Ballads of Romance and Chivalry

F >> Frank Sidgwick >> Ballads of Romance and Chivalry

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

[Transcriber's Note:

The printed text used small capitals for emphasis. These have been
replaced with +marks+ where appopriate. Missing lines were shown
by rows of widely spaced dots (single lines) or asterisks (longer
sections). They are shown here in groups of three:

... ... ...
or
*** *** ***

Variant forms such as "Maisry" : "Maisery" or "+Text(s)+" :
"+The Text+" are unchanged. Brackets are in the original, except
when enclosing footnotes or illustration markers. Errors are listed
at the end of the text.]

* * * * *
* * * *
* * * * *

[Illustration: Facsimile of the Percy Folio MS. (_British Museum_,
Addit. MS. 27, 879, f. 46 _verso_). +Glasgerion+, first three verses
(see p. 2), annotated by Percy. The full page is 15 1/4 x 6 inches.]

POPULAR BALLADS
OF THE OLDEN TIME

SELECTED AND EDITED
BY FRANK SIDGWICK

First Series. Ballads of
Romance and Chivalry

'What hast here? Ballads?
'Pray now, buy some.'

A. H. BULLEN
47 Great Russell Street
London. MCMIII

'La rime n'est pas riche, et le style en est vieux:
Mais ne voyez-vous pas que cela vaut bien mieux
Que ces colifichets dont le bon sens murmure,
Et que la passion parle la toute pure?'

Moliere, _Le Misanthrope_, I. 2.

CONTENTS
Page

Preface ix
Introduction xvii
Ballads in the First Series xliii
Glossary of Ballad Commonplaces xlvi
List of Books for Ballad Study lii
Note on the Illustrations lv

Glasgerion 1
Young Bekie 6
Old Robin of Portingale 13
Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard 19
The Bonny Birdy 25
Fair Annie 29
The Cruel Mother 35
Child Waters 37
Earl Brand 44
The Douglas Tragedy 49
The Child of Ell 52
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet 54
The Brown Girl 60
Fair Margaret and Sweet William 63
Lord Lovel 67
Lady Maisry 70
The Cruel Brother 76
The Nutbrown Maid 80
Fair Janet 94
Brown Adam 100
Willie o' Winsbury 104
The Marriage of Sir Gawaine 107
The Boy and the Mantle 119
Johney Scot 128
Lord Ingram and Chiel Wyet 135
The Twa Sisters o' Binnorie 141
Young Waters 146
Barbara Allan 150
The Gay Goshawk 153
Brown Robin 158
Lady Alice 163
Child Maurice 165
Fause Footrage 172
Fair Annie of Rough Royal 179
Hind Horn 185
Edward 189
Lord Randal 193
Lamkin 196
Fair Mary of Wallington 201

Index of Titles 209
Index of First Lines 211

PREFACE

Of making selections of ballads there is no end. As a subject for the
editor, they seem to be only less popular than Shakespeare, and every
year sees a fresh output. But of late there has sprung up a custom of
confusing the old with the new, the genuine with the imitation; and the
products of civilised days, 'ballads' by courtesy or convention, are set
beside the rugged and hard-featured aborigines of the tribe, just as the
delicate bust of Clytie in the British Museum has for next neighbour the
rude and bold 'Unknown Barbarian Captive.' To contrast by such enforced
juxtaposition a ballad of the golden world with a ballad by Mr. Kipling
is unfair to either, each being excellent in its way; and the
collocation of _Edward_ or _Lord Randal_ with a ballad of Rossetti's is
only of interest or value as exhibiting the perennial charm of the
_refrain_.

There exist, however, in our tongue--though not only in our
tongue--narratives in rhyme which have been handed down in oral
tradition from father to son for so many ages, that all record of their
authorship has long been lost. These are commonly called the Old
Ballads. Being traditional, each ballad may exist in more than one form;
in most cases the original story is clothed in several different forms.
The present series is designed to include all the best of these ballads
which are still extant in England and Scotland: Ireland and Wales
possess a similar class of popular literature, but each in its own
tongue. It is therefore necessary, in issuing this the first volume of
the series, to say somewhat as to the methods employed in editing and
selecting.

