wild stock out of which the richer garden roses are grown. If the wild stock be so poor and feeble in England, how comes it, we may ask, that English cultivated poetry is so rich in colour and perfume? In simpler language, if the people is so devoid of poetry, how has the race come to produce so many great poets and the noblest poetic literature of the modern world, while artistic poets are rare indeed among races which have great wealth of popular song? This is not the place to attempt a full answer to the question; we can only defend the natural imagination of the English people by saying that we do not really possess its unsophisticated productions. The English ballads are not, or are very rarely, pure volks-lieder. The vast majority of them have not been collected from oral tradition, like the ballads of the Scotch Border, of Italy, and of Greece. As soon as printing was firmly established in England, the traditional songs were distributed in cheap broad-sheets. The people 'love a ballad but even too well; if it be doleful matter, merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed, and sung lamentably.' Pedlars like Shakspeare's Autolycus 'had songs for man or woman of all sizes.' These songs may originally have been true volks-lieder-many of them, indeed, can have been nothing else. In passing, however, through the hands of the printers and poor scholars who prepared them for the press, they became dull, long-drawn, and didactic. The loyalty, good-humour, and love of the free air and the greenwood remain, but the clerks have spoiled the praise of 'Robin Hood, the good outlaw.' The ballads wandered about the land, corrupted from the simplicity that pleased the untaught, into harmony with the roughest educated taste. By Addison's time these broad-sheet ballads had been pasted on the walls of chambers in country houses. In the country, says The Spectator (No. 85, June 7, 1711), 'I cannot, for my Heart, leave a Room before I have thoroughly studied the Walls of it, and examined the several printed Papers which are usually pasted upon them.' And on a wall, Addison says, he found 'the old Ballad of The two Children in the Wood, which is one of the darling songs of the common People.' Most of our English ballads are gathered from old broad-sheets and ancient MS. collections. To say that is to say that they are dashed with the humblest literary commonplace, that they do not come straight from the heart and lips of a singing people, like the modern Greeks or Italians. They have acquired, in the hands of half-educated printers and editors, a tone which is not the tone of the people. They are almost as bald, often, as Dr. Johnson declared them to be-as bald as Johnson's parody: : I put my hat upon my head, and went into the Strand, And there I saw another man, with his hat in his hand.' The history of English ballad-collecting may be summed up very briefly. We know from Sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poesie, and from many passages in the Elizabethan drama, that ballads were both sung by 'blind crowders,' like the minstrels on the modern Greek frontier, and distributed by pedlars. Addison not only studied English volks-lieder, but also those of France and Italy. He tells us that Lord Dorset 'had a numerous collection of old English Ballads, and took a particular pleasure in the reading of them.' Mr. Dryden was of the same humour, so was Pepys of the famous diary. The little conceited wits of the age' laughed at Addison, but Dryden ventured to publish some ballads in Miscellany Poems (1684-1708). A Collection of Old Ballads (since reprinted) was put out in 1723. Ramsay's Evergreen, containing many popular songs, appeared in 1724. The great event in the history of the taste for ballads was the publication of Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry, in 1765. Percy, as is well known, altered, softened, and diluted the old copies which he found in a folio MS. that came into his possession. A correct text from the folio, with excessively copious notes and prolegomena, was published by Messrs. Furnivall and Hales (London, 1867-68, 3 vols.). Other noteworthy collections are those of Herd (1769), Ritson, Buchan, Motherwell, Kinloch, Jamieson (1806), and above all, The Border Minstrelsy of Scott. Perhaps the best modern collection, the most scholarly, and the least overladen with notes, is that of Professor F. J. Child (English and Scotch Ballads, Boston, U.S. 1864). The Ballad Book of Mr. W. Allingham (London, 1864) is the companion of every true ballad lover. The poetic character and quality of the ballads will be best learned from these poems themselves. They have the imaginative daring of early and simple minds; they often deal with great tragic situations, with deep and universal passions. They are most poetical when the ardour, the anguish, the love, the remorse of some passionate mind becomes for once articulate, as in the cry of Waly, waly, the regret of Edom o' Gordon, the mysterious wail of The Wife o' Usher's Well, or the monotonous chant of The Lyke-wake Dirge. In selecting Ballads for a purely poetical collection, it is necessary to choose, not those which the historian, the antiquary, the student of early society might prefer, but those which have most poetical power and charm, and are least embellished by modern editors. We may, for the purposes of this work, divide Ballads into five classes-the Historical, or Mythico-historical, to represent which we pick out Sir Patrick Spens, and Edom o' Gordon. In each of these poems the popular fancy works on true historical data. The second class is the Romantic, and here Glasgerion, The Douglas Tragedy, The Twa Corbies, and Waly, Waly are chosen. As specimens of the popular treatment of the Supernatural, we take Clerk Saunders, The Wife of Usher's Well, and the fragment of a popular Dirge, like those which are still sung by the women of Corsica and the Greek isles. Ballads of the adventures of outlaws and wild marchmen will find their representative in Kinmont Willie. As any selection, however limited, is incomplete without fragments of the Robin Hood cycle, we end with Robin and the Widow's Three Sons, and Robin Hood's Death and Burial, while The Bailiff's Daughter illustrates the more domestic ballads of the English people. These are representatives of different classes of volks-lieder, but few poems suffer so much in the process of selection. Too many of the highest quality have to be omitted for want of space. And the ballads are wronged too, when they are made to appear among the more ornate and various measures of cultivated and artistic poetry. A. LANG. VOL. I. Р HISTORICAL. SIR PATRICK SPENS. [This ballad is a confused echo of the Scotch expedition which should have brought the Maid of Norway to Scotland, about 1285. While Dunfermline is still spoken of as the favourite Royal residence, the Scotch nobles wear the cork-heeled shoon of a later century, a curious example of the medley common in traditional poetry.] O up and spake an eldern knight, Our king has written a braid letter, 'To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The first word that Sir Patrick read, The neist word that Sir Patrick read, 'O wha is this has done this deed, To send us out, at this time of the year, 'Be it wind, be it weet, be it hail, be it sleet1, They hoysed their sails on Monenday morn, They hae landed in Noroway, They hadna been a week, a week, In Noroway, but twae, When that the lords o' Noroway 'Ye Scottishmen spend a' our king's goud, And a' our queenis fee.' 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye liars loud! Fu' loud I hear ye lie. 'For I brought as much white monie, As gane my men and me, And I brought a half-fou3 o' gude red goud, 'Make ready, make ready, my merrymen a'! 'I saw the new moon, late yestreen, They hadna sailed a league, a league, A league but barely three, When the lift grew dark, and the wind blew loud, 1 A line adapted in Kinmont Willie, as the formulae of the Iliad recurs in the Odyssey. 2 $uffice. 3 the eighth part of a peck. |