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TITLE: THE BOOK OF OLD ENGLISH BALLADS
AUTHOR: GEORGE WHARTON EDWARDS
EBOOK: E07205 (O'Briens Book Cellar)
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

A BOOK OF OLD ENGLISH BALLADS

with an

Accompaniment of Decorative Drawings

by

George Wharton Edwards

And an Introduction by

Hamilton W. Mabie

[1896]

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chevy Chace

King Cophetua and the Beggar-Maid

King Leir and his Three Daughters

Fair Rosamond

Phillida and Corydon

Fair Margaret and Sweet William

Annan Water

The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington

Barbara Allen's Cruelty

The Douglas Tragedy

Young Waters

Flodden Field

Helen of Kirkconnell

Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale

Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne

Robin Hood's Death and Burial

The Twa Corbies

Waly, Waly, Love be Bonny

The Nut-brown Maid

The Fause Lover

The Mermaid

The Battle of Otterburn

The Lament of the Border Widow

The Banks o' Yarrow

Hugh of Lincoln

Sir Patrick Spens

Introduction

Goethe, who saw so many things with such clearness of vision,
brought out the charm of the popular ballad for readers of a later
day in his remark that the value of these songs of the people is to
be found in the fact that their motives are drawn directly from
nature; and he added, that in the art of saying things compactly,
uneducated men have greater skill than those who are educated.  It is
certainly true that no kind of verse is so completely out of the
atmosphere of modern writing as the popular ballad.  No other form of
verse has, therefore, in so great a degree, the charm of freshness.
In material, treatment, and spirit, these bat lads are set in sharp
contrast with the poetry of the hour.  They deal with historical
events or incidents, with local traditions, with personal adventure
or achievement.  They are, almost without exception, entirely
objective.  Contemporary poetry is, on the other hand, very largely
subjective; and even when it deals with events or incidents it
invests them to such a degree with personal emotion and imagination,
it so modifies and colours them with temperamental effects, that the
resulting poem is much more a study of subjective conditions than a
picture or drama of objective realities.  This projection of the
inward upon the outward world, in such a degree that the dividing
line between the two is lost, is strikingly illustrated in
Maeterlinck's plays.  Nothing could be in sharper contrast, for
instance, than the famous ballad of "The Hunting of the Cheviot" and
Maeterlinck's "Princess Maleine."  There is no atmosphere, in a
strict use of the word, in the spirited and compact account of the
famous contention between the Percies and the Douglases, of which
Sir Philip Sidney said "that I found not my heart moved more than
with a Trumpet."  It is a breathless, rushing narrative of a swift
succession of events, told with the most straight-forward
simplicity.  In the "Princess Maleine," on the other hand, the
narrative is so charged with subjective feeling, the world in which
the action takes place is so deeply tinged with lights that never
rested on any actual landscape, that all sense of reality is lost.
The play depends for its effect mainly upon atmosphere.  Certain
very definite impressions are produced with singular power, but
there is no clear, clean stamping of occurrences on the mind.  The
imagination is skilfully awakened and made to do the work of
observation.

The note of the popular ballad is its objectivity; it not only takes
us out of doors, but it also takes us out of the individual
consciousness.  The manner is entirely subordinated to the matter; the
poet, if there was a poet in the case, obliterates himself.  What we
get is a definite report of events which have taken place, not a
study of a man's mind nor an account of a man's feelings.  The true
balladist is never introspective; he is concerned not with himself
but with his story.  There is no self-disclosure in his song.  To the
mood of Senancour and Amiel he was a stranger.  Neither he nor the
men to whom he recited or sang would have understood that mood.
They were primarily and unreflectively absorbed in the world outside
of themselves.  They saw far more than they meditated; they recorded
far more than they moralized.  The popular ballads are, as a rule,
entirely free from didacticism in any form; that is one of the main
sources of their unfailing charm.  They show not only a childlike
curiosity about the doings of the day and the things that befall
men, but a childlike indifference to moral inference and
justification.  The bloodier the fray the better for ballad
purposes; no one feels the necessity of apology either for ruthless
aggression or for useless blood-letting; the scene is reported as it
was presented to the eye of the spectator, not to his moralizing
faculty.  He is expected to see and to sing, not to scrutinize and
meditate.  In those rare cases in which a moral inference is drawn,
it is always so obvious and elementary that it gives the impression
of having been fastened on at the end of the song, in deference to
ecclesiastical rather than popular feeling.

The social and intellectual conditions which fostered self-
unconsciousness,--interest in things, incidents, and adventures
rather than in moods and inward experiences,--and the unmoral or non
moralizing attitude towards events, fostered also that delightful
naivete which contributes greatly to the charm of many of the best
ballads; a naivete which often heightens the pathos, and, at times,
softens it with touches of apparently unconscious humour; the naivete
of the child which has in it something of the freshness of a
wildflower, and yet has also a wonderful instinct for making the
heart of the matter plain.  This quality has almost entirely
disappeared from contemporary verse among cultivated races; one must
go to the peasants of remote parts of the Continent to discover even
a trace of its presence.  It has a real, but short-lived charm, like
the freshness which shines on meadow and garden in the brief dawn
which hastens on to day.

This frank, direct play of thought and feeling on an incident, or
series of incidents, compensates for the absence of a more perfect
art in the ballads; using the word "art" in its true sense as
including complete, adequate, and beautiful handling of subject-
matter, and masterly working out of its possibilities.  These
popular songs, so dear to the hearts of the generations on whose
lips they were fashioned, and to all who care for the fresh note,
the direct word, the unrestrained emotion, rarely touch the highest
points of poetic achievement.  Their charm lies, not in their
perfection of form, but in their spontaneity, sincerity, and graphic
power.  They are not rivers of song, wide, deep, and swift; they are
rather cool, clear springs among the hills.  In the reactions
against sophisticated poetry which set in from lime to time, the
popular ballad--the true folk-song--has often been exalted at the
expense of other forms of verse.  It is idle to attempt to arrange
the various forms of poetry in an order of absolute values; it is
enough that each has its own quality, and, therefore, its own value.
The drama, the epic, the ballad, the lyric, each strikes its note in
the complete expression of human emotion and experience.  Each
belongs to a particular stage of development, and each has the
authority and the enduring charm which attach to every authentic
utterance of the spirit of man under the conditions of life.

In this wide range of human expression the ballad follows the epic
as a kind of aftermath; a second and scattered harvest, springing
without regularity or nurture out of a rich and unexhausted soil.  The
epic fastens upon some event of such commanding importance that it
marks a main current of history; some story, historic, or mythologic;
some incident susceptible of extended narrative treatment.  It is
always, in its popular form, a matter of growth it is direct, simple,
free from didacticism; representing, as Aristotle says, "a single
action, entire and complete."  It subordinates character to action; it
delights in episode and dialogue; it is content to tell the story as
a story, and leave the moralization to hearers or readers.  The
popular ballad is so closely related to the popular epic that it may
be said to reproduce its qualities and characteristics within a
narrower compass, and on a smaller scale.  It also is a piece of the
memory of the people, or a creation of the imagination of the people;
but the tradition or fact which it preserves is of local, rather
than national importance.  It is indifferent to nice distinctions and

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