



Produced by John B. Hare





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