Ballad editors of yore were confronted with perhaps two, perhaps twenty,
versions of each ballad; some unintelligibly fragmentary, some
intelligibly complete; some in print, some in manuscript, some,
perchance, in their own memories. Collating these, they subjected the
text to minute revision, omitting and adding, altering and inserting, to
suit their personal tastes and standards, literary or polite; and having
thus made it over, forgot to record the act, and saw no reason to
apologise therefor.

Pioneers like Thomas Percy, Bishop of Dromore, and Sir Walter Scott, may
well be excused the general censure. The former, living in and pandering
to an age which invented and applied those delightful literary
adjectives 'elegant' and 'ingenious,' may be pardoned with the more
sincerity if one recalls the influence exercised on English letters by
his publication. The latter, who played the part of Percy in the matter
of Scottish ballads, and was nourished from his boyhood on the
_Reliques_, printed for the first time many ballads which still are the
best of their class, and was gifted with consummate skill and taste.
Both, moreover, did their work scientifically, according to their
lights; and both have left at least some of their originals behind them.
There is, perhaps, one more exception to the general condemnation. Of
William Allingham's _Ballad Book_, as truly a _vade mecum_ as Palgrave's
lyrical anthology in the same 'Golden Treasury' series, I would speak,
perhaps only for sentimental reasons, always with respect, admiring the
results of his editing while looking askance at the method, for he mixed
his ingredients and left no recipe.

But in the majority of cases there is no obvious excuse for this 'omnium
gatherum' process. The self-imposed function of most ballad editors
appears to have been the compilation of _rifacimenti_ in accordance with
their private ideas of what a ballad should be. And that such a state of
things was permissible is doubtless an indication of the then prevalent
attitude of half-interested tolerance assumed towards these memorials of
antiquity.

To-day, however, the ballad editor is confronted with the results of the
labours, still unfinished, of a comparatively recent school in literary
science. These have lately culminated in _The English and Scottish
Popular Ballads_, edited by the late Professor Francis James Child of
Harvard University. This work, in five large volumes, issued in ten
parts at intervals from 1882 to 1898, and left by the editor at his
death complete but for the Introduction--_valde deflendus_--gives in
full all known variants of the three hundred and five ballads adjudged
by its editor to be genuinely 'popular,' with an essay, prefixed to each
ballad, on its history, origin, folklore, etc., and notes, glossary,
bibliographies, appendices, etc.; exhibiting as a whole unrivalled
special knowledge, great scholarly intuition, and years of patient
research, aided by correspondents, students, and transcribers in all
parts of the world, Lacking Professor Child's Introduction, we cannot
exactly tell what his definition of a 'popular' ballad was, or what
qualities in a ballad implied exclusion from his collection--_e.g._ he
does not admit _The Children in the Wood_: otherwise one can find in
this monumental work the whole history and all the versions of nearly
all the ballads.

It will be obvious that Professor Child's academic method is suited
rather to the scholar than the general reader. As a rule, one text of
each ballad is all that is required, which must therefore be chosen--but
by what rules? To the scholar, it usually happens that the most ancient
and least handled text is the most interesting; but these are too
frequently incomplete and unintelligible. The literary dilettante may
prefer tasteful decorations by a Percy or a Scott; doubtless Buchan has
some admirers: but the student abhors this painting of the lily.

Therefore I have compromised--always a dangerous practice--and I have
sought to give, to the best of my judgement, _that authorised text of
each ballad which tells in the best manner the completest form of the
story or plot_. I have been forced to make certain exceptions, but for
all departures from the above rule I have given reasons which, I trust,
will be found to justify the procedure; and in all cases the sources of
each text or part of the text are indicated.

I am quite aware that it may fairly be asked: Why not assume the
immemorial privilege of a ballad editor, and concoct a text for
yourself? Why, when any text of a ballad is, as you admit, merely a
representative of parallel and similar traditional versions, should you
not compile from those other variants a text which should combine the
excellences of each, and give us the cream?

