I.

In that article in the _Universal Cyclopædia_ which Professor Child “wished to be neither quoted nor regarded as final,”[135] but which must here be combined with other tentative or fragmentary statements, he defined the _popular ballad_ as “a distinct and very important species of poetry. Its historical and natural place,” he said, “is anterior to the appearance of the poetry of art, to which it has formed a step, and by which it has been regularly displaced, and, in some cases, all but extinguished. Whenever a people in the course of its development reaches a certain intellectual and moral stage, it will feel an impulse to express itself, and the form of expression to which it is first impelled is, as is well known, not prose, but verse, and in fact narrative verse. The condition of society in which a truly national or popular poetry appears explains the character of such poetry. It is a condition in which the people are not divided by political organization and book-culture into markedly distinct classes, in which consequently there is such community of ideas and feelings that the whole people form an individual. Such poetry, accordingly, while it is in its essence an expression of our common human nature, and so of universal and indestructible interest, will in each case be differenced by circumstances and idiosyncrasy. On the other hand, it will always be an expression of the mind and heart of the people as an individual, and never of the personality of individual men. The fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and of self-consciousness. Though they do not ‘write themselves,’ as William Grimm has said, though a man and not a people has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us anonymous. Hence, too, they are extremely difficult to imitate by the highly civilized modern man, and most of the attempts to reproduce this kind of poetry have been ridiculous failures.

“The primitive ballad, then, is popular, not in the sense of something arising from and suited to the lower orders of a people. As yet, no sharp distinction of high and low exists, in respect to knowledge, desires, and tastes. An increased civilization, and especially the introduction of book-culture, gradually gives rise to such a division; the poetry of art appears; the popular poetry is no longer relished by a portion of the people, and is abandoned to an uncultivated or not over-cultivated class--a constantly diminishing number.”

But “the popular ballad is not originally the product or the property of the lower orders of the people. Nothing, in fact, is more obvious than that many of the ballads of the now most refined nations had their origin in that class whose acts and fortunes they depict--the upper class--though the growth of civilization has driven them from the memory of the highly polished and instructed, and has left them as an exclusive possession to the uneducated. The genuine popular ballad had its rise in a time when the distinctions since brought about by education and other circumstances had practically no existence. The vulgar ballads of our day, the ‘broadsides’ which were printed in such large numbers in England and elsewhere in the sixteenth century or later, belong to a different genus; they are products of a low kind of _art_, and most of them are, from a literary point of view, thoroughly despicable and worthless.

“Next it must be observed that ballads which have been handed down by long-repeated tradition have always departed considerably from their original form. If the transmission has been purely through the mouths of unlearned people, there is less probability of willful change, but once in the hands of professional singers there is no amount of change which they may not undergo. Last of all comes the modern editor, whose so-called improvements are more to be feared than the mischances of a thousand years. A very old ballad will often be found to have resolved itself in the course of what may be called its propagation into several distinct shapes, and each of these again to have received distinct modifications. When the fashion of verse has altered, we shall find a change of form as great as that in the _Hildebrandslied_, from alliteration without stanza to stanza with rhyme. In all cases the language drifts insensibly from ancient forms, though not at the same rate with the language of every-day life. The professional ballad-singer or minstrel, whose sole object is to please the audience before him, will alter, omit, or add, without scruple, and nothing is more common than to find different ballads blended together.

“There remains the very curious question of the origin of the resemblances which are found in the ballads of different nations, the recurrence of the same incidents or even of the same story, among races distinct in blood and history, and geographically far separated.” It is not necessary to go back to a common ancestry to explain these resemblances. “The incidents of many ballads are such as might occur anywhere and at any time; and with regard to agreements that can not be explained in this way we have only to remember that tales and songs were the chief social amusement of all classes of people in all the nations of Europe during the Middle Ages, and that new stories would be eagerly sought for by those whose business it was to furnish this amusement, and be rapidly spread among the fraternity. A great effect was undoubtedly produced by the crusades, which both brought the chief European nations into closer intercourse and made them acquainted with the East, thus facilitating the interchange of stories and greatly enlarging the stock.”

