Ballads of Romance and Chivalry.

by Frank Sidgwick.

PREFACE

Of making selections of ballads there is no end. As a subject for the editor, they seem to be only less popular than Shakespeare, and every year sees a fresh output. But of late there has sprung up a custom of confusing the old with the new, the genuine with the imitation; and the products of civilised days, 'ballads' by courtesy or convention, are set beside the rugged and hard-featured aborigines of the tribe, just as the delicate bust of Clytie in the British Museum has for next neighbour the rude and bold 'Unknown Barbarian Captive.' To contrast by such enforced juxtaposition a ballad of the golden world with a ballad by Mr. Kipling is unfair to either, each being excellent in its way; and the collocation of _Edward_ or _Lord Randal_ with a ballad of Rossetti's is only of interest or value as exhibiting the perennial charm of the _refrain_.

There exist, however, in our tongue--though not only in our tongue--narratives in rhyme which have been handed down in oral tradition from father to son for so many ages, that all record of their authorship has long been lost. These are commonly called the Old Ballads. Being traditional, each ballad may exist in more than one form; in most cases the original story is clothed in several different forms.

The present series is designed to include all the best of these ballads which are still extant in England and Scotland: Ireland and Wales possess a similar class of popular literature, but each in its own tongue. It is therefore necessary, in issuing this the first volume of the series, to say somewhat as to the methods employed in editing and selecting.

Ballad editors of yore were confronted with perhaps two, perhaps twenty, versions of each ballad; some unintelligibly fragmentary, some intelligibly complete; some in print, some in manuscript, some, perchance, in their own memories. Collating these, they subjected the text to minute revision, omitting and adding, altering and inserting, to suit their personal tastes and standards, literary or polite; and having thus made it over, forgot to record the act, and saw no reason to apologise therefor.

Pioneers like Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and Sir Walter Scott, may well be excused the general censure. The former, living in and pandering to an age which invented and applied those delightful literary adjectives 'elegant' and 'ingenious,' may be pardoned with the more sincerity if one recalls the influence exercised on English letters by his publication. The latter, who played the part of Percy in the matter of Scottish ballads, and was nourished from his boyhood on the _Reliques_, printed for the first time many ballads which still are the best of their class, and was gifted with consummate skill and taste.

Both, moreover, did their work scientifically, according to their lights; and both have left at least some of their originals behind them.

There is, perhaps, one more exception to the general condemnation. Of William Allingham's _Ballad Book_, as truly a _vade mecum_ as Palgrave's lyrical anthology in the same 'Golden Treasury' series, I would speak, perhaps only for sentimental reasons, always with respect, admiring the results of his editing while looking askance at the method, for he mixed his ingredients and left no recipe.

But in the majority of cases there is no obvious excuse for this 'omnium gatherum' process. The self-imposed function of most ballad editors appears to have been the compilation of _rifacimenti_ in accordance with their private ideas of what a ballad should be. And that such a state of things was permissible is doubtless an indication of the then prevalent attitude of half-interested tolerance assumed towards these memorials of antiquity.

To-day, however, the ballad editor is confronted with the results of the labours, still unfinished, of a comparatively recent school in literary science. These have lately culminated in _The English and Scottish Popular Ballads_, edited by the late Professor Francis James Child of Harvard University. This work, in five large volumes, issued in ten parts at intervals from 1882 to 1898, and left by the editor at his death complete but for the Introduction--_valde deflendus_--gives in full all known variants of the three hundred and five ballads adjudged by its editor to be genuinely 'popular,' with an essay, prefixed to each ballad, on its history, origin, folklore, etc., and notes, glossary, bibliographies, appendices, etc.; exhibiting as a whole unrivalled special knowledge, great scholarly intuition, and years of patient research, aided by correspondents, students, and transcribers in all parts of the world, Lacking Professor Child's Introduction, we cannot exactly tell what his definition of a 'popular' ballad was, or what qualities in a ballad implied exclusion from his collection--_e.g._ he does not admit _The Children in the Wood_: otherwise one can find in this monumental work the whole history and all the versions of nearly all the ballads.

