spring up and flourish by the side of the regular crop, so it is in the world of literature. The old wheat-field of epic poetry, long after it was ploughed under, kept sending up scattered blades, which we call ballads or folk-songs. Except in authority, national importance, and kindred qualities, we may use the same definition for the (narrative) folk-song that we use for the early epic. Both names, ballad and folk-song, are suggestive: ballad means a song to which one may dance; folk-song is something made by the whole people, not by individual poets. Wright, in speaking of certain songs of the Fifteenth Century (Percy Soc., vol. XXIII.),, says: "The great variation in the different copies of the same song shews that they were taken down from oral recitation, and had been often preserved by memory among minstrels who were not unskilful at composing, and who were . . . in the habit . . . of making up new songs by stringing together phrases and lines, and even whole stanzas, from the different compositions that were imprinted on their memories." The importance and influence and, we may add, the worth, of the folk-song are in inverse ratio to the spread of printed books. As the minstrel's welcome vanished from the baron's hall, and his audience degenerated to peasants and servingpeople, we note a corresponding degeneration from the highest poetical merit to the level of modern streetsongs. It easily follows that much of the best folkpoetry must be lost, not because, like the heroes before Agamemnon, it lacked the pious poet to sing it, but rather the 'chiel' to take notes and 'print it.'

...

1 ... "the usual marks of degeneracy [of ballads], a dropping or obscuring of marvellous and romantic incidents, and a declension in the rank and style of the characters." Child, Ballads, 2d Ed., vol. I., p. 48.

The folk-song is a complete satisfaction of the demand for "more matter and less art." It is very art less and full of matter. The passions jostle each other terribly, as they escape from the singer's lips:

"I hacked him in pieces sma',

For her sake that died for me."

The historical or narrative ballad is what we now consider. Like the early epic, it refers often to subjects made up partly of legend and partly of myth, such as the Robin Hood ballads. But unlike the epic, the folksong is often made immediately after a great battle or similar event. In the Battle of Maldon, or Byrhtnoth's Death, a stirring ballad of the later Anglo-Saxon period, the song follows the event so closely that the singer has not had time even to find out the name of the enemy's leaders. It is full of epic phrases and figures, and is thoroughly in the objective manner. The event seems to sing itself.

Professor Child has grouped our national ballads as follows: I. Romances of Chivalry and legends of the popular history of England. II. Ballads involving various superstitions; as of Fairies, Elves, Magic, and Ghosts. III. Tragic love-ballads. IV. Other tragic

ballads. V. Love-ballads not tragic. In all these, and in the miscellaneous ballads, the tests we mentioned above will hold good for the genuine folk-song. It must be objective, filled with its story, adding no sentiment or moral, and breathing a healthy, popular spirit. Antique spelling and archaic phrases do not make a ballad. Many ballads, too, are not of native origin, but, blown from the East over Europe, dropped seed in

many countries.

Hence a number of similar ballads (cf. the extraordinary spread of a ballad known in English as Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight) in the different literatures of Europe. Again, like fairy and nursery tales, like superstitions and folk-lore of every sort, many strikingly similar European ballads point to a common mythical source. But amid the diversity of subject and origin, the general spirit of the ballad or folk-song remains one and the same. The genuine ballad is one thing, and the imitated ballad-even such an imitation as Chatterton could make is quite another. To understand this clearly, read a good specimen of each kind; compare, say, Thomas of Ercildoune with Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci, a Ballad. The latter is wrought by the fancy of a poet under certain influences of the past; the other, written in the Fifteenth Century, but older in composition than that, is the work of a single poet or minstrel only in the sense that this minstrel combined materials which had been handed down from remotest times. The study of these materials leads in all directions, to the prophecies of Merlin, the story of the Tannhäuser, and so forth; the floating waifs of myth and superstition had gathered about the legendary (or historical) form of Thomas the Rhymer, and under one minstrel's hands take this definite shape as ballad. It is the old epic process in miniature. Even in the style we may distinguish the two. "I am glad as grasse wold be of raine" is the ballad style (Marriage of Sir Gawayne); "With kisses glad as birds are that get sweet rain at noon imitated ballad style (Swinburne, A Match).

" is the

The ballad, with the spread of letters, degenerates

into the street-song or broadside. It bewails abuses in government, the wrongs of the poor, satirizes the follies of the day, and the like. For a collection of such, see (among others) the Roxburghe Ballads.

§ 5. LATER BALLADS.

As with the epic, so with the folk-song; poets soon saw how much could be done with the form and manner of the ballad. Prudentius wrote a sort of ballad on the death of the martyr Laurentius; it was in the metre of the Latin folk-song, and is called by Ebert the first example of a modern ballad. He compares the style, and even the metre, to the English popular ballads of later time. Of course, Prudentius purposely adopts this ballad style: "Hear," he cries to the martyr, "a rustic poet." The nearer such conscious ballads approach the tone of genuine folk-song, the better they are. The old AngloSaxon ballad, e.g., Byrhtnoth's Death, may be compared with Drayton's stirring Battle of Agincourt. The list of these imitated or conscious ballads, works of individual poets, would be endless. Any great occasion or situation can inspire such songs. Of martial ballads, we instance Campbell's Battle of the Baltic; of loveballads (narrative, of course), Maud Müller or Lord Ullin's Daughter; gay ballads, like Burns' Duncan Grey or John Barleycorn; longer historical ballads, like Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome, in which there is more tinsel than true metal; the "dramatic," spirited ballad, such as Robert Browning delights in; and a host of others. Often a story is told in a story; e.g., Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. Comic ballads are of two

kinds. In one, the fun springs from the situation or event; e.g., John Gilpin's famous ride. In the other, the mind must work out the humor of the poem; there is nothing laughable in the event itself. Of this kind is Goldsmith's Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog. To classify the great number of occasional ballads would be useless. They cover every conceivable situation. But we must note the gradual shading away of narrative ballads into ballads that are either lyric or dramatic. The tragic ballad is in its purity objective, as The Children in the Wood, or Sir Patrick Spens: when it begins to let emotion outweigh narrative, then we have a lyric ballad. When the persons of the story speak for themselves, we have a dramatic ballad. Naturally, the lyric and epic are often closely blended. Thus a deep emotion-as of grief- finds expression by dwelling on certain events. The Burial of Sir John

Moore is strongly objective; mingled with outbursts of feeling is the narrative in David's beautiful lament over Jonathan (2 Sam. 1. 17 ff.). This is closely allied to the lyric Threnody; but there is a tendency to dwell on events. There is much narrative in Milton's Lycidas, and at first we might call it chiefly epic in its lament;

what with the pastoral allegory, and the appeal to the nymphs, one is almost ready to add "artificial": but a deeper study shows us that the whole poem is a splendid burst of grief and indignation, - Milton's first strong cry against the evil of the times, against a degenerate priesthood. King's death is only the occasion for uttering those feelings. Lycidas is in every sense of the word a lyric.