This account of authorship and transmission may be illustrated and supplemented by _obiter dicta_ from _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_. “The author counts for nothing;” the ballad is essentially anonymous: that Expliceth quod Rychard Sheale means merely that _The Hunting of the Cheviot_ (162) “was of course part of his stock as minstrel; the supposition that he was the author is preposterous in the extreme.”[136]

Ballads are at their best when “the transmission has been purely through the mouths of unlearned people,” when they have come down by domestic tradition, through knitters and weavers. _Glasgerion_ (67, B) “is mainly of good derivation (a poor old woman in Aberdeenshire).”[137] And “no Scottish ballads are superior in kind to those recited in the last century by Mrs Brown, of Falkland.”[138] Yet even upon Mrs Brown printed literature may have had some influence: in _Fause Foodrage_ (89), “the resemblance in the verse in A 31, ‘The boy stared wild like a gray gose-hawke,’ to one in ‘Hardyknute,’ ‘Norse een like gray goss-hawk stared wild,’ struck Sir Walter Scott as suspicious,” and “it is quite possible that Mrs Brown may unconsciously have adopted this verse from the tiresome and affected Hardyknute, so much esteemed in her day.”[139] A literary treatment of a ballad theme may affect the traditional versions of that ballad. In the case of _Child Maurice_ (83) “the popularity of the play [Home’s _Douglas_] seems to have given vogue to the ballad. The sophisticated copy passed into recitation, and may very likely have more or less infected those which were repeated from earlier tradition.”[140] A whole ballad may even be completely derived from print, and yet, in the course of time, revert to the popular form. Of this same ballad, _Child Maurice_, “Mr Aytoun considers that E is only the copy printed in the middle of the last century purged, in the process of oral transmission, of what was not to the popular taste, ‘and altered more.’ There is no doubt that a copy learned from print may be transformed in this way, but it is certain that old tradition does not come to a stop when a ballad gets into print.”[141]

Not only the possible influence of print is to be taken into account; much depends on the material to which the reciter was exposed and upon his selection. “It will not ... help the ballad [_Young Bearwell_ (302)] much that it was not palmed off on Buchan in jest or otherwise, or even if it was learned from an old person by Mr Nicol in his youth. The intrinsic character of the ballad remains, and old people have sometimes burdened their memory with worthless things.”[142] Editors were not the only interpolators; of _The Twa Sisters_ (10), A, a, 11-13, need not have been written, but “might easily be extemporized by any singer of sufficiently bad taste.”[143] The varying memory of reciters, too, was a cause of unintentional change. Thus “Mrs Brown was not satisfied with A b [of _Bonny Baby Livingston_ (222)], which Jamieson had taken down from her mouth, and after a short time she sent him A a. The verbal differences are considerable. We need not suppose that Mrs Brown had heard two ‘sets’ or ‘ways,’ of which she blended the readings; the fact seems to be that, at the time when she recited to Jamieson, she was not in good condition to remember accurately.”[144] In general, however, the folk memory is remarkable for its tenacity. “Most of the [Danish] versions [of _Earl Brand_ (7)] from recitation are wonderful examples and proofs of the fidelity with which simple people ‘report and hold’ old tales: for, as the editor has shown, verses which never had been printed, but which are found in old manuscripts, are now met with in recited copies; and these recited copies, again, have verses that occur in no Danish print or manuscript, but which nevertheless are found in Norwegian and Swedish recitations, and, what is more striking, in Icelandic tradition of two hundred years’ standing.”[145]

The ballad does not remain in the possession of the simple folk, or of reciters of Mrs Brown’s instinctive good taste. Its best fortune is then perhaps to fall into the hands of children, like _The Maid Freed From the Gallows_ (95), of which “F had become a children’s game, the last stage of many old ballads.”[146] Again, “it is interesting to find the ballad [_The Twa Brothers_ (49)] still in the mouths of children in American cities,--in the mouths of the poorest, whose heritage these old things are.”[147] _Sir Hugh_ (155) in the form of _Little Harry Hughes and the Duke’s Daughter_, was heard, says Mr Newell, “from a group of colored children, in the streets of New York city,” and traced “to a little girl living in one of the cabins near Central Park.”[148]

Less happy is the fate of the ballad when it falls into the hands of professional singers,--the Minstrel Ballad is to be considered presently,--or when it falls into the hands of amateurs of various sorts, who corrupt and debase it. _Hind Etin_ (41) “has suffered severely by the accidents of tradition. A has been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been worked over by low hands. Something considerable has been lost from the story, and fine romantic features, preserved in Norse and German ballads, have been quite effaced.”[149] Of _The Clerk’s Twa Sons o Owsenford_ (72) “D has some amusing dashes of prose, evidently of masculine origin. [Examples follow]. We have here a strong contrast with both the blind-beggar and the housemaid style of corruption; something suggesting the attorney’s clerk rather than the clerk of Owsenford, but at least not mawkish.”[150] The “blind beggar” is, of course, Buchan’s collector, and whether he or the editor was responsible for the corruptions is not always clear. The blind beggar himself, however, comes in for special condemnation in the comment on _The Bent Sae Brown_ (71): “The introduction and conclusion, and some incidental decorations, of the Scottish ballad will not be found in the Norse, but are an outcome of the invention and the piecing and shaping of that humble but enterprising rhapsodist who has left his trail over so large a part of Buchan’s volumes.”[151] In _Brown Robin_ (97) “the story undoubtedly stops at the right point in A, with the escape of the two lovers to the wood. The sequel in C is not at all beyond the inventive ability of Buchan’s blind beggar, and some other blind beggar may have contrived the cane and the whale, the shooting and the hanging, in B.”[152] As type of the housemaid style of corruption may, perhaps, stand _Lizie Lindsay_ (226). “Leezie Lindsay from a maid-servant in Aberdeen,” wrote Jamieson to Scott of A b.[153] And, “in his preface to B, Kinloch remarks that the ballad is very popular in the North, ‘and few milk-maids in that quarter but can chaunt it.’”[154] “Ballads of this description [a young lord o the Hielands, pretending that he is the son of an auld shepherd and an auld dey, persuades a young lady of Edinburgh to fly with him to the Highlands, where he at length reveals his identity]--ballads of this description are peculiarly liable to interpolation and debasement, and there are two passages, each occurring in several versions, which we may, without straining, set down to some plebeian improver.”[155]

Not mere corruption, but serving-man authorship, even, is suggested for _Tom Potts_ (109): “Such events [unequal matches] would be celebrated only by fellows of the yeoman or of the foot-boy, and surely in the present case the minstrel was not much above the estate of the serving-man. Lord Jockey’s reckless liberality throughout, and Lord Phoenix’s in the end, is a mark of the serving-man’s ideal nobleman.”[156] Again as mere corrupter, rather than author, appears the ostler in one version of _Bewick and Graham_, (211). In the 1833 edition of _The Border Minstrelsy_ “deficiencies were partly supplied and some different readings adopted ‘from a copy obtained by the recitation of an ostler in Carlisle.’” g “is shown by internal evidence to be the ostler’s copy. Both copies [g and h] were indisputably derived from print, though h may have passed through several mouths, g agrees with b--f closely as to minute points of phraseology which it is difficult to believe that a reciter would have retained. It looks more like an immediate, though faulty, transcript from print.”[157] Contrasting styles are suggested in the comment on _The Broomfield Hill_ (43): “The editor [of the broadside, “differing as to four or five@@ words only from F”] remarks that A is evidently taken@ from F; from which it is clear that the pungent buckishness of the broadside does not necessarily make an impression. A smells of the broom; F suggests the groom.”[158] Perhaps not to be classed with these non-professional corrupters or interpolators is the bänkelsänger who is responsible for one of the German versions of _Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight_ (4): “M smacks decidedly of the bänkelsänger, and has an appropriate moral at the tail: _animi index cauda!_”[159] Perhaps he is to be regarded as a humble sort of minstrel; to the comments on this class we may now turn our attention.

It does not appear from Professor Child’s remarks whether he thought of the minstrel as composing his ballads,--or making them over,--orally or in writing. Perhaps we are to suppose that he followed now one method, now the other. Rychard Sheale may be supposed to have affixed his “expliceth” to his written copy of Chevy Chase; yet it is “_quod_ Rychard Sheale” as if the manuscript had been written by another from his singing. But whether the ballad passed through the minstrel’s mouth or through his hands, it received some peculiar and characteristic modifications. Thus The _Boy and the Mantle_ (29), _King Arthur and King Cornwall_ (30), and _The Marriage of Sir Gawain_ (31) “are clearly not of the same rise, and not meant for the same ears, as those which go before. They would come down by professional rather than by domestic tradition, through minstrels rather than knitters and weavers. They suit the hall better than the bower, the tavern or public square better than the cottage, and would not go to the spinning-wheel at all. An exceedingly good piece of minstrelsy ‘The Boy and the Mantle’ is, too; much livelier than most of the numerous variations on the somewhat overhandled theme.”[160] _Crow and Pie_ (111), likewise, “is not a purely popular ballad, but rather of that kind which, for convenience, may be called the minstrel-ballad. It has, however, popular features, and markedly in stanzas 13, 14,”[161]--the damsel’s demanding the name of the man who has wronged her, a feature found in _The Bonny Hind_ (50) and its continental parallels.[162] The term _minstrel_ may, perhaps, be more loosely used in the passage which describes _The Rising in the North_ (175) as “the work of a loyal but not unsympathetic minstrel;”[163] in the statement concerning _Northumberland Betrayed by Douglas_ (176), that “the ballad-minstrel acquaints us with circumstances concerning the surrender of Northumberland;”[164] and in the statement to the effect that, in the case of _Tom Potts_ (109), “the minstrel was not much above the estate of the serving-man.”[165]

We may now attempt to construct an account of the vicissitudes to which the ballad was subject when, in the course of transmission, it sometimes found its way into writing and into print. Version B of _The Hunting of the Cheviot_ (162) “is a striking but by no means a solitary example of the impairment which an old ballad would suffer when written over for the broadside press. This very seriously enfeebled edition was in circulation throughout the seventeenth century, and much sung ... despite its length. It is declared by Addison, in his appreciative and tasteful critique ... to be the favorite ballad of the common people of England.”[166] Similarly, in the case of _Sir Andrew Barton_ (167), “a collation of A and B will show how ballads were retrenched and marred in the process of preparing them for the vulgar press.”[167] “B begins vilely, but does not go on so ill. The forty merchants coming ‘with fifty sail’ to King Henry on a mountain top ... requires to be taken indulgently.”[168] Though a broadside differs widely from a true ballad, it is not to be supposed that,--at least in the examples included by Professor Child,--some general traits or special features peculiar to the popular or traditional matter or manner did not survive. Thus, although the ballad of _The Twa Knights_ (268) “can have had no currency in Scotland, and perhaps was known only through print,” yet “a similar one is strictly traditional in Greece, and widely dispersed, both on the mainland and among the islands.”[169] Again, there are two broadsides of _King John and the Bishop_ (45), which Professor Child does not include, “both inferior even to B, and in a far less popular style.”[170] There are, then, degrees of departure from the popular style. There are degrees of departure from the popular matter, also, and the broadside preserves sometimes but a single popular feature. Version M of _Young Beichan_ (53) “was probably a broadside or stall copy, and is certainly of that quality, but preserves a very ancient traditional feature.”[171] The broadside version of _The Broomfield Hill_ (43) is distinguished by a “pungent buckishness,” which is not found in A, and which “suggests the groom.”[172] A broadside may itself become tradition. The English version of _Lord Thomas and Fair Annet_ (73) “is a broadside of Charles the Second’s time.... This copy has become traditional in Scotland and Ireland. The Scottish traditional copy ... is far superior, and one of the most beautiful of our ballads, and indeed of all ballads.”[173] The tradition lives, even after a ballad has found its way into print, and may influence and modify later versions of the printed form. Of _Prince Heathen_ (104) “the fragment A ... is partly explained by B, which is no doubt some stall-copy, reshaped from tradition.”[174] Of _The Baffled Knight_ (112) “E is, in all probability, a broadside copy modified by tradition.”[175] In origin, in any case, the broadsides in _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_ are popular.[176] “There is a Scottish ballad [similar to _The Baffled Knight_] in which the tables are turned.... This, as being of comparatively recent, and not of popular, but of low literary origin, cannot be admitted here.”[177]

