Chapter L: Part III: , p. 24, Part IV, p. xxxi, taken down from James Olver, (37)

We have already seen how a ballad derived from print tends to revert to the popular form; the same tendency is evident in the ballad derived from a romance. Of _Gude Wallace_ (157) “Blind Harry’s Wallace ... is clearly the source.” “But the portions of Blind Harry’s poem out of which these ballads were made were perhaps themselves composed from older ballads, and the restitution of the lyrical form may have given us something not altogether unlike what was sung in the fifteenth, or even the fourteenth, century.”[242] _Thomas Rymer_ (37) is derived from the romance, yet it is “an entirely popular ballad as to style.”[243] These are the only cases where Professor Child admits without question the derivation of a ballad from a romance; in other cases, where ballad and romance tell the same story, he insists that the possibility of the priority of the ballad must be considered. Thus the ballad of _Hind Horn_ (17) has close affinity with the later English romance, but no filiation. “And were filiation to be accepted, there would remain the question of priority. It is often assumed, without a misgiving, that oral tradition must needs be younger than anything that was committed to writing some centuries ago; but this requires in each case to be made out; there is certainly no antecedent probability of that kind.”[244] _Fair Annie_ (62) is not derived from the lay; they “have a common source, which lies further back, and too far for us to find.”[245] In _Gil Brenton_ (5) “the artifice of substituting waiting-woman for bride has been thought to be derived from the romance of Tristan.... Grundtvig truly remarks that a borrowing by the romance from the popular ballad is as probable a supposition as the converse.”[246] The ballad does sometimes go to the romance for details. Thus, in _The Earl of Westmoreland_ (177) “what follows [stanza 15] is pure fancy work, or rather an imitation of stale old romance.”[247] _The Kitchie-Boy_ (252) is a modern adaptation of King Horn, but, “in the particular of the hero’s having his choice of two women, it is more like the _gest_ of ‘King Horn,’ or ‘Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild;’ but an independent invention of the Spanish lady is not beyond the humble ability of the composer of ‘The Kitchie-Boy.’”[248] In the “worthless and manifestly--at least in part--spurious ballad” of _Young Ronald_ (304), “the nicking with nay and the giant are borrowed from romances.”[249] Though the _Gest_, finally, “as to all important considerations, is eminently original, absolutely so as to the conception of Robin Hood, some traits and incidents, as might be expected, are taken from what we may call the general stock of mediæval fiction.”[250] Thus “Robin Hood will not dine until he has some guest that can pay handsomely for his entertainment.... This habit of Robin’s seems to be a humorous imitation of King Arthur, who in numerous romances will not dine till some adventure presents itself.”[251]

Not only from ancient tradition, from fact, from romance or the sources of romance may the ballad derive its subject-matter; it may also turn back upon itself, and as late ballads counterfeit or imitate the style of earlier ones, so late ballads go to earlier ones for their subject-matter as well. Thus _The Battle of Otterburn_ (161) “is likely to have been modernized from ... a predecessor.”[252] Part of _The King’s Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood_ (151) “is a loose paraphrase, with omissions, of the seventh and eighth fits of the Gest.”[253] _The Brown Girl_ (295) “recalls ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,’ ‘Sweet William’s Ghost,’ ‘Clerk Saunders,’ ‘The Unquiet Grave,’ ‘Bonny Barbara Allen,’ and has something of all of them.... Still it is not deliberately and mechanically patched together (as are some pieces in Part VIII), and in the point of the proud and unrelenting character of the Brown Girl it is original.”[254] “Deliberately and mechanically put together” were the pieces of Part VIII which follow. _Auld Matrons_ (249) “was made by someone who had acquaintance with the first fit of ‘Adam Bell.’ The anonymous ‘old wife’ becomes ‘auld Matrons;’ Inglewood, Ringlewood. The conclusion is in imitation of the rescues in Robin Hood ballads.”[255] _Henry Martyn_ (250) “must have sprung from the ashes of ‘Andrew Barton,’ of which name Henry Martyn would be no extraordinary corruption.”[256] _The Kitchie-Boy_ (252) is “a modern ‘adaptation’ of ‘King Horn’ ... from which A 33, 34, B 47, D 7, 8, are taken outright.”[257] The first half of _Willie’s Fatal Visit_ (255) “is a medley of ‘Sweet William’s Ghost,’ ‘Clerk Saunders,’ and ‘The Grey Cock,’”[258] Of _Broughty Wa’s_ (258), “Stanza 9, as it runs in b, is a reminiscence of ‘Bonny Baby Livingston,’ and 13 recalls ‘Child Waters,’ or ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter.’”[259] A large part of _The New-Slain Knight_ (263) “is imitated or taken outright from very well known ballads.”[260] Like some of these later ballads the _Gest of Robyn Hode_ goes back to earlier ballads for its subject-matter. “The Gest is a popular epic, composed from several ballads by a poet of a thoroughly congenial spirit. No one of the ballads from which it was made up is extant in a separate shape, and some portions of the story may have been of the compiler’s own invention. The decoying of the sheriff into the wood, stanzas 181-204, is of the same derivation as the last part of Robin Hood and the Potter, No 121, Little John and Robin Hood exchanging parts; the conclusion, 451-56, is of the same source as Robin Hood’s Death, No 120.”[261] Some of the Middle-English forms “may be relics of the ballads from which this little epic was made up; or the whole poem may have been put together as early as 1400, or before.”[262] It is noteworthy that the _Gest_ was composed _from_, not _of_, several ballads; it was not made up of unchanged ballads, “deliberately and mechanically put together.”

