Ancient Scottish ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before ...

45
crime was subversive of the most tender feel-
ings of our nature, and was viewed as unnatural
and barbarous, the law, enacted for its preven-
tion, was strongly tinged with inhumanity.
Yet, severe as this law was, more than a cen-
tury elapsed before it was repealed: In 1809 the
British legislature, viewing the matter with
greater leniency, wisely preferred a punishment
of imprisonment to that of death, for a pre-
sumptive crime.
The superstitious belief of the ghost of a mur-
dered person haunting the slayer, is still preva-
lent among the vulgar; and the circumstance of
a mother, bereaving her innocent babe of life,
and the horror with which such a crime is
viewed, might naturally give rise to the idea of
her being continually haunted by its apparition.