“Last of all comes the modern editor,” and from Professor Child’s comments and skilful undoing of much of their work one might put together fairly complete accounts of the methods of Percy, Scott, Jamieson, Buchan, and the rest. We are concerned, however, not so much with the editors as with the results of their editing, with the kinds of change that the ballad suffered in their hands. It was often lengthened, in many cases by the combination of several versions. Thus Scott’s version of _Tam Lin_ (39, I), “as he himself states, was compounded of the Museum copy, Riddell’s, Herd’s, and ‘several recitals from tradition.’”[178] Of this use of materials from recitation examples are very numerous. Ballads were lengthened also by the interpolation of new stanzas. After Scott’s edition, in the _Minstrelsy_, of _The Twa Sisters_ (10), “Jamieson followed ... with a tolerably faithful, though not, as he says, _verbatim_,[179] publication of his copy of Mrs Brown’s ballad, somewhat marred, too, by acknowledged interpolations.”[180] _King Henry_ (32) was increased by Jamieson’s interpolations from twenty-two to thirty-four stanzas.[181] Scott’s version of _Fair Annie_ (62, A) “was obtained ‘chiefly from the recitation of an old woman,’ but we are not informed who supplied the rest. Herd’s fragment, D, furnished stanzas 2-6, 12, 17, 19. A doubt may be hazarded whether stanzas 8-10 came from the old woman.”[182] Interpolation and combination are here both illustrated. Scott’s later edition of _Tam Lin_ (39) “was corrupted with eleven new stanzas, which are not simply somewhat of a modern cast as to diction, as Scott remarks, but of a grossly modern invention, and as unlike popular verse as anything can be.”[183] Of his version of _Jellon Grame_ (90) Scott says: “‘Some verses are apparently modernized.’” “The only very important difference between Scott’s version and Mrs Brown’s is its having four stanzas of its own, the four before the last two, which are evidently not simply modernized, but modern.”[184]

But the editor did not merely combine or interpolate; more vaguely, he “improved.” Version E of _The Fair Flower of Northumberland_ (9), “a traditional version from the English border, has unfortunately been improved by some literary pen.”[185] Or he “retouched,”[186] or “altered,”[187] or “emended.” Scott confesses to some emendation of _Kinmont Willy_ (186); “it is to be suspected that a great deal more emendation was done than the mangling of reciters rendered absolutely necessary. One would like, for example, to see stanzas 10-12 and 31 in their mangled condition.”[188] In general, no changes or additions are “in so glaring contrast with the groundwork as literary emendations of traditional ballads.”[189] “Variations,” also, are to be noted: inaccuracies in _The Fire of Frendraught_ (196) are acknowledged by Motherwell; “the implication is, or should be, that these variations are of editorial origin.”[190] Of _Sweet William’s Ghost_ (77, A and B), “Percy remarks that the concluding stanza seems modern. There can be no doubt that both that and the one before it are modern; but, to the extent of Margaret’s dying on her lover’s grave, they are very likely to represent original verses not remembered in form.”[191]

Certain general results of transmission, of whatever kind, are to be noted. As a ballad passes from one country to another the nationality of the hero may be changed. In _Hugh Spencer’s Feats in France_ (158) “Hugh is naturally turned into a Scotsman in the Scottish version, C.”[192] The hero’s name is not more stable than his nationality. “In the course of transmission [of _John Thomson and the Turk_ (266)], as has ever been the wont, names were changed, and also some subordinate circumstances.”[193] Again, “the actual name of the hero of a ballad affords hardly a presumption as to who was originally the hero.”[194] Even the part that he plays the hero may exchange with another character. “Robin Hood’s rescue of Little John, in Guy of Gisborne, after quarrelling with him on a fanciful provocation, is a partial offset for Little John’s heart-stirring generosity in this ballad. [_Robin Hood and the Monk_ (119).] We have already had several cases of ballads in which the principal actors exchange parts.”[195] The ballad, again, is not constant in its attachment to one locality, and “the topography of traditional ballads frequently presents difficulties, both because it is liable to be changed, wholly, or, what is more embarrassing, partially, to suit a locality to which a ballad has been transported, and again because unfamiliar names, when not exchanged, are exposed to corruption.”[196] Thus, “in the ballad which follows this [_Rare Willie Drowned in Yarrow_ (215)], a western variety of the same story, Willie is drowned in the Clyde.”[197]

The corruption of names is but one phase of the change to which all unfamiliar ballad diction is exposed. “At every stage of oral transmission we must suppose that some accidental variations from what was delivered would be introduced, and occasionally some wilful variations. Memory will fail at times; at times the listener will hear amiss, or will not understand, and a perversion of sense will ensue, or absolute nonsense,--nonsense which will be servilely repeated, and which repetition may make more gross.... Learned words do not occur in ballads; still an old native word will be in the same danger of metamorphosis. But, though unfamiliarity naturally ends in corruption, mishearing may have the like effect where the original phrase is in no way at fault....