There are several objections to this course. However incompetent,
I should not shrink from the labour involved; nor do I entirely approve
the growing demand for German minuteness and exactitude in editors. But,
firstly, the ballad should be subject to variation only while it is in
oral circulation. Secondly, editorial garnishing has been overdone
already, and my unwillingness to adopt that method is caused as much by
the failure of the majority of editors as by the success of the few.
Lastly, _chacun a son gout_; there is a kind of literary selfishness in
emending and patching to suit one's private taste, and, if any one
wishes to do so, he will be most pleased with the result if he does it
for himself.

This lengthy _apologia_ is necessitated by a departure from the usual
custom of ballad-editing. For the rest, my indebtedness to the work of
Professor Child will be obvious throughout. Many of his most interesting
texts were printed for the first time from manuscripts in private hands.
These I have not sought to collate, which would, indeed, insult his
accuracy and care. But in the case of texts from the Percy Folio, where
the labour is rather to decipher than to transcribe accurately, I have
resorted not only to the reprint of Hales and Furnivall, but to the
Folio itself. The whimsical spelling of this MS. pleases me as often as
it irritates, and I have ventured in certain ballads, _e.g._
_Glasgerion_, to modernise it, and in others, _e.g._ _Old Robin of
Portingale_, to retain it _literatim_: in either case I have reduced to
uniformity the orthography of the proper names. Transcripts from other
MSS. are reproduced as they stand.

In the general Introduction I have tried to sketch the genesis and
history of the ballad impartially in its several aspects, not for
scholars and connoisseurs, but for those ready to learn. To supply
deficiencies, I have added a list of books useful to the student of
English ballads--to go no further afield. Each ballad also is prefaced
with an introduction setting forth, besides the source of the text, as
succinctly as is consistent with accuracy, the derivation, when known,
of the story; the plot of similar foreign ballads; and points of
interest in folklore, history, or criticism attached to the particular
ballad. Where the story is fragmentary, I have added an argument. It
will be realised that such introductions at the best are but a
thousandth part of what might be written; but if they shall play the
part of _hors d'oeuvres_, and whet the appetite to proceed to more solid
food, the labour will not be lost.

Difficulties in the text are explained in footnotes. Few things are more
vexatious to a reader than constant reference to a glossary; but as
compensation for the educational value thus lost, the footnotes are, to
a certain extent, progressive; that is to say, a word already explained
in a foregoing ballad is not always explained again; and to the best of
my ability I have freed the notes from the grotesque blunders observable
in most modern editions of ballads.

Besides my indebtedness to the books mentioned in the bibliographical
list, I have to acknowledge my thanks to the Rev. Sabine Baring Gould,
for permission to use his version of _The Brown Girl_; to Mr. E. K.
Chambers, for kindly reading the general Introduction; and to my friend
and partner Mr. A. H. Bullen, for constant suggestions and assistance.

F. S.

INTRODUCTION

'Y-a-t-il donc, dans les contes populaires, quelque chose
d'interessant pour un esprit serieux?'--Cosquin.

The old ballads of England and Scotland are fine wine in cobwebbed
bottles; and many have made the error of paying too much attention to
the cobwebs and not enough attention to the wine. This error is as
blameworthy as its converse: we must take the inside and the outside
together.

+I. What is a Ballad?+

The earliest sense of the word 'ballad,' or rather of its French and
Provencal predecessors, _balada_, _balade_ (derived from the late Latin
_ballare_, to dance), was 'a song intended as the accompaniment to a
dance,' a sense long obsolete.[1] Next came the meaning, a simple song
of sentiment or romance, of two verses or more, each of which is sung to
the same air, the accompaniment being subordinate to the melody. This
sense we still use in our 'ballad-concerts.' Another meaning was that of
simply a popular song or ditty of the day, lyrical or narrative, of the
kind often printed as a broadsheet. Lyrical _or_ narrative, because the
Elizabethans appear not to distinguish the two. Read, for instance, the
well-known scene in _The Winter's Tale_ (Act IV. Sc. 4); here we have
both the lyrical ballad, as sung by Dorcas and Mopsa, in which Autolycus
bears his part 'because it is his occupation'; and also the 'ballad in
print,' which Mopsa says she loves--'for then we are sure it is true.'
Immediately after, however, we discover that the 'ballad in print' is
the broadside, the narrative ballad, sung of a usurer's wife brought to
bed of twenty money-bags at a burden, or of a fish that appeared upon
the coast on Wednesday the fourscore of April: in short, as _Martin
Mar-sixtus_ says (1592), 'scarce a cat can look out of a gutter but out
starts a halfpenny chronicler, and presently a proper new ballet of a
strange sight is indited.' Chief amongst these 'halfpenny chroniclers'
were William Elderton, of whom Camden records that he 'did arm himself
with ale (as old father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated,' and
thereby obtained a red nose almost as celebrated as his verses; Thomas
Deloney, 'the ballating silkweaver of Norwich'; and Richard Johnson,
maker of Garlands. Thus to Milton, to Addison, and even to Johnson,
'ballad' essentially implies singing; but from about the middle of the
eighteenth century the modern interpretation of the word began to come
into general use.