It will be obvious that Professor Child's academic method is suited rather to the scholar than the general reader. As a rule, one text of each ballad is all that is required, which must therefore be chosen--but by what rules? To the scholar, it usually happens that the most ancient and least handled text is the most interesting; but these are too frequently incomplete and unintelligible. The literary dilettante may prefer tasteful decorations by a Percy or a Scott; doubtless Buchan has some admirers: but the student abhors this painting of the lily.

Therefore I have compromised--always a dangerous practice--and I have sought to give, to the best of my judgement, _that authorised text of each ballad which tells in the best manner the completest form of the story or plot_. I have been forced to make certain exceptions, but for all departures from the above rule I have given reasons which, I trust, will be found to justify the procedure; and in all cases the sources of each text or part of the text are indicated.

I am quite aware that it may fairly be asked: Why not assume the immemorial privilege of a ballad editor, and concoct a text for yourself? Why, when any text of a ballad is, as you admit, merely a representative of parallel and similar traditional versions, should you not compile from those other variants a text which should combine the excellences of each, and give us the cream?

There are several objections to this course. However incompetent, I should not shrink from the labour involved; nor do I entirely approve the growing demand for German minuteness and exactitude in editors. But, firstly, the ballad should be subject to variation only while it is in oral circulation. Secondly, editorial garnishing has been overdone already, and my unwillingness to adopt that method is caused as much by the failure of the majority of editors as by the success of the few.

Lastly, _chacun a son gout_; there is a kind of literary selfishness in emending and patching to suit one's private taste, and, if any one wishes to do so, he will be most pleased with the result if he does it for himself.

This lengthy _apologia_ is necessitated by a departure from the usual custom of ballad-editing. For the rest, my indebtedness to the work of Professor Child will be obvious throughout. Many of his most interesting texts were printed for the first time from manuscripts in private hands.

These I have not sought to collate, which would, indeed, insult his accuracy and care. But in the case of texts from the Percy Folio, where the labour is rather to decipher than to transcribe accurately, I have resorted not only to the reprint of Hales and Furnivall, but to the Folio itself. The whimsical spelling of this MS. pleases me as often as it irritates, and I have ventured in certain ballads, _e.g._ _Glasgerion_, to modernise it, and in others, _e.g._ _Old Robin of Portingale_, to retain it _literatim_: in either case I have reduced to uniformity the orthography of the proper names. Transcripts from other MSS. are reproduced as they stand.

In the general Introduction I have tried to sketch the genesis and history of the ballad impartially in its several aspects, not for scholars and connoisseurs, but for those ready to learn. To supply deficiencies, I have added a list of books useful to the student of English ballads--to go no further afield. Each ballad also is prefaced with an introduction setting forth, besides the source of the text, as succinctly as is consistent with accuracy, the derivation, when known, of the story; the plot of similar foreign ballads; and points of interest in folklore, history, or criticism attached to the particular ballad. Where the story is fragmentary, I have added an argument. It will be realised that such introductions at the best are but a thousandth part of what might be written; but if they shall play the part of _hors d'uvres_, and whet the appetite to proceed to more solid food, the labour will not be lost.

Difficulties in the text are explained in footnotes. Few things are more vexatious to a reader than constant reference to a glossary; but as compensation for the educational value thus lost, the footnotes are, to a certain extent, progressive; that is to say, a word already explained in a foregoing ballad is not always explained again; and to the best of my ability I have freed the notes from the grotesque blunders observable in most modern editions of ballads.

Besides my indebtedness to the books mentioned in the bibliographical list, I have to acknowledge my thanks to the Rev. Sabine Baring Gould, for permission to use his version of _The Brown Girl_; to Mr. E. K.

Chambers, for kindly reading the general Introduction; and to my friend and partner Mr. A. H. Bullen, for constant suggestions and assistance.

F. S.

INTRODUCTION

'Y-a-t-il donc, dans les contes populaires, quelque chose d'interessant pour un esprit serieux?'--Cosquin.

The old ballads of England and Scotland are fine wine in cobwebbed bottles; and many have made the error of paying too much attention to the cobwebs and not enough attention to the wine. This error is as blameworthy as its converse: we must take the inside and the outside together.

