with her yellow hair. According to a northern version of the ballad, he makes a plectrum from 'a lith of her finger bane.' On this strange instrument the minstrel plays before king and court, and the strings sigh forth: