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]