+I. What is a Ballad?+

The earliest sense of the word 'ballad,' or rather of its French and Provencal predecessors, _balada_, _balade_ (derived from the late Latin _ballare_, to dance), was 'a song intended as the accompaniment to a dance,' a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song of sentiment or romance, of two verses or more, each of which is sung to the same air, the accompaniment being subordinate to the melody. This sense we still use in our 'ballad-concerts.' Another meaning was that of simply a popular song or ditty of the day, lyrical or narrative, of the kind often printed as a broadsheet. Lyrical _or_ narrative, because the Elizabethans appear not to distinguish the two. Read, for instance, the well-known scene in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act IV. Sc. 4); here we have both the lyrical ballad, as sung by Dorcas and Mopsa, in which Autolycus bears his part 'because it is his occupation'; and also the 'ballad in print,' which Mopsa says she loves--'for then we are sure it is true.'

Immediately after, however, we discover that the 'ballad in print' is the broadside, the narrative ballad, sung of a usurer's wife brought to bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as _Martin Mar-sixtus_ says (1592), 'scarce a cat can look out of a gutter but out starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a strange sight is indited.' Chief amongst these 'halfpenny chroniclers'

were William Elderton, of whom Camden records that he 'did arm himself with ale (as old father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated,' and thereby obtained a red nose almost as celebrated as his verses; Thomas Deloney, 'the ballating silkweaver of Norwich'; and Richard Johnson, maker of Garlands. Thus to Milton, to Addison, and even to Johnson, 'ballad' essentially implies singing; but from about the middle of the eighteenth century the modern interpretation of the word began to come into general use.

[Footnote 1: For the subject of the origin of the ballad and its refrain in the _ballatio_ of the dancing-ring, see _The Beginnings of Poetry_, by Professor Francis B. Gummere, especially chap. v. The beginning of the whole subject is to be found in the universal and innate practices of accompanying manual or bodily labour by a rhythmic chant or song, and of festal song and dance.]

In 1783, in one of his letters, the poet Cowper says: 'The ballad is a species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country.... Simplicity and ease are its proper characteristics.' Here we have one of the earliest attempts to define the modern meaning of a 'ballad.' Centuries of use and misuse of the word have left us no unequivocal name for the ballad, and we are forced to qualify it with epithets. 'Traditional'

might be deemed sufficient; but 'popular' or 'communal' is more definite. Here we adopt the word used by Professor Child--'popular.'

What, then, do we intend to signify by the expression 'popular ballads'?

Far the most important point is to maintain an antithesis between the poetry of the people and the consciously artistic poetry of the schools.

Wilhelm Grimm, the less didactic of the two famous brothers, said that the ballad says nothing unnecessary or unreal, and despises external adornment. Ferdinand Wolf, the great critic of the Homeric question, said the ballad must be nave, objective, not sentimental, lively and erratic in its narrative, without ornamentation, yet with much picturesque vigour.

It is even more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry _of_ the people and poetry _for_ the people.[2] The latter may still be written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song and ballad. 'With us,' says Ritson, 'songs of sentiment, expression, or even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads.' This definition, of course, is essentially modern; we must still insist on the fact that genuine ballads were sung: 'I sing Musgrove,'[3] says Sir Thwack in Davenant's _The Wits_, 'and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes near me.' Lastly, we must emphasise that the accompaniment is predominated by the air to which the words are sung. I have heard the modern comic song described as 'the kind in which you hear the words,'

thus differentiating it from the drawing-room song, in which the words are (happily) as a rule less audible than the melody. In the ballad, as sung, the words are most important; but it is of vital importance to remember that the ballads were chanted.

[Footnote 2: See the first essay, 'What is "Popular Poetry"?' in _Ideas of Good and Evil_, by W. B. Yeats (1903), where this distinction is not recognised.]

[Footnote 3: _Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard_ (see p. 19, etc.).]

+II. Poetry of the People.+

Now what is this 'poetry of the people'? One theory is as follows. Every nation or people in the natural course of its development reaches a stage at which it consists of a homogeneous, compact community, with its sentiments undivided by class-distinctions, so that the whole active body forms what is practically an individual. Begging the question, that poetry can be produced by such a body, this poetry is naturally of a concrete and narrative character, and is previous to the poetry of art.

