Mr. Pitt's fires were lighted with half-pages torn out from incomparably early and precious versions of certain Robin Hood and other ballads.

Percy notes that he was very young when he first got possession of the MS., and had not then learned to reverence it. When he put it into boards to lend to Dr. Johnson, the bookbinder pared the margins, and cut away top and bottom lines. In editing the _Reliques_, Percy actually tore out pages 'to save the trouble of transcribing.' In spite of all, it remains a unique and inestimably valuable manuscript. Its writer was presumably a Lancashire man, from his use of certain dialect words, and was assuredly a man of slight education; nevertheless a national benefactor.

[Footnote 12: Cp. _Love's Labour's Lost_:--

+Armado.+ Is there not a ballad, boy, of the King and the Beggar?

+Moth.+ The world was very guilty of such a ballad some three ages since; but I think now 'tis not to be found.]

In speaking of manuscripts, we must not omit to mention the Scottish collectors. Most of them went to work in the right way, seeking out aged men and women in out-of-the-way corners of Scotland, and taking down their ballads from their lips. If we condemn these editors for subsequently adorning the traditional versions, we must be grateful to them for preserving their manuscripts so that we can still read the ballads as they received them. The old ladies of Scotland seem to have possessed better memories than the old men. Besides Sir Walter Scott's anonymous 'Old Lady,' there was another to whom we owe some of the finest versions of the Scottish ballads. This was Mrs. Brown, daughter of Professor Gordon of Aberdeen. Born in 1747, she learned most of her ballads before she was twelve years old, or before 1759, from the singing of her aunt, Mrs. Farquhar of Braemar. From about twenty to forty years later, she repeated her ballads, first to Jamieson, and afterwards to William Tytler, each of whom compiled a manuscript. The latter, the Tytler-Brown MS., unfortunately is lost, but the ballads are practically all known from the other manuscript and various sources.

Perhaps the richest part of our stock are the Scottish and Border ballads. Beside them, most of our mawkish English ballads look pale and withered. The reason, perhaps, may be traced to the effect of natural surroundings on literature. The English ballads were printed or written down at a period which is early compared with the date of collection of the Scottish ballads. In fact, it is only during the last hundred and thirty years that the ballads of Scotland have been recovered from oral tradition. In mountainous districts, where means of communication and intercourse are naturally limited, tradition dies more hard than in countries where there are no such barriers. Moreover, as Professor Child points out, 'oral transmission by the unlettered is not to be feared nearly so much as by minstrels, nor by minstrels nearly so much as modern editors.' Svend Grundtvig illustrates this from his twenty-nine versions of the Danish ballad 'Ribold and Guldborg.' In versions from recitation, he has shown that there occur certain verses which have never been printed, but which are found in old manuscripts; and these recited versions also contain verses which have never been either printed or written down in Danish, but which are to be found still in recitation, not only in Norwegian and Swedish versions, but even in Icelandic tradition of two hundred years' standing.

Such, then, is the history of our ballads, so far as it may be stated in a few pages. With regard to origins, the 'nebular' theory cannot be summarily dismissed;[13] but, after weighing the evidence and arguments, the balance of probability would seem to lie with the supporters of the 'artistic' theory in a modified form. The ballad may say, with Topsy, 'Spec's I growed'; but _vires adquirit eundo_ is only true of the ballad to a certain point; progress, which includes the invention of printing and the absorption into cities of the unsophisticated rural population, has since killed the oral circulation of the ballad. Thus it was not an unmixed evil that in the Middle Ages, as a rule, the ballads were neglected; for this neglect, while it rendered the discovery of their sources almost impossible, gave the ballads for a time into the safe-keeping of their natural possessors, the common people.

Civilisation, advancing more swiftly in some countries than in others, has left rich stores here, and little there. Our close kinsmen of Denmark, and the rest of Scandinavia, possess a ballad-literature of which they do well to be proud; and Spain is said to have inherited even better legacies. A study of our native ballads yields much interest, much delight, and much regret that the gleaning is comparatively so small. But what we still have is of immense value. The ballads may not be required again to revoke English literature from flights into artificiality and subjectivity; but they form a leaf in the life of the English people, they uphold the dignity of human nature, they carry us away to the legends, the romances, the beliefs, the traditions of our ancestors, and take us out of ourselves to 'fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden world.'

[Footnote 13: Professor Gummere (_The Beginnings of Poetry_) is perhaps the strongest champion of this theory, and takes an extreme view.]

BALLADS IN THE FIRST SERIES

The only possible method of classifying ballads is by their subject-matter; and even thus the lines of demarcation are frequently blurred. It is, however, possible to divide them roughly into several main classes, such as ballads of romance and chivalry; ballads of superstition and of the supernatural; Arthurian, historical, sacred, domestic ballads; ballads of Robin Hood and other outlaws; and so forth.

The present volume is concerned with ballads of romance and chivalry; but it is useless to press too far the appropriateness of this title.

_The Nutbrown Maid_, for instance, is not a true ballad at all, but an ambaean idyll, or dramatic lyric. But, on the whole, these ballads chiefly tell of life, love, death, and human passions, of revenge and murder and heroic deed.

'These things are life: And life, some think, is worthy of the Muse.'

They are left unexpurgated, as they came down to us: to apologise for things now left unsaid would be to apologise not only for the heroic epoch in which they were born, but also for human nature.

And how full of life that heroic epoch was! Of what stature must Lord William's steed have been, if Lady Maisry could hear him sneeze a mile away! How chivalrous of Gawaine to wed an ugly bride to save his king's promise, and how romantic and delightful to discover her on the morrow to have changed into a well-fared may!