[Footnote 1: For the subject of the origin of the ballad and its
refrain in the _ballatio_ of the dancing-ring, see _The Beginnings
of Poetry_, by Professor Francis B. Gummere, especially chap. v. The
beginning of the whole subject is to be found in the universal and
innate practices of accompanying manual or bodily labour by a
rhythmic chant or song, and of festal song and dance.]

In 1783, in one of his letters, the poet Cowper says: 'The ballad is a
species of poetry, I believe, peculiar to this country.... Simplicity
and ease are its proper characteristics.' Here we have one of the
earliest attempts to define the modern meaning of a 'ballad.' Centuries
of use and misuse of the word have left us no unequivocal name for the
ballad, and we are forced to qualify it with epithets. 'Traditional'
might be deemed sufficient; but 'popular' or 'communal' is more
definite. Here we adopt the word used by Professor Child--'popular.'

What, then, do we intend to signify by the expression 'popular ballads'?
Far the most important point is to maintain an antithesis between the
poetry of the people and the consciously artistic poetry of the schools.
Wilhelm Grimm, the less didactic of the two famous brothers, said that
the ballad says nothing unnecessary or unreal, and despises external
adornment. Ferdinand Wolf, the great critic of the Homeric question,
said the ballad must be naive, objective, not sentimental, lively and
erratic in its narrative, without ornamentation, yet with much
picturesque vigour.

It is even more necessary to define sharply the line between poetry _of_
the people and poetry _for_ the people.[2] The latter may still be
written; the making of the former is a lost art. Poetry of the people is
either lyric or narrative. This difference is roughly that between song
and ballad. 'With us,' says Ritson, 'songs of sentiment, expression, or
even description, are properly termed songs, in contradistinction to
mere narrative compositions which we now denominate Ballads.' This
definition, of course, is essentially modern; we must still insist on
the fact that genuine ballads were sung: 'I sing Musgrove,'[3] says Sir
Thwack in Davenant's _The Wits_, 'and for the Chevy Chase no lark comes
near me.' Lastly, we must emphasise that the accompaniment is
predominated by the air to which the words are sung. I have heard the
modern comic song described as 'the kind in which you hear the words,'
thus differentiating it from the drawing-room song, in which the words
are (happily) as a rule less audible than the melody. In the ballad, as
sung, the words are most important; but it is of vital importance to
remember that the ballads were chanted.

[Footnote 2: See the first essay, 'What is "Popular Poetry"?' in
_Ideas of Good and Evil_, by W. B. Yeats (1903), where this
distinction is not recognised.]

[Footnote 3: _Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard_ (see p. 19, etc.).]

+II. Poetry of the People.+

Now what is this 'poetry of the people'? One theory is as follows. Every
nation or people in the natural course of its development reaches a
stage at which it consists of a homogeneous, compact community, with its
sentiments undivided by class-distinctions, so that the whole active
body forms what is practically an individual. Begging the question, that
poetry can be produced by such a body, this poetry is naturally of a
concrete and narrative character, and is previous to the poetry of art.
'Therefore,' says Professor Child, 'while each ballad will be
idiosyncratic, it will not be an expression of the personality of
individuals, but of a collective sympathy; and the fundamental
characteristic of popular ballads is therefore the absence of
subjectivity and self-consciousness. Though they do not "write
themselves," as Wilhelm Grimm has said--though a man and not a people
has composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by
mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us
anonymous.'

