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THE BALLADISTS




[Illustration:

THE BALLADISTS

BY
JOHN
GEDDIE

FAMOUS
.SCOTS.
.SERIES.

PUBLISHED BY
OLIPHANT ANDERSON
& FERRIER. EDINBURGH
AND LONDON

]

       *       *       *       *       *

The designs and ornaments of this volume are by Mr. Joseph Brown, and
the printing from the press of Messrs. T. and A. Constable, Edinburgh.

       *       *       *       *       *




PREFACE


Not much more has been attempted in these pages than to extract the
marrow of the Scottish Ballad Minstrelsy. They will have served their
purpose if they help to awaken, or to renew, a relish for the contents
of the Ballad Book. To know and love these grand old songs is its own
exceeding great reward; and it is also, alas! almost the only means now
left to us of knowing something concerning their nameless writers.

Questions involving literary or critical controversy as to the age and
genuineness of the ballads have been, as far as possible, avoided in
this popular presentation of their beauties and their qualities; and in
case any challenge may be made of the origin or authenticity of the
passages quoted, I may say that, in nearly every case, I have prudently,
and of purpose, refrained from giving the authority for my text, and
have taken that which best pleases my own ear or has clung most closely
to my memory.

J. G.

_July 1896._




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE
CHAPTER I

BALLAD CHARACTERISTICS                                                 9


CHAPTER II

BALLAD GROWTH AND BALLAD HISTORY                                      24


CHAPTER III

BALLAD STRUCTURE AND BALLAD STYLE                                     43


CHAPTER IV

THE MYTHOLOGICAL BALLAD                                               58


CHAPTER V

THE ROMANTIC BALLAD                                                   83


CHAPTER VI

THE HISTORICAL BALLAD                                                108


CHAPTER VII

CONCLUSION                                                           128




CHAPTER I

BALLAD CHARACTERISTICS

    'Layes that in harping
    Ben y-found of ferli thing;
    Sum beth of wer, and sum of wo,
    Sum of joye and mirthe also;
    And sum of treacherie and gile;
    Of old aventours that fell while;
    And sum of bourdes and ribaudy;
    And many ther beth of faery,--
    Of all things that men seth;
    Maist o' love forsoth they beth.'

        _The Lay of the Ash._


Who would set forth to explore the realm of our Ballad Literature needs
not to hamper himself with biographical baggage. Whatever misgivings and
misadventures may beset him in his wayfaring, there is no risk of
breaking neck or limb over dates or names. For of dates and names and
other solid landmarks there are none to guide us in this misty
morning-land of poetry. The balladist is 'a voice and nothing more'--a
voice singing in a chorus of others, in which only faintly and
uncertainly we sometimes fancy we can make out the note, but rarely
anything of the person or history, of the individual singer. In the
hierarchy of song, he is a priest after the order of Melchisedec--without
father or mother, beginning of days or end of life.

The Scottish ballads we may thus love and know by heart, and concerning
their preservation, collection, collation, we may gather a large store
of facts. But the original ballad-writers themselves must remain for us
the Great Unknown. Here and there one can lay down vague lines that seem
to confine a particular ballad, or group of ballads, within particular
bounds of place and of time. Here and there one seems to get a glimpse
of the balladist himself, as onlooker or as actor in the scenes of
fateful love and deathless grief which he has fixed for ever in the
memory of men of his race and blood. There are passages in which, in the
light and heat of battle, or in agony of terror or sorrow, we are made
to see something of the minstrel as well as his theme. But by no
research are we likely at this late date to recover any clew to the
birthplace or to the lineaments of the life and face of the grand old
poet who wrote the grand old ballad of _Sir Patrick Spens_; nor do towns
contend for the honour of having produced the sweet singer of
_Kirkconnel Lea_, the blithe minstrel of _Glenlogie_, or the first of
all the bards who made the _Dowie Dens of Yarrow_ vocal with the song of
unavailing sorrow.

And in truth towns--even such towns as were in those days--could have
had but little to do with the birth and shaping of the Scottish
Balladists. Chief among the marks by which we may the true ballad-maker
know among the verse-makers of his age, is the open-air feeling that
pervades his thought and style. Like the Black Douglas, he likes better
to hear the laverock sing than the mouse cheep. It is not only that he
cares to tread 'the bent sae brown' rather than the paved street; that
the tragedies of fiery love and hate quenched by death, in which he
delights, are more often enacted under the blue cope of heaven than
under vault of stone. What we seem to feel is that these simple old
lays, in which lives a passion that still catches the breath and makes
the cheek turn pale--whose 'words of might' have yet the power to waft
us, mind and sense, into the 'Land of Faery,' must have been conceived
and brought to full strength under the light of the sun and the breath
of the wind