'Therefore,' says Professor Child, 'while each ballad will be idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of individuals, but of a collective sympathy; and the fundamental characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of subjectivity and self-consciousness. Though they do not "write themselves," as Wilhelm 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.'

By stating this, the dictum of one of the latest and most erudite of ballad-scholars, so early in our argument, we anticipate a century or more of criticism and counter-criticism, during which the giants of literature ranged themselves in two parties, and instituted a battle-royal which even now is not quite finished. It will be most convenient if we denominate the one party as that which holds to the communal or 'nebular' theory of authorship, and the other as the anti-communal or 'artistic' theory. The tenet of the former party has already been set forth, namely, that the poetry of the people is a natural and spontaneous production of a community at that stage of its existence when it is for all practical purposes an individual. The theory of the 'artistic' school is that the ballads and folk-songs are the productions of skalds, minstrels, bards, troubadours, or other vagrant professional singers and reciters of various periods; it is allowed, however, that, being subject entirely to oral transmission, these ballads and songs are open to endless variation.

On the Continent, Herder was pioneer, both of the claims of popular poetry and of the nebular theory of authorship. Traditions of chivalry, he says, became poetry in the mouths of the people; but his definition of popular poetry has rather extended bounds. Herder's enthusiasm fired Goethe (who, however, did not wholly accede to the 'nebular' theory) to study the subject, and the effect was soon noticeable in his own poetry.

Next came the two great brothers, whose names are ever to be held in honour wherever folklore is studied or folktales read, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Jacob, the more ardent and polemical, insisted on the communal authorship of the poetry of the people; ballad or song 'sings itself.'

Both the Grimms, and especially Jacob, were severely handled by the critic Schlegel, who insisted on the artist. To Schlegel we owe the famous image in which popular poetry is a tower, and the poet an architect. Hundreds may fetch and carry, but all are useless without the direction of the architect. This is specious argument; but we might reply to Schlegel that an architect is only wanted when the result is required to be an artistic whole. The tower of Babel was built by hundreds of men under no superintendence. Schlegel's intention, however, is no less clear than that of Jacob Grimm, and the two are diametrically opposed.

In England, literary prejudice against the unpolished barbarities and uncouthnesses of the ballad was at no time so pronounced as it was on the Continent, and especially in Germany, during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Indeed, at intervals, the most learned and fantastic critics in England would call attention to the poetry of the people. Sir Philip Sidney's apologetic words are well known:-- 'Certainly I must confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of _Percy_ and _Duglas_, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a Trumpet.'

Addison was bolder. 'It is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a Multitude, tho' they are only the Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.' With these and other encouragements the popular poetry of England was not lost to sight; and in 1765 the work of the good Bishop of Dromore gave the ballads a place in literature.

Percy's opening remarks, attributing the ballads to the minstrels, are as well known as the scoffs of the hard-hitting Joseph Ritson, who contemptuously dismissed Percy's theories,[4] and refused to believe any ballad to be of earlier origin than the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Walter Scott was quite ready to accept the ballads as the productions of the minstrels, either as 'the occasional effusions of some self-taught bard,' or as abridged from the tales of tradition after the days when, as Alfred de Musset says, 'our old romances spread their wings of gold towards the enchanted world.'

[Footnote 4: 'The truth really lay between the two, for neither appreciated the wide variety covered by a common name' (_The Mediaeval Stage_, E. K. Chambers, 1903). See especially chapters iii.

and iv. of this work for an admirably complete and illuminating account of minstrelsy.]

This brings us nearer to our own day. The argument is not closed, although we can discern offers of concession from either side. Svend Grundtvig, editor of the enormous collection of Danish ballads, distinguished the ballad from all forms of artistic literature, and would have the artist left out of sight; Nyrop and the Scandinavian scholars, on the other hand, entirely gave up the notion of communal authorship. Howbeit, the trend of modern criticism,[5] on the whole, is towards a common belief regarding most ballads, which may be stated again, in Professor Child's words: '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.'