By stating this, the dictum of one of the latest and most erudite of
ballad-scholars, so early in our argument, we anticipate a century or
more of criticism and counter-criticism, during which the giants of
literature ranged themselves in two parties, and instituted a
battle-royal which even now is not quite finished. It will be most
convenient if we denominate the one party as that which holds to the
communal or 'nebular' theory of authorship, and the other as the
anti-communal or 'artistic' theory. The tenet of the former party has
already been set forth, namely, that the poetry of the people is a
natural and spontaneous production of a community at that stage of its
existence when it is for all practical purposes an individual. The
theory of the 'artistic' school is that the ballads and folk-songs are
the productions of skalds, minstrels, bards, troubadours, or other
vagrant professional singers and reciters of various periods; it is
allowed, however, that, being subject entirely to oral transmission,
these ballads and songs are open to endless variation.

On the Continent, Herder was pioneer, both of the claims of popular
poetry and of the nebular theory of authorship. Traditions of chivalry,
he says, became poetry in the mouths of the people; but his definition
of popular poetry has rather extended bounds. Herder's enthusiasm fired
Goethe (who, however, did not wholly accede to the 'nebular' theory) to
study the subject, and the effect was soon noticeable in his own poetry.
Next came the two great brothers, whose names are ever to be held in
honour wherever folklore is studied or folktales read, Jacob and Wilhelm
Grimm. Jacob, the more ardent and polemical, insisted on the communal
authorship of the poetry of the people; ballad or song 'sings itself.'

Both the Grimms, and especially Jacob, were severely handled by the
critic Schlegel, who insisted on the artist. To Schlegel we owe the
famous image in which popular poetry is a tower, and the poet an
architect. Hundreds may fetch and carry, but all are useless without the
direction of the architect. This is specious argument; but we might
reply to Schlegel that an architect is only wanted when the result is
required to be an artistic whole. The tower of Babel was built by
hundreds of men under no superintendence. Schlegel's intention, however,
is no less clear than that of Jacob Grimm, and the two are diametrically
opposed.

In England, literary prejudice against the unpolished barbarities and
uncouthnesses of the ballad was at no time so pronounced as it was on
the Continent, and especially in Germany, during the latter half of the
eighteenth century. Indeed, at intervals, the most learned and fantastic
critics in England would call attention to the poetry of the people. Sir
Philip Sidney's apologetic words are well known:-- 'Certainly I must
confesse my own barbarousnes, I never heard the olde song of _Percy_ and
_Duglas_, that I found not my heart mooved more then with a Trumpet.'
Addison was bolder. 'It is impossible that anything should be
universally tasted and approved by a Multitude, tho' they are only the
Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please
and gratify the Mind of Man.' With these and other encouragements the
popular poetry of England was not lost to sight; and in 1765 the work of
the good Bishop of Dromore gave the ballads a place in literature.

Percy's opening remarks, attributing the ballads to the minstrels, are
as well known as the scoffs of the hard-hitting Joseph Ritson, who
contemptuously dismissed Percy's theories,[4] and refused to believe any
ballad to be of earlier origin than the reign of Elizabeth. Sir Walter
Scott was quite ready to accept the ballads as the productions of the
minstrels, either as 'the occasional effusions of some self-taught
bard,' or as abridged from the tales of tradition after the days when,
as Alfred de Musset says, 'our old romances spread their wings of gold
towards the enchanted world.'

[Footnote 4: 'The truth really lay between the two, for neither
appreciated the wide variety covered by a common name' (_The
Mediaeval Stage_, E. K. Chambers, 1903). See especially chapters iii.
and iv. of this work for an admirably complete and illuminating
account of minstrelsy.]

This brings us nearer to our own day. The argument is not closed,
although we can discern offers of concession from either side. Svend
Grundtvig, editor of the enormous collection of Danish ballads,
distinguished the ballad from all forms of artistic literature, and
would have the artist left out of sight; Nyrop and the Scandinavian
scholars, on the other hand, entirely gave up the notion of communal
authorship. Howbeit, the trend of modern criticism,[5] on the whole, is
towards a common belief regarding most ballads, which may be stated
again, in Professor Child's words: 'Though a man and not a people has
composed them, still the author counts for nothing, and it is not by
mere accident, but with the best reason, that they have come down to us
anonymous.'

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12