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TITLE: BALLAD BOOK
AUTHOR: KATHERINE LEE BATES
EBOOK: E07172 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

BALLAD BOOK

EDITED BY KATHARINE LEE BATES,

WELLESLEY COLLEGE.

    "The plaintive numbers flow
  For old, unhappy, far-off things,
     And battles long ago."

  --WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

PREFACE

Probably no teacher of English literature in our schools or colleges
would gainsay the statement that the chief aim of such instruction is
to awaken in the student a genuine love and enthusiasm for the higher
forms of prose, and more especially for poetry. For love is the surest
guarantee of extended and independent study, and we teachers are the
first to admit that the class-room is but the vestibule to
education. So in beginning the critical study of English poetry it
seems reasonable to use as a starting-point the early ballads,
belonging as they do to the youth of our literature, to the youth of
our English race, and hence appealing with especial power to the youth
of the human heart. Every man of letters who still retains the
boy-element in his nature--and most men, Sir Philip Sidney tells us,
are "children in the best things, till they be cradled in their
graves"--has a tenderness for these rough, frank, spirited old poems,
while the actual boy in years, or the actual girl, rarely fails to
respond to their charm. What Shakespeare knew, and Scott loved, and
Bossetti echoes, can hardly be beneath the admiration of high school
and university students. Rugged language, broken metres, absurd plots,
dubious morals, are impotent to destroy the vital beauty that
underlies all these. There is a philosophical propriety, too, in
beginning poetic study with ballad lore, for the ballad is the germ of
all poem varieties.

This volume attempts to present such a selection from the old ballads
as shall represent them fairly in their three main classes,--those
derived from superstition, whether fairy-lore, witch-lore, ghost-lore,
or demon-lore; those derived from tradition, Scotch and English; and
those derived from romance and from domestic life in general. The
Scottish ballads, because of their far superior poetic value, are
found here in greater number than the English. The notes state in each
case what version has been followed. The notes aim, moreover, to give
such facts of historical or bibliographical importance as may attach
to each ballad, with any indispensable explanation of outworn or
dialectic phrases, although here much is left to the mother-wit of the
student.

It is hoped that this selection may meet a definite need in connection
with classes not so fortunate as to have access to a ballad library,
and that even where such access is procurable, it may prove a friendly
companion in the private study and the recitation-room.

KATHARINE LEE BATES.

WELLESLEY COLLEGE,
March, 1904.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BALLADS OF SUPERSTITION.
  THE WEE WEE MAN
  TAMLANE
  TRUE THOMAS
  THE ELFIN KNIGHT
  LADY ISOBEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
  TOM THUMBE
  KEMPION
  ALISON GROSS
  THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL
  A LYKE-WAKE DIRGE
  PROUD LADY MARGARET
  THE TWA SISTERS O' BINNORIE
  THE DEMON LOVER
  RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

BALLADS OF TRADITION.
  SIR PATRICK SPENS
  THE BATTLE OF OTTERBURNE
  THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT
  EDOM O' GORDON
  KINMONT WILLIE
  KING JOHN AND THE ABBOT OF CANTERBURY
  ROBIN HOOD RESCUING THE WIDOW'S THREE SONS
  ROBIN HOOD AND ALLIN A DALE
  ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH AND BURIAL

ROMANTIC AND DOMESTIC BALLADS.
  ANNIE OF LOCHROYAN
  LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET
  THE BANKS O' YARROW
  THE DOUGLAS TRAGEDY
  FINE FLOWERS I' THE VALLEY
  THE GAY GOSS-HAWK
  YOUNG REDIN
  WILLIE AND MAY MARGARET
  YOUNG BEICHAN
  GILDEROY
  BONNY BARBARA ALLAN
  THE GARDENER
  ETIN THE FORESTER
  LAMKIN
  HUGH OF LINCOLN
  FAIR ANNIE
  THE LAIRD O' DRUM
  LIZIE LINDSAY
  KATHARINE JANFARIE
  GLENLOGIE
  GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR
  THE LAWLANDS O' HOLLAND
  THE TWA CORBIES
  HELEN OF KIRCONNELL
  WALY WALY
  LORD RONALD
  EDWARD, EDWARD