The popular Muse regards not probability. Old Robin, who hails from Portugal, marries the daughter of the mayor of Linne, that unknown town so dear to ballads. In _Young Bekie_, Burd Isbel's heart is wondrous sair to find, on liberating her lover, that the bold rats and mice have eaten his yellow hair. We must not think of objecting that the boldest rat would never eat a live prisoner's hair, but only applaud the picturesque indication of durance vile.

In the same ballad, Burd Isbel, 'to keep her from thinking lang'--a prevalent complaint--is told to take 'twa marys' on her journey. We suddenly realise how little there was to amuse the Burd Isbels of yore. Twa marys provide a week's diversion. Otherwise her only occupation would have been to kemb her golden hair, or perhaps, like Fair Annie, drink wan water to preserve her complexion.

But if their occupations were few, their emotions and affections were strong. Ellen endures insult after insult from Child Waters with the faithful patience of a Griselda. Hector the hound recognises Burd Isbel after years of separation. Was any lord or lady in need of a messenger, there was sure to be a little boy at hand to run their errand soon, faithful unto death. On receipt of painful news, they kicked over the table, and the silver plate flew into the fire. When roused, men murdered with a brown sword, and ladies with a penknife. We are left uncertain whether the Cruel Mother did not also 'howk' a grave for her murdered babe with that implement.

But readers will easily pick out and enjoy for themselves other instances of the nave and picturesque in these ballads.

GLOSSARY OF BALLAD COMMONPLACES

There survive in ballads a few conventional phrases, some of which appear to have been preserved by tradition beyond an understanding of their import. I give here short notes on a few of the more interesting phrases and words which appear in the present volume, the explanations being too cumbrous for footnotes.

+Bow.+

'bent his bow and swam,' _Lady Maisry_, 21.2; _Johney Scot_, 10.2; _Lord Ingram and Chiel Wyet_, 12.2; etc.

'set his bent bow to his breast,' _Lady Maisry_, 22.3; _Lord Ingram and Chiel Wyet_, 13.3; _Fause Footrage_, 33.1; etc.

Child attempts no explanation of this striking phrase, which, I believe, all editors have either openly or silently neglected.

Perhaps 'bent' may mean _un_-bent, _i.e._ with the string of the bow slacked. If so, for what reason was it done before swimming? We can understand that it would be of advantage to keep the string dry, but how is it better protected when unstrung? Or, again, was it carried unstrung, and literally 'bent' before swimming? Or was the bow solid enough to be of support in the water?

Some one of these explanations may satisfy the first phrase (as regards swimming); but why does the messenger 'set his bent bow to his breast' before leaping the castle wall? It seems to me that the two expressions must stand or fall together; therefore the entire lack of suggestions to explain the latter phrase drives me to distrust of any of the explanations given for the former.

A suggestion recently made to me appears to dispose of all difficulties; and, once made, is convincing in its very obviousness.

It is, that 'bow' means 'elbow,' or simply 'arm.' The first phrase then exhibits the commonest form of ballad-conventionalities, picturesque redundancy: the parallel phrase is 'he slacked his shoon and ran.' In the second phrase it is, indeed, necessary to suppose the wall to be breast-high; the messenger places one elbow on the wall, pulls himself up, and vaults across.

Lexicographers distinguish between the Old English _bog_ or _boh_ (O.H.G. buog = arm; Sanskrit, bahu-s = arm), which means arm, arch, bough, or bow of a ship; and the Old English _boga_ (O.H.G. bogo), which means the archer's bow. The distinction is continued in Middle English, from the twelfth to the fifteenth century. Instances of the use of the word as equivalent to 'arm' may be found in Old English in _King Alfred's Translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care_ (E.E.T.S., 1871, ed. H. Sweet) written in West Saxon dialect of the ninth century.

It is true that the word does not survive elsewhere in this meaning, but I give the suggestion for what it is worth.

+Briar.+

'briar and rose,' _Douglas Tragedy_, 18, 19, 20; _Fair Margaret and Sweet William_, 18, 19, 20; _Lord Lovel_, 9, 10; etc.

'briar and birk,' _Lord Thomas and Fair Annet_, 29, 30; _Fair Janet_, 30; etc.

'roses,' _Lady Alice_, 5, 6. (See introductory note to _Lord Lovel_, p. 67.)

The ballads which exhibit this pleasant conception that, after death, the spirits of unfortunate lovers pass into plants, trees, or flowers springing from their graves, are not confined to European folklore. Besides appearing in English, Gaelic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German, French, Roumanian, Romaic, Portuguese, Servian, Wendish, Breton, Italian, Albanian, Russian, etc., we find it occurring in Afghanistan and Persia. As a rule, the branches of the trees intertwine; but in some cases they only bend towards each other, and kiss when the wind blows.

In an Armenian tale a curious addition is made. A young man, separated by her father from his sweetheart because he was of a different religion, perished with her, and the two were buried by their friends in one grave. Roses grew from the grave, and sought to intertwine, but a _thorn-bush_ sprang up between them and prevented it. The thorn here is symbolical of religious belief.

+Pin.+

'thrilled upon a pin,' _Glasgerion_, 10.2.

'knocked at the ring,' _Fair Margaret and Sweet William_, 11.2.

(_Cp._ 'lifted up the pin,' _Fair Janet_, 14.2.)

Throughout the Scottish ballads the expression is 'tirl'd at the pin,'

_i.e._ rattled or twisted the pin.

The pin appears to have been the external part of the door-latch, attached by day thereto by means of a leathern thong, which at night was disconnected with the latch to prevent any unbidden guest from entering. Thus any one 'tirling at the pin' does not attempt to open the door, but signifies his presence to those within.

The ring was merely part of an ordinary knocker, and had nothing to do with the latching of the door.