The motives or features characteristic of subject-matter derived from pure popular tradition have already been noted; we may now note those traits which Professor Child declares or implies to be not characteristic of such subject-matter. Extravagance would seem to be one of these: the extravagance of _Hughie Grame_ (191, A, 16) “it is to be hoped is a corruption.”[263] In _Mary Hamilton_ (173) “there are not a few spurious passages. Among these are the extravagance of the queen’s bursting in the door, F 8; the platitude,[264] of menial stamp, that the child, if saved, might have been an honor to the mother, D 10, L 3, O 4.”[265] Exaggeration is another non-traditional trait: “It is but the natural course of exaggeration that the shepherd, having beaten Robin Hood, should beat Little John. This is descending low enough, but we do not see the bottom of this kind of balladry here”[266] [_Robin Hood and the Shepherd_ (165)]. _Robin Hood and Queen Katherine_ (145) is “a very pleasant ballad, with all the exaggeration.”[267] The true ballad is not prosaic: in _Fause Foodrage_ (89) “the ... king kills his successful rival on his wedding-day. According to the prosaic, not at all ballad-like, and evidently corrupted account in A, there is a rebellion of nobles four months after the marriage, and a certain False Foodrage takes it upon himself to kill the king.”[268] The true ballad is not over-refined: in _The Braes of Yarrow_ (214, C, 2) “the brothers have taken offence because their sister was not regarded as his equal by her husband, which is perhaps too much of a refinement for ballads, and may be a perversion.”[269] The true ballad is not cynical: _The Twa Corbies_ sounds “something like a cynical variation of the tender little English ballad,”[270] and it is not printed as a ballad in Professor Child’s collection. The true ballad is not sophisticated: it was the influence of the play, Home’s _Douglas_, that gave vogue to the ballad, _Child Maurice_ (83), and “the sophisticated copy passed into recitation.”[271] The true ballad is not sentimental: in _Mary Hamilton_ (173), “there are not a few spurious passages,” among them, “the sentimentality of H 3, 16.”[272] Jamieson published _Child Waters_ (63, B a) with “the addition of three sentimental stanzas to make Burd Ellen die just as her enduring all things is to be rewarded.”[273] The true ballad does not append a moral: a German version of _Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight_ (4) “smacks decidedly of the bänkelsänger, and has an appropriate moral at the tail.”[274] A certain degree of probability or naturalness is to be expected of the true ballad story: in _Jellon Grame_ (90), “one day, when the boy asks why his mother does not take him home, Jellon Grame (very unnaturally) answers, I slew her, and there she lies: upon which the boy sends an arrow through him.”[275] Finally, the plot of the true ballad is not trite. In _Child Owlet_ (291) “the chain of gold in the first stanza and the penknife below the bed in the fourth have a false ring, and the story is of the tritest. The ballad seems at best to be a late one, and is perhaps mere imitation.”[276]

III.

It is clear that to Professor Child’s mind it was necessary that the ballad should tell a story. “The word _ballad_ in English signifies a narrative song, a short tale in lyric verse.”[277] Thus the English versions of _Geordie_ (209) are said to be mere ‘goodnights,’ whereas “the Scottish ballads have a proper story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and (save one late copy), a good end, and they are most certainly ... independent of the English.”[278] _Dugall Quin_ (294) is a “little ballad, which has barely story enough to be so called.”[279] To the “English ‘ditty’ (not a traditional ballad) ... there is very little story.”[280]

Necessary as the story is, however, it is seldom completely told in the ballad; something is left to the hearers’ imagination. Sometimes the close of the story is omitted: “it is not said (except in the spurious portions of E) that the lady was carried back by her husband, but this may perhaps be inferred from his hanging the gypsies. In D and K we are left uncertain as to her disposition.”[281] Transitions are usually abrupt,--“abrupt even for a ballad” in _Willie’s Lady_ (6) from stanza 33 to stanza 34.[282] Jamieson, in printing _The Bonny Birdy_ (82), introduced several stanzas ‘to fill up chasms.’ “But the chasms, such as they are, are easily leapt by the imagination, and Jamieson’s interpolations are mere bridges of carpenter’s work.”[283] Of _Sir Patrick Spens_ (58), “Percy’s version [A] remains, poetically, the best. It may be a fragment, but the imagination easily supplies all that may be wanting; and if more of the story, or the whole, be told in H, the half is better[284] than the whole.”[285] These abrupt transitions do not, then, result in incoherence, which accompanies corruption and is a sign of degeneracy. Thus _The Carnal and the Crane_ (55) “had obviously been transmitted from mouth to mouth before it was fixed in its present incoherent and corrupted form by print.”[286] _Young Bearwell_ (302) is “one of not a few flimsy and unjointed ballads found in Buchan’s volumes, the like of which is hardly to be found elsewhere.”[287] After an attempt to make the story of _The White Fisher_ (264) hang together, Professor Child concludes: “But we need not trouble ourselves much to make these counterfeits reasonable. Those who utter them rely confidently upon our taking folly and jargon as the marks of genuineness.”[288] Coherence, on the contrary, is a characteristic of the true ballad, an important phase of ballad excellence. “I am persuaded that there was an older and better copy of this ballad [_Bewick and Graham_ (211)] than those which are extant. The story is so well composed, proportion is so well kept, on the whole, that it is reasonable to suppose that certain passages (as stanzas 3, 4, 50) may have suffered some injury.”[289] Introductions, not closely connected with the ballad story, are not characteristic. “The narrator in the Ever Green poem reports at second hand: as he is walking, he meets a man who, upon request, tells him the beginning and the end. Both pieces have nearly the same first line. The borrowing was more probably on the part of the ballad, for a popular ballad would be likely to tell its tale without preliminaries.”[290]

Brevity is a characteristic of the true ballad, and it may be, in this respect, profitably contrasted with Buchan’s versions. Version C of _Brown Adam_ (98) “has the usual marks of Buchan’s copies, great length, vulgarity, and such extravagance and absurdity as are found in stanzas 23, 26, 29.”[291] “Buchan, who may generally be relied upon to produce a longer ballad than anybody else, has ‘Young Waters’ in thirty-nine stanzas, ‘the only complete version which he had ever met.’”[292] His version of _The Gay Goshawk_ (96, G) is “vilely dilated and debased,”[293] and that of _Jellon Grame_ (90, C) “has nearly the same incidents as B, diluted and vulgarized in almost twice as many verses.”[294]

The action is seldom carefully localized: the compiler of _A Gest of Robyn Hode_ was careless of geography.[295] The New England copy of _Archie o Cawfield_ (188, F) “naturally enough, names no places.” “The route in C is not described[2] there is no reason, if they start from Cafield (see 23), why they should cross the Annan, the town being on the eastern side. All difficulties are escaped in D by giving no names.”[296] The attention given to the setting in some of the Robin Hood ballads is, then, exceptional. Of _Robin Hood and the Monk_ (119), “the landscape background of the first two stanzas has often been praised, and its beauty will never pall. It may be called landscape or prelude, for both eyes and ears are addressed, and several others of these woodland ballads have a like symphony or setting: Adam Bell, Robin Hood and the Potter, Guy of Gisborne, even the much later ballad of The Noble Fisherman. It is to be observed that the story of the outlaw Fulk Fitz Warine, which has other traits in common with Robin Hood ballads, begins somewhat after the same fashion.”[297]

In dealing with the supernatural the way of the true ballad is to omit description or explanation. In _James Harris_ (243), “to explain the eery personality and proceedings of the ship-master, E-G, with a sort of vulgar rationalism, turn him into the devil.... D (probably by the fortunate accident of being a fragment) leaves us to put our own construction upon the weird seaman; and, though it retains the homely ship-carpenter, is on the whole the most satisfactory of all the versions.”[298] In _Johnie Scot_ (99) “the champion is described in A 31 as a gurious (grugous, gruous?) ghost; in H 27 as a greecy (frightful) ghost; in L 18 he is a fearsome sight, with three women’s spans between his brows and three yards between his shoulders; in the Abbotsford copy of A, 29, 30, a grisly sight, with a span between his eyes, between his shoulders three and three, and Johnie scarcely reaching his knee. These points are probably taken from another and later ballad, which is perhaps an imitation, and might almost be called a parody, of Johnie Soot.”[299] Ghosts, though not thought sufficiently strange to demand special treatment, should, nevertheless, “have a fair reason for walking.... In popular fictions, the motive for their leaving the grave is to ask back plighted troth, to be relieved from the inconveniences caused by the excessive grief of the living, to put a stop to the abuse of children by stepmothers, to repair an injustice done in the flesh, to fulfil a promise; at the least, to announce the visitant’s death.”[300]

Turning now from technique,--from treatment of plot, of setting, of the supernatural,--to style in the narrower sense, we find that the comments are again largely in the way of pointing out flaws, or traits which are not characteristic of the true ballad, and which are due to the peculiar conditions of ballad transmission. From such negative comments may be inferred, again, the stylistic marks of the true ballad. Thus, in the first place, ballad style is artless and homely. In _Andrew Lammie_ (233):

Her bloom was like the springing flower
That hails the rosy morning,
With innocence and graceful mein
Her beauteous form adorning.

and

‘No kind of vice eer staind my life,
Or hurt my virgin honour;
My youthful heart was won by love,
But death will me exoner’ (C, 2, 42).

are “not homely enough.”[301] Moreover,

‘At Fyvie’s yetts there grows a flower,
It grows baith braid and bonny;
There’s a daisie in the midst o it,
And it’s ca’d by Andrew Lammie’ (A, 1.).

“the mystical verses with which A and B begin are also not quite artless.”[302] The ninth stanza of _The New-Slain Knight_ (263) “is pretty, but not quite artless.”[303] In the true ballad the conceit is out of place. Scott’s version (C) of _Thomas Rymer_ (37) closes with two satirical stanzas not popular in style. “‘The repugnance of Thomas to be debarred the use of falsehood when he should find it convenient,’ may have, as Scott says, ‘a comic effect,’ but is, for a ballad, a miserable conceit.”[304] In _The Mother’s Malison_ (216), A 8^{1-2}, C 10^{1-2},

Make me your wrack as I come back,
But spare me as I go,

the conceit (from Martial) “does not overwell suit a popular ballad.”[305] The literary manner is thus to be contrasted with the popular. In _Edward_ (13) “the word ‘brand,’ in the first stanza, is possibly more literary than popular; further than this the language is entirely fit.”[306] Of _Earl Brand_ (7) “A a has suffered less from literary revision than ... A c.”[307] This revision may be illustrated by the following stanza:

To a maiden true he’ll give his hand,
To the king’s daughter o fair England,
To a prize that was won by a slain brother’s hand,

which c substitutes for a 32:

This has not been the death o ane,
But it’s been that of fair seventeen.

version from the English border, has unfortunately been improved by some literary pen.”[308] These improvements consist in part of descriptions of the lady’s states of mind;[309] for example:@

To think of the prisoner her heart was sore,
Her love it was much but her pity was more.

The words that he said on her fond heart smote,
She knew not in sooth if she lived or not.

She looked to his face, and it kythed so unkind
That her fast coming tears soon rendered her blind.

(Sts. 3, 9, 10.)

_Jamie Telfer_ (190) “was retouched for the Border Minstrelsy, nobody can say how much. The 36th stanza is in Hardyknute style.”[310]

Of _Hughie Grame_ (191), B, 3, 8, “are obviously, as Cromek says, the work of Burns, and the same is true of 10^{3-4}.”[311] _The Famous Flower of Serving-Men_ (106), an “English broadside, which may be reasonably believed to be formed upon a predecessor in the popular style,[312] was given in Percy’s _Reliques_, ..., ‘from a written copy containing some improvements (perhaps modern ones).’ These improvements are execrable in style and in matter, so far as there is new matter, but not in so glaring contrast with the groundwork as literary emendations of traditional ballads.”[313] Such contrast is found in the “hack-rhymester lines” in _Bewick and Graham_ (211, 7^3, 19^2), which are “not up to the mark of the general style.”[314] Similarly, _King Henry_ (32) “as published by Jamieson ... is increased by interpolation to thirty-four stanzas [from twenty]. ‘The interpolations will be found enclosed in brackets,’ but a painful contrast of style of itself distinguishes them.”[315] Editorial changes are, however, in some cases confined to slight verbal variations, where the contrast is less evident or painful.[316]