“It must be borne in mind, however, that as to nonsense the burden of proof rests always upon the expositor. His personal inability to dispose of a reading is not conclusive; his convictions may be strong, but patience and caution are his part and self-restraint as to conjectures.”[198]

In transmission, then, and even in the best of it, the ballad ordinarily fares but ill, “departs from the original form,” becomes less typically ballad; and, generally speaking, the older it is, the earlier it is caught and fixed in print, the better. Professor Child has thus special praise for those Robin Hood ballads which “have come down to us in comparatively ancient form.”[199] _Robin Hood’s Death_ (120, B) is “in the fine old strain.”[200] _Robin Hood and the Beggar_ (134, II), “by far the best of the Robin Hood ballads of the secondary, so to speak cyclic, period,” is “a composition of some antiquity,”[201] _Thomas Rymer_ (37) “is an entirely popular ballad as to style, and must be of considerable age.”[202] One is not to expect in a late or modern ballad the excellence found in an early or ancient one. _Robin Hood’s Chase_ (146) “is a well-conceived ballad, and only needs to be older.”[203] _Walter Lesly_ (296) is “a late, but life-like and spirited ballad.”[204] _The Hunting of the Cheviot_ (162, B) “is a striking ... example of the impairment which an old ballad would suffer when written over for the broadside press.”[205] Version M of _Young Beichan_ (53) “was probably a broadside or stall copy, and is certainly of that quality, but preserves a very ancient traditional feature.”[206] The “ridiculous ballad” of _John Thomson and the Turk_ (266) finds a place in the collection because it is “a seedling from an ancient and very notable story.”[207] _The Knight’s Ghost_ (265) “has not a perceptible globule of old blood in it, yet it has had the distinction of being more than once translated as a specimen of Scottish popular ballads.”[208] Scott’s later edition of _Tam Lin_ (39) “was corrupted with eleven new stanzas, which are not simply somewhat of a modern cast as to diction, as Scott remarks, but of a grossly modern invention, and as unlike popular verse as anything can be.”[209] Scott’s version of _Jellon Grame_ (90) has four stanzas of its own, “which are evidently not simply modernized, but modern.”[210] Certain stanzas in version B b of _Archie o Cawfield_ (188) “are indifferent modern stuff.”[211] The “modern ballad” on the subject of _The Heir of Linne_ (267) is “an inexpressibly pitiable ditty.”[212]

Certain counterfeits, imitations, or “spurious” ballads, wholly or almost wholly the work of editors or modern writers, are included in Professor Child’s collection. _Robin Hood and the Tinker_ (127) is a “contemptible imitation of imitations.”[213] Buchan’s version of _Young Waters_ (94) is, for the most part, “a counterfeit of the lowest description. Nevertheless it is given in an appendix; for much the same reason that thieves are photographed.”[214] _Young Ronald_ (304) is an example of the “spurious” ballad, and the reasons for its inclusion are given at some length. “If any lover of ballads should feel his understanding insulted by the presentation of such a piece as this, I can have no quarrel with him. There is certainly much in it that is exasperating.... In this and not a very few other cases, I have suppressed disgust, and admitted an actually worthless and manifestly--at least in part--spurious ballad, because of a remote possibility that it might contain relics, or be a debased representative, of something genuine and better. Such was the advice of my lamented friend, Grundtvig, in more instances than those in which I have brought myself to defer to his judgment.”[215] For the same reason is included _The Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heughs_: “This composition of Mr. Lamb’s--for nearly every line of it is his[216]--is not only based on popular tradition, but evidently preserves some small fragments of a popular ballad, and for this reason is given in an Appendix.”[217]