er becomes no
easier as the end of my task approaches. The Fourth Series will consist
mainly of ballads of Robin Hood and other outlaws, including a few
pirates. The projected class of 'Sea Ballads' has thus been split; _Sir
Patrick Spence_, for example, appears in this volume. A few ballads defy
classification, and will have to appear, if at all, in a miscellaneous
section.

The labour of reducing to modern spelling several ballads from the
seventeenth-century orthography of the Percy Folio is compensated,
I hope, by the quaint and spirited result. These lively ballads are now
presented for the first time in this popular form.

In _The Jolly Juggler_, given in the Appendix, I claim to have
discovered a new ballad, which has not yet been treated as such, though
I make bold to think Professor Child would have included it in his
collection had he known of it. I trust that the publicity thus given to
it will attract the attention of experts more competent than myself to
annotate and illustrate it as it deserves.

F. S.

BALLADS IN THE THIRD SERIES

I have hesitated to use the term 'historical' in choosing a general
title for the ballads in this volume, although, if the word can be
applied to any popular ballads, it would be applied with most
justification to a large number of these ballads of Scottish and Border
tradition. 'Some ballads are historical, or at least are founded on
actual occurrences. In such cases, we have a manifest point of departure
for our chronological investigation. The ballad is likely to have sprung
up shortly after the event, and to represent the common rumo[u]r of the
time. Accuracy is not to be expected, and indeed too great historical
fidelity in detail is rather a ground of suspicion than a certificate
of the genuinely popular character of the piece.... Two cautionary
observations are necessary. Since history repeats itself, the
possibility and even the probability must be entertained that every now
and then a ballad which had been in circulation for some time was
adapted to the circumstances of a recent occurrence, and has come down
to us only in such an adaptation. It is also far from improbable that
many ballads which appear to have no definite localization or historical
antecedents may be founded on fact, since one of the marked tendencies
of popular narrative poetry is to alter or eliminate specific names of
persons and places in the course of oral tradition.'[1]

[F