Yet, in spite of its artless, homely, and non-literary style, the ballad is not without conventions of its own. Most striking of these is the use of “commonplaces” or passages which recur in many ballads, like:

When bells were rung and mass was sung,
And a’ men bound to bed;

or,

O whan he came to broken briggs
He bent his bow and swam,
An whan he came to the green grass growin
He slackd his shoone and ran.[317]

Another convention is the complete repetition of the message by the messenger. Thus in _Fair Mary of Wallington_ (91, A) “the stanza which should convey ... part of the message is wanting, but may be confidently supplied from the errand-boy’s repetition.”[318] Another form of repetition occurs in the narration of similar incidents by different ballads. “There is a general resemblance between the rescue of Robin Hood in stanzas 61-81 and that of William of Cloudesly in Adam Bell, 56-94, and the precaution suggested by Much in the eighth stanza corresponds to the warning given by Adam in the eighth stanza of the other ballad. There is a verbal agreement in stanzas 71 of the first and 66 of the second. Such agreements or repetitions are numerous in the Robin Hood ballads, and in other traditional ballads, where similar situations occur.”[319]

In the course of degeneration, ballads retain, but distort, the commonplace. Thus in _Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret_ (261) “B 14^{3, 4} is a commonplace, which, in inferior traditional ballads, is often, as here, an out-of-place. B 15, 16 is another commonplace, of the silly sort.”[320] “Hacknied commonplaces” occur in _Auld Matrons_ (249), stanzas 2-5;[321] “frippery commonplaces,” in _The White Fisher_ (264), stanzas 2, 7, 8, 12.[322]

Turning now to the emotional qualities of ballad style, we find that the ghost ballad, in spite (or perhaps because) of the absence of special treatment noted above, is, at its best, “impressive.” The scene at the grave in _Sweet William’s Ghost_ (77 C 11-13) “may be judged grotesque, but is not trivial or unimpressive. These verses may be supposed not to have belonged to the earliest form of the ballad, and one does not miss them from A, but they cannot be an accretion of modern date.”[323] In _The Wife of Usher’s Well_ (79) “there is no indication that the sons come back to forbid obstinate grief, as the dead often do. But supplying a motive would add nothing to the impressiveness of these verses. Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting.”[324] _The Suffolk Miracle_ (272) is to be contrasted with the continental versions, “one of the most remarkable tales and one of the most impressive and beautiful ballads of the European continent.”[325] _Bewick and Graham_ (211), in spite of certain defects, “is a fine-spirited ballad as it stands, and very infectious.”[326] _Walter Lesly_ (296) is “a late, but life-like and spirited ballad.”[327] _The Wee Wee Man_ (38) is an “extremely airy and sparkling little ballad.”[328] _Andrew Lammie_ (233) “is a homely ditty, but the gentleness and fidelity of Annie under the brutal behavior of her family are genuinely pathetic, and justify the remarkable popularity which the ballad has enjoyed in the north of Scotland.”[329] Contrasted with the cynical _Twa Corbies_ of Scott’s Minstrelsy is _The Three Ravens_ (26), a “tender little English ballad.”[330] In the _Gest_: “Nothing was ever more felicitously told, even in the best _dit_ or _fabliau_, than the ‘process’ of Our Lady’s repaying the money which had been lent on her security. Robin’s slyly significant welcome to the monk upon learning that he is of Saint Mary Abbey, his professed anxiety that Our Lady is wroth with him because she has not sent him his pay, John’s comfortable suggestion that perhaps the monk has brought it, Robin’s incidental explanation of the little business in which the Virgin was a party, and request to see the silver in case the monk has come upon her affair, are beautiful touches of humor, and so delicate that it is all but brutal to point them out.”[331] The tales which are cited as parallels to _Queen Eleanor’s Confession_ (156) all “have the cynical Oriental character, and, to a healthy taste, are far surpassed by the innocuous humor of the English ballad.”[332] While we need not question the substantial genuineness of _Fause Foodrage_ (89), “we must admit that the form in which we have received it is an enfeebled one, without much flavor or color.”[333] _The Suffolk Miracle_ (272) preserves the story only in a “blurred, enfeebled, and disfigured shape.”[334] Version B of the _Cheviot_ (162) is “very seriously enfeebled.”[335]

The lyrical quality,--the fact that the ballad was made to be sung,--must not be lost sight of. “Fair Annie’s fortunes have not only been charmingly sung, as here [in the ballad of _Fair Annie_ (62)]; they have also been exquisitely _told_ in a favorite lay of Marie de France.”[336] The superior lyrical quality of _The Bonny Birdy_ (82) “makes up for its inferiority [to _Little Musgrave_ (81)] as a story, so that on the whole it cannot be prized much lower than the noble English ballad.”[337] Thus lyrical quality is to be regarded as no less significant than plot as a trait of the true ballad. _The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice_ (40), “after the nature of the best popular ballad, forces you to chant and will not be read.”[338] Even _The Jolly Pindar of Wakefield_, (124) “is thoroughly lyrical, ... and was pretty well sung to pieces before it ever was printed.”[339] “It is not ... always easy to say whether an isolated stanza belonged to a ballad or a song;”[340] and Professor Child speaks even of the whole of _Bessy Bell and Mary Gray_ (201) as “this little ballad, or song.”[341] Of _Lord Lovel_ (75) he says: “It can scarcely be too often repeated that such ballads as this were meant only to be sung, not at all to be recited.... ‘Lord Lovel’ is especially one of those which, for their due effect, require the support of a melody, and almost equally the comment of a burden. No burden is preserved in the case of ‘Lord Lovel,’ but we are not to infer that there never was one. The burden, which is at least as important as the instrumental accompaniment of modern songs, sometimes, in these little tragedies, foreshadows calamity from the outset, sometimes ... is a cheerful-sounding formula, which in the upshot enhances by contrast the gloom of the conclusion. ‘A simple but life-like story, supported by the burden and the air, these are the means by which such old romances seek to produce an impression.’”[342] _The Elfin Knight_ (2 A) “is the only example, so far as I remember, which our ballads afford of a burden of this kind, one that is of greater extent than the stanza with which it was sung, though this kind of burden seems to have been common enough with old songs and carols.”[343]

IV.

_The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ of 1882-1898 has naturally superseded the _English and Scottish Ballads_ of 1857-1859, and Professor Child himself shared the general tendency to underestimate the real value of the earlier collection. It was of course made on a different plan; its limits were not so clearly defined, and it did not attempt to give every version of every known ballad. Many of the sources, moreover, were not yet open. One is, then, surprised to find that, of the three hundred and five ballads printed in the later collection, only ninety are new; and these are, for the most part, unimportant additions to the body of ballad literature. They are distributed as follows: 15 in volume I, 16 in II, 11 in III, 25 in IV, 23 in V. Thus 59 of the 90 occur in the last three volumes; of these there is not one of first importance. Of the remaining 31 not more than 10 can be regarded as really valuable additions, though such an estimate must of necessity be based more or less upon personal impression. Some of these were already accessible, in Buchan’s versions, or elsewhere: _Willie’s Lyke-Wake_ (25), _Lizie Wan_ (51), _The King’s Dochter Lady Jean_ (52), _Brown Robyn’s Confession_ (57), _Fair Mary of Wallington_(91). These, doubtless, were omitted because of the nature of their subject-matter; it was only in the later collection that Professor Child “had no discretion.”[344] Other important ballads were not yet accessible, or not yet discovered: _St. Stephen and Herod_ (22), _The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea_ (36), _The Queen of Elfan’s Nourice_ (40), _The Unquiet Grave_ (78), _The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry_ (113). Of the ten, only four are included in Professor Gummere’s collection. The main addition of the later collection is thus rather in the way of new versions of important ballads, or of more authentic versions based directly upon the manuscripts; in the citation of a larger number of foreign parallels; and, generally, in the matter contained in the introductions.

The _Ballads_ contained 115 pieces which do not appear in the later collection. The nature of such material, since it is excluded from the “complete” _English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, is significant as throwing some additional light upon Professor Child’s conception. In many cases the reason for exclusion is made clear by Professor Child himself, in comments in the earlier or in the later collection. Of the whole group of lays and romances contained in Book I of the _Ballads_, he says: “Some of the longer pieces in this book are not of the nature of ballads, and require an apology. They were admitted before the limits of the work had been determined with exactness.”[345] If such pieces as these do not fulfil the lyrical requirement of the true ballad, others cannot fulfil the requirement of plot, and the songs, of the _Ballads_, like _A Lyke Wake Dirge_, _Fair Helen of Kirconnel_, or _The Lowlands of Holland_[346] find no place in the later collection. The _Ballads_ contains also translations from the Danish, and the original and translation of a modern Greek parallel of the Lenore story; these are naturally not included in _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_.

The later collection is much more chary of the admission of broadsides or sheet-ballads: in many cases they are relegated to introductions or appendices; in many more, omitted. _William Guiseman_ is cited merely, under _Brown Robin’s Confession_ (57), as “a copy, improved by tradition, of the ‘lament’ in ‘William Grismond’s Downfal,’ a broadside of 1650.”[347] _The Lament of the Border Widow_, which occurs in Book VI of the _Ballads_, “shows broader traces of the sheet-ballad,” and is quoted in the introduction to No 106 for “those who are interested in such random inventions (as, under pardon, they must be called).”[348] Of _The Lady Isabella’s Tragedy_ Professor Child says in the later collection: “Though perhaps absolutely the silliest ballad that ever was made, and very far from silly sooth, the broadside was traditionally propagated in Scotland without so much change as is usual in such cases.”[349] Even in the _Ballads_ one finds this comment: “The three following pieces [_The Spanish Virgin_, _Lady Isabella’s Tragedy_, _The Cruel Black_] are here inserted merely as specimens of a class of tales, horrible in their incidents but feeble in their execution, of which whole dreary volumes were printed and read about two centuries ago. They were all of them, probably, founded on Italian novels.”[350] Although the _Ballads_ includes _Macpherson’s Rant_, it is declared “worthy of a hangman’s pen.”[351] A number of tales which employ a highly artificial stanza, such as _The Fray of Suport_, _The Raid of the Reidswire_, or _The Flemish Insurrection_, do not find their way into the later collection.

Traces of the modern editor or author become less common in the later collection. Versions “modernized and completed by Percy” (Book I, Nos. 1 b and 5 b) are excluded. The cynical _Twa Corbies_ appears only in the introduction to _The Three Ravens_; and Motherwell’s edition, declared already in the _Ballads_ to be a “modernized version,”[352] does not appear at all. Motherwell’s _Bonnie_ _George Campbell_ suffers a like fate, and this, we infer, because “Motherwell made up his ‘Bonnie George Campbell’ from B, C, D.”[353] As, no doubt, not merely modernized but modern, _Sir Roland_ is excluded. “This fragment, Motherwell tells us, was communicated to him by an ingenious friend, who remembered having heard it sung in his youth. He does not vouch for its antiquity, and we have little or no hesitation in pronouncing it a modern composition.”[354] Similarly, _Lady Anne_ “is on the face of it a modern composition, with extensive variations, on the theme of the popular ballad.”[355] It is printed in the appendix to No 20. _Earl Richard_ is “an entirely modern composition, excepting only the twenty lines of Herd’s fragment.”[356] Of _Auld Maitland_ Professor Child says: “Notwithstanding the authority of Scott and Leyden, I am inclined to agree with Mr Aytoun, that this ballad is a modern imitation, or if not that, a comparatively recent composition. It is with reluctance that I make for it the room it requires.”[357] The essential anonymity of the ballad, in Professor Child’s final conception, naturally excludes pieces like Henryson’s _Robene and Makyne_ and _The Bludy Serk_, which had found their way into the _Ballads_.[358]

There are but few instances of definite praise, as ballads, of pieces included in the earlier collection and excluded from the later. _The Children in the Wood_ is said to be “perhaps the most popular of all English ballads. Its merit is attested by the favor it has enjoyed with so many generations, and was vindicated to a cold and artificial age by the kindly pen of Addison.”[359] We must not forget, however, that Professor Child was fifty years nearer the kindly pen of Addison. The cold and artificial age, moreover, was also sentimental and moral; and why, with it, this ballad was so popular, a single stanza will show:

You that executors be made,
And overseers eke
Of children that be fatherless,
And infants mild and meek;
Take you example by this thing,
And yield to each his right,
Lest God with such like miserye
Your wicked minds requite (vv. 153 ff.).