INTRODUCTION

The development of poetry, the articulate life of man, is hidden in
that mist which overhangs the morning of history. Yet the indications
are that this art of arts had its origin, as far back as the days of
savagery, in the ideal element of life rather than the utilitarian.
There came a time, undoubtedly, when the mnemonic value of verse was
recognized in the transmission of laws and records and the hard-won
wealth of experience.  Our own Anglo-Saxon ancestors, whose rhyme, it
will be remembered, was initial rhyme, or alliteration, have
bequeathed to our modern speech many such devices for "the knitting up
of the memory," largely legal or popular phrases, as _bed and board_,
_to have and to hold_, _to give and to grant_, _time and tide_, _wind
and wave_, _gold and gear_; or proverbs, as, for example: _When bale
is highest, boon is nighest_, better known to the present age under
the still alliterative form: _The darkest hour's before the dawn_.
But if we may trust the signs of poetic evolution in barbarous tribes
to-day, if we may draw inferences from the sacred character attached
to the Muses in the myths of all races, with the old Norsemen, for
instance, SagAc being the daughter of Odin, we may rest a reasonable
confidence upon the theory that poetry, the world over, finds its
first utterance at the bidding of the religious instinct and in
connection with religious rites.

Yet the wild-eyed warriors, keeping time by a rude triumphal chant to
the dance about the watch-fire, were mentally as children, with keen
senses and eager imagination, but feeble reason, with fresh and
vigorous emotions, but without elaborate language for these emotions.
Swaying and shouting in rhythmic consent, they came slowly to the use
of ordered words and, even then, could but have repeated the same
phrases over and over. The burden--sometimes senseless to our modern
understanding--to be found in the present form of many of our ballads
may be the survival of a survival from those primitive iterations. The
"Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw" of _The Elfin Knight_ is not, in this
instance, inappropriate to the theme, yet we can almost hear shrilling
through it a far cry from days when men called directly upon the
powers of nature. Such refrains as "Binnorie, O Binnorie," "Jennifer
gentle an' rosemaree," "Down, a down, a down, a down," have ancient
secrets in them, had we ears to hear.

One of the vexed questions of criticism regarding these refrains is
whether they were rendered in alternation with the narrative verses or
as a continuous under-song.  Early observers of Indian dances have
noted that, while one leaping savage after another improvised a simple
strain or two, the whole dancing company kept up a guttural cadence of
"Heh, heh, heh!" or "Aw, aw, aw!"  which served the office of musical
accompaniment. This choral iteration of rhythmic syllables, still
hinted in the refrain, but only hinted, is believed to be the original
element of poetry.

In course of time, however, was evolved the individual singer. In the
earlier stages of society, song was undoubtedly a common gift, and
every normal member of the community bore his part in the recital of
the heroic deeds that ordinarily formed the subject of these primeval
lays. Were it the praise of a god, of a feasting champion, or of a
slain comrade, the natural utterance was narrative. Later on, the more
fluent and inventive improvisers came to the front, and finally the
professional bard appeared. Somewhere in the process, too, the burden
may have shifted its part from under-song to alternating chorus, thus
allowing the soloist opportunity for rest and recollection.

English ballads, as we have them in print to-day, took form in a far
later and more sophisticated period than those just suggested; yet
even thus our ballads stand nearest of anything in our literature to
the primitive poetry that was born out of the social life of the
community rather than made by the solitary thought of the artist. Even
so comparatively small a group as that comprehended within this volume
shows how truly the ballad is the parent stock of all other poetic
varieties. In the ballad of plain narrative, as _The Hunting of the
Cheviot,_ the epic is hinted. We go a step further in _A Lytell Geste
of Robyn Hode,_--too long for insertion in this collection, but
peculiarly interesting from the antiquarian point of view, having been
printed, in part, as early as 1489,--and find at least a rough
foundation for a genuine hero-lay, the _Lytell Geste_ being made up of
a number of ballads rudely woven into one. A poem like this, though
hardly "an epic in miniature,"--a phrase which has been proposed as

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