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