_The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bednall’s Green_ is said to be printed from a modern broadside, yet it is characterized as “this favorite popular ballad.”[360] _The Nutbrowne Maid_ is “this matchless poem,” “this beautiful old ballad.”[361] Yet, clearly, it is not a popular ballad at all.

On the whole, it is not difficult to see why the 115 ballads are excluded from the later collection; and one gets the impression that, had Professor Child chosen to enforce the conception of the ballad which he already had in mind, most of them would have been excluded from the earlier collection as well. This impression is deepened by an examination of the comments scattered through the _Ballads_.

He already regarded the ballad as inimitable:[362] “The exclusion of the ‘Imitations’ ... may possibly excite the regret of a few.... Whatever may be the merit of the productions in question, they are never less likely to obtain credit for it, than when they are brought into comparison with their professed models.”[363] Again, _Sir Patrick Spence_, “if not ancient, has been always accepted as such by the most skilful judges, and is a solitary instance of a successful imitation, in manner and spirit, of the best specimens of authentic minstrelsy.”[364]

Professor Child had already fallen foul of the editors, and their alterations and interpolations.[365] It is interesting to see how, in many cases, he anticipated the corrections and comments made possible, for the later collection, by access to the manuscripts. Of _The Child of Elle_ he says: “So extensive are Percy’s alterations and additions, that the reader will have no slight difficulty in detecting the few traces that are left of the genuine composition.”[366] Compare: “So much of Percy’s ‘Child of Elle’ as was genuine, which, upon the printing of his manuscript, turned out to be one fifth.”[367] Again, Percy acknowledges interpolations, which “might with some confidence be pointed out. Among them are certainly most, if not all, of the last twelve stanzas of the Second Part, which include the catastrophe to the story.”[368] In Percy, he says in the later collection, _Sir Cawline_ “is extended to nearly twice the amount of what is found in the manuscript, and a tragical turn is forced upon the story.”[369] Again: “We have given _Gil Morrice_ as it stands in the _Reliques_ (iii. 132,) degrading to the margin those stanzas which are undoubtedly spurious.”[370] The stanzas thus degraded turned out to be actually spurious.[371] Condemnation of Buchan is scattered throughout the _Ballads_. Thus: “Some resolution has been exercised, and much disgust suppressed, in retaining certain pieces from Buchan’s collections, so strong is the suspicion that, after having been procured from very inferior sources, they were tampered with by the editor.”[372] Again: “One uncommonly tasteless stanza [41, A, 53], the interpolation of some nursery-maid,[373] is here omitted. Too many of Buchan’s ballads have suffered in this way, and have become both prolix and vulgar.”[374] Even in the _Ballads_ Professor Child placed “no confidence in any of Allan Cunningham’s _souvenirs_ of Scottish song,”[375] and his early suspicions[376] of the character of Cunningham’s version of Gil Brenton are confirmed in the later collection.[377] _King Henry_, printed in the earlier collection “without the editor’s [Jamieson’s] interpolations,”[378] appears in the same form in the later, except that stanza 14 is printed in small type, as not being in the Jamieson-Brown MS. Again, in _The Bonny Birdy_, “the lines supplied by Jamieson have been omitted.”[379] There is an interesting comment on these lines in the later collection.[380]

Professor Child was already aware that change of nationality was accompanied by change of the scene of action.[381] He quoted Scott’s account of the locality of _The Douglas Tragedy_ [==_Earl Brand_ (7, B)], and added: “After so circumstantial a description of the scene, ... the reader may be amused to see the same story told in various Scandinavian ballads, with a no less plausible resemblance to actual history. This, as has already been pointed out under _Guy of Warwick_ and _Kempion_,[382] is an ordinary occurrence in the transmission of legends.”[383]

He noted, too, the tendency of ballads to combine: “The natural desire of men to hear more of characters in whom they have become strongly interested, has frequently stimulated the attempt to continue successful fictions.”[384] _Sweet William’s Ghost_ is often made the sequel to other ballads.[385]

So far as subject-matter is concerned, we find in the _Ballads_ the same conception of the relation of ballad and fact. _Jane Shore_ “adheres to matter of fact with a fidelity very uncommon,”[386] and this is, perhaps, one reason why it does not find a place in the later collection.[387] We may contrast, on the other hand, the two statements in regard to the relation of _Hind Horn_ and the romance: “Metrical romances ... are known in many cases to have been adapted for the entertainment of humbler hearers, by abridgment in the form of ballads.” He regards _Hind Horn_ as a case of this sort.[388]

Style and plot, finally, are a test of genuineness: “I cannot assent to the praise bestowed by Scott on _The Outlaw Murray_. The story lacks point and the style is affected--not that of the unconscious poet of the real _traditional_ ballad.”[389] Though there without comment, it is placed at the very end of the later collection.

From a comment like this it is obvious that Professor Child already had in mind the conception of “a real _traditional_ ballad,” a “specimen of authentic minstrelsy.”[390] Although he admitted to the earlier collection lays, romances, songs, broadsides and sheet-ballads, as well as modern or modernized compositions, yet he was aware that all these differed from the true ballad. This true ballad, he conceived, was inimitable, in matter and manner. In transmission it might suffer, from the invention of a nursery-maid, from Buchan’s beggar, from a “hangman’s pen,” from the modern editors. It drew its subject-matter from fact (to which it was not loyal), from romances, from other ballads. In quality the subject-matter was not “horrible.” In style the true ballad was not feeble in execution, not prolix and vulgar, and not affected. The earlier conception was not as complete as the later, and it was by no means so rigorously enforced. In regard to specific compositions, there was, as is to be expected, some change of opinion. But the significant fact is that for at least forty years Professor Child retained without essential change his conception of the traditional ballad as a distinct literary type.

V.

We may now bring together the passages in which Professor Child declared certain ballads to be of the true “popular” or “traditional” type. The fewness of such passages is at first surprising, yet it clearly formed no part of a set purpose to include in his introductions estimates of this kind, and such “appreciations” seem to have been either spontaneous,--springing, as in the case of _Johnie Cock_, from his delight in the ballad with which he was concerned,--or intended, as in the case of _Edward_, as answer to his predecessors’ doubts of authenticity. On ballads like _Lord Randal_, _Babylon_, _Hind Horn_, _Clerk Saunders_, _Fair Margaret and Sweet William_, there is no such comment. It would seem, no doubt, in such cases obviously unnecessary. Nevertheless the list is fairly representative. We have examples of the Domestic Ballad,--tragic, in _Earl Brand_ (7), _Edward_ (13), _Old Robin of Portingale_ (80), _Little Musgrave_ (81), _The Bonny Birdy_ (82); not tragic, in _Child Waters_ (63), _Young Beichan_ (53), _Queen Eleanor’s Confession_ (156): we have examples of the Supernatural Ballad,--transformation, in _The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea_ (36); fairy, in _Thomas Rymer_ (37); ghost, in _The Wife_ _of Usher’s Well_ (79): we have examples of the Border Ballad in _Captain Car_ (178 F) and _Jock o the Side_ (187): of the Outlaw Ballad in _Johnie Cock_ (114), the Robin Hood ballads, 117-121: of the Heroic Ballad in _King Estmere_ (60), _Sir Aldingar_ (59), _Sir Patrick Spens_ (58 A).

_Johnie Cock_ (114): “This precious specimen of the unspoiled traditional ballad.” III, 1.

_Edward_ (13): “The word ‘brand,’ in the first stanza, is possibly more literary than popular; further than this the language is entirely fit. The affectedly antique spelling in Percy’s copy has given rise to vague suspicions concerning the authenticity of the ballad, or of the language: but as spelling will not make an old ballad, so it will not unmake one. We have, but do not need, the later traditional copy to prove the other genuine. ‘Edward’ is not only unimpeachable, but has ever been regarded as one of the noblest and most sterling specimens of the popular ballad.” I, 167.

_The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea_ (36): “Somewhat mutilated, and also defaced, though it be, this ballad has certainly never been retouched by a pen, but is pure tradition. It has the first stanza in common with ‘Kemp Owyne,’ and shares more than that with ‘Allison Gross.’ But it is independent of ‘Allison Gross,’ and has a far more original sound.” I, 315.

_Earl Brand_ (7): ... “has preserved most of the incidents of a very ancient story with a faithfulness unequalled by any ballad that has been recovered from English oral tradition.” I, 88.

_The Wife of Usher’s Well_ (79): “A motive for the return of the wife’s three sons is not found in the fragments which remain to us.... But supplying a motive would add nothing to the impressiveness of these verses. Nothing that we have is more profoundly affecting.” II, 238.

_Thomas Rymer_ (37): “B ... has been corrupted here and there, but only by tradition.” I, 317.

“The fairy adventures of Thomas and of Ogier have the essential points in common, and even the particular trait that the fairy is taken to be the Virgin. The occurrence of this trait again in the ballad, viewed in connection with the general similarity of the two, will leave no doubt that the ballad had its source in the romance. Yet it is an entirely popular ballad as to style,[391] and must be of considerable age, though the earliest version (A) can be traced at furthest only into the first half of the last century.” I, 319 f.

_Captain Car_ (178): “F is purely traditional and has one fine stanza not found in any of the foregoing:@

Out then spake the lady Margaret,
As she stood on the stair;
The fire was at her goud garters,
The lowe was at her hair.” III, 429.@

_Queen Eleanor’s Confession_ (156): “There is reason to question whether this [F] and the other recited versions are anything more than traditional variations of printed copies. The ballad seems first to have got into print in the latter part of the seventeenth century, but was no doubt circulating orally sometime before that, for it is in the truly popular tone.” III, 255.

_Robin Hood and the Tanner_ (126): “The sturdy Arthur a Bland is well hit off, and, bating the sixteenth and thirty-fifth stanzas, the ballad has a good popular ring. There is corruption at 8^3, 12^3, and perhaps 13^3.” III, 137.

The earliest Robin Hood ballads (117-121) “are among the best of all ballads, and perhaps none in English please so many and please so long.” III, 42.

_Robin Hood and the Monk_ (119): “Too much could not be said in praise of this ballad, but nothing need be said. It is very perfection in its kind; and yet we have others equally good, and beyond doubt should have had more, if they had been written down early, as this was, and had not been left to the chances of tradition. Even writing would not have saved all, but writing has saved this (in large part), and in excellent form.” III, 95.

_Child Waters_ (63): “This charming ballad, which has perhaps no superior in English, and if not in English perhaps nowhere.” II, 84. (“Caution is imperative where so much ground is covered, and no man should be confident that he can do absolute justice to poetry in a tongue that he was not born to; but foreign poetry is as likely to be rated too high as to be undervalued.” II, 84, n.)

_Jock o the Side_ (187): “The ballad is one of the best in the world, and enough to make a horse-trooper of any young borderer, had he lacked the impulse.” III, 477.

_Sir Patrick Spens_ (58, A): “This admired and most admirable ballad.” “It would be hard to point out in ballad poetry, or other, happier or more refined touches than the two stanzas in A which portray the bootless waiting of the ladies for the return of the seafarers.” II, 17 f.[392]

_Young Beichan_ (53): “A favorite ballad and most deservedly.” I, 455.

_King Estmere_ (60): “While we cannot but be vexed that so distinguished a ballad, not injured much, so far as we can see, by time, should not come down to us as it came to Percy, our loss must not be exaggerated. The changes made by the editor, numerous enough, no doubt, cannot be very material until we approach the end. Stanzas 63-66 are entirely suspicious, and it may even be questioned whether the manuscript contained a word that is in them.” II, 49.

_Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard_ (81): “The noble English ballad.” II, 260.

_The Bonny Birdy_ (82): “A fine ballad upon the same theme.” II, 243.

_Old Robin of Portingale_ (80): “This fine ballad.” II, 240.

_Sir Aldingar_ (69): “This ballad, one of the most important of all that the Percy manuscript has saved from oblivion.” II, 33.

_Robin Hood’s Death_ (120): “B, though found only in late garlands, is in the fine old strain.” III, 103.

Certain ballads are expressly condemned as not “traditional” or “popular”:

_Robin Hood Rescuing Will Stutly_ (141): “This is a ballad made for print, with little of the traditional in the matter and nothing in the style. It may be considered as an imitation of the Rescue of the Three Squires.” III, 185.

_Robin Hood’s Birth, Breeding, etc._ (149): “The jocular author of this ballad, who would certainly have been diverted by any one’s supposing him to write under the restraints of tradition....” III, 214.

_The Lovely Northerne Lasse_ (217, Appendix): “There is an English ‘ditty’ (not a traditional ballad) ... which was printed in the first half of the seventeenth century. It is here given in an appendix.” IV, 192.

To these may be added a few examples of less specific condemnation:

_The Earl of Mar’s Daughter_ (270): A Scandinavian ballad and this “are, perhaps, on a par, for barrenness and folly, but the former may claim some age and vogue, the Scottish ballad neither.” V, 39.

_The Drunkard’s Legacy_ (267, Appendix): “The modern ballad ... used by Percy was ‘The Drunkard’s Legacy,’ an inexpressibly pitiable ditty.” V, 12.

_John Thomson and the Turk_ (266): “This ridiculous ballad.” V, 1.

_Robin Hood and the Tinker_ (127): “The fewest words will best befit this contemptible imitation of imitations.” III, 140.

_Robin Hood and Maid Marian_ (150): “This foolish ditty.” III, 218.

_Robin Hood and the Valiant Knight_ (153): “Written, perhaps, because it was thought that authority should in the end be vindicated against outlaws, which may explain why this piece surpasses in platitude everything that goes before.” III, 225.

_The Suffolk Miracle_ (272): “This piece could not be admitted here on its own merits. At the first look, it would be classed with the vulgar prodigies printed for hawkers to sell and for Mopsa and Dorcas to buy. It is not even a good specimen of its kind.” V, 58.

We may add from the _Ballads_ half-a-dozen examples of specific praise:

_The Lass of Lochroyan_ [76, D][393]: “This beautiful piece.” _Ballads_, II, 98.

_The Queen’s Marie_ [173, I]: “Jamieson and Kinloch have each published a highly dramatic fragment of this terrible story.” _Ballads_, III, 107.

_The Lochmaben Harper_ [192, A]: “This fine old ballad ... has the genuine ring of the best days of minstrelsy. On account of its excellence, we give two versions.” _Ballads_, VI, 3.

_Earl Richard_ [68, J]: “This gloomy and impressive romance.” _Ballads_, III, 3.

_Chevy-Chace_ [162, A]: “Addison’s papers in the _Spectator_ ... evince so true a perception of the merits of this ballad [162, B], shorn as it is of the most striking beauties of the grand original, that we cannot but deeply regret his never having seen the ancient and genuine copy (‘The noble ballad,’ 162, A; _Ballads_, VII, 27), which was published by Hearne only a few days after Addison died.” _Ballads_, VII, 43.

_Sir Andrew Barton_ [167, A]: “This noble ballad.” _Ballads_, VII, 56.

_Sir Patrick Spence_ [58, A]: “If not ancient, has been always accepted as such by the most skilful judges, and is a solitary instance of a successful imitation, in manner and spirit, of the best specimens of authentic minstrelsy.” _Ballads_, III, 149.

VI.

We are now in position to attempt a summary of Professor Child’s conception of the popular ballad. He regarded it as a distinct species of poetry, which precedes the poetry of art, as the product of a homogeneous people, the expression of our common human nature, of the mind and heart of the people, never of the personality of an individual man, devoid, therefore, of all subjectivity and self-consciousness. Hence the author counts for nothing; hence, too, the ballad is difficult to imitate and most attempts in this way are ridiculous failures. In transmission the ballad regularly departs from the original form, least in the mouths of unlearned people, more in the hands of professional singers or editors. It is at its best when it has come down by a purely domestic tradition, yet even so it is sometimes influenced by printed literature; and much depends on the experience and selection of the reciters, and on their varying memory, which is, however, ordinarily remarkable for its tenacity. Less fortunate is the ballad when it passes through low mouths or hands, suffering corruption of various kinds,--in the style of the attorney’s clerk, or the housemaid or the serving-man, or ostler, or blind beggar. In the hands of the _bänkelsänger_ or of the minstrel, the ballad departs still further from its original form. Or, rewritten for the broadside press, it is seriously enfeebled, or retrenched and marred, though it may retain some original features, and there are thus degrees of departure from the original matter and manner. The broadside may, in turn, become tradition. It is, so far as it appears in Professor Child’s later collection, always founded on tradition, and this tradition lives after the composition of the broadside, and may influence the later versions of the printed form. Last comes the modern editor, and by him the ballad is sometimes lengthened,--by combination of different versions, by interpolation of new stanzas, always more or less unlike the popular style; or it is sometimes “improved,” or retouched, or emended, or altered,--changed to something in glaring contrast to the groundwork. Some results of the vicissitudes of transmission are, the change of the hero’s nationality, of his name, of his rôle; change of the scene of action; corruption of diction resulting in perversion of sense or in nonsense; introduction of learned words. The ballad thus suffers in transmission, and is at its best when it is early caught and fixed in print. It is sometimes counterfeited or imitated, and counterfeits are included in the later collection for contrast, for much the same reason that thieves are photographed, or because they may contain relics of something genuine or better.