[节选]A Collection of Ballads

INTRODUCTION







When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads,

from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under

certain disabilities.  The Comparative Method was scarcely

understood, and was little practised.  Editors were content to

study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great

Britain.  Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then

adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson.  It was later that the ballads

of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our

own, with European MARCHEN, or children's tales, and with the

popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage

peoples.  The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly

stated.  Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation.  Every

man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses

himself in song.  A typical example is the Song of Lamech in

Genesis -





"I have slain a man to my wounding,

And a young man to my hurt."





Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas:  Grettir, Egil,

Skarphedin, are always singing.  In KIDNAPPED, Mr. Stevenson

introduces "The Song of the Sword of Alan," a fine example of

Celtic practice:  words and air are beaten out together, in the

heat of victory.  In the same way, the women sang improvised

dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danae in

Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy.  Every function of

life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriate magical and

mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among

Australian blacks.  "The deeds of men" were chanted by heroes, as

by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls,

like Homer's Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and

medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs.



These practices are world-wide, and world-old.  The thoroughly

popular songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a

professional class of minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic

age of Greece.  A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a

noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the

people.  In either case, this class of men developed more regular

and ample measures.  They evolved the hexameter; the LAISSE of the

CHANSONS DE GESTE; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian

poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece.  The

narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the

mediaeval rhymed romance.  The metre of improvised verse changed

into the artistic lyric.  These lyric forms were fixed, in many

cases, by the art of writing.  But poetry did not remain solely in

professional and literary hands.  The mediaeval minstrels and

JONGLEURS (who may best be studied in Leon Gautier's Introduction

to his EPOPEES FRANCAISES) sang in Court and Camp.  The poorer,

less regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring

tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners.  The foreign

newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English verse.

But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing.



Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our

traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary

poetry.  The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the

same as those of some literary mediaeval romances.  But these plots

and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final

literary form of MARCHEN, myths and inventions originally POPULAR,

and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races

which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more

polished and complex GENRES of literature.  Thus, when a literary

romance and a ballad have the same theme, the ballad may be a

popular degradation of the romance; or, it may be the original

popular shape of it, still surviving in tradition.  A well-known

case in prose, is that of the French fairy tales.
Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them

literary and courtly shape.  But CENDRILLON or CHAPERON ROUGE in

the mouth of a French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional

version, uncontaminated by the refinements of Perrault, despite

Perrault's immense success and circulation.  Thus tradition

preserves pre-literary forms, even though, on occasion, it may

borrow from literature.  Peasant poets have been authors of

ballads, without being, for all that, professional minstrels.  Many

such poems survive in our ballad literature.



The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical.

The former class is based on one of the primeval invented

situations, one of the elements of the MARCHEN in prose.  Such

tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of

peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance,

and may also inspire ballads.  Popular superstitions, the witch,

metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them

survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part.

The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding

fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived

from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted,

sometimes out of all knowledge.  Good examples are the ballads on

Darnley's murder and the youth of James VI.



In the romantic class, we may take TAMLANE.  Here the idea of

fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal

young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by

clinging to them through all transformations.  A classical example

is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern

Cretan example.  The dipping in milk and water, I may add, has

precedent in ancient Egypt (in THE TWO BROTHERS), and in modern

Senegambia.  The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is

illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. (1)  Now, in

literary forms and romance, as in OGIER LE DANOIS, persons are

carried away by the Fairy King or Queen.  But here the literary

romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need

to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance.  On the whole

subject the curious may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves,

Fauns, and Fairies," by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle,

himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies.



Thus, in TAMLANE, the whole DONNEE is popular.  But the current

version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by

incongruous modernisms.  Burns's version, from tradition, already

localizes the events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and

Yarrow.  But Burns's version does not make the Earl of Murray

father of the hero, nor the Earl of March father of the heroine.

Roxburgh is the hero's father in Burns's variant, which is more

plausible, and the modern verses do not occur.  This ballad

apparently owes nothing to literary romance.



In MARY HAMILTON we have a notable instance of the Historical

Ballad. She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four

Maries, though a lady of the latter name was at her court.  But

early in the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen's was hanged, with

her paramour, an apothecary, for slaying her infant.  Knox mentions

the fact, which is also recorded in letters from the English

ambassador, uncited by Mr. Child.  Knox adds that there were

ballads against the Maries.  Now, in March 1719, a Mary Hamilton,

of Scots descent, a maid of honour of Catherine of Russia, was

hanged for child murder (CHILD, vi. 383).  It has therefore been

supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long ago, later by

Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our ballad is of

1719, or later, and deals with the Russian, not the Scotch,

tragedy.



To this we may reply (1) that we have no example of such a throwing

back of a contemporary event, in ballads.  (2) There is a version

(CHILD, viii. 507) in which Mary Hamilton's paramour is a

"pottinger," or apothecary, as in the real old Scotch affair.  (3)

The number of variants of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to

its antiquity and wide distribution.  Now only SIR PATRICK SPENS

has so many widely different variants as MARY HAMILTON.  These

could hardly have been evolved between 1719 and 1790, when Burns

quotes the poem as an old ballad.  (4) We have no example of a poem

so much in the old ballad manner, for perhaps a hundred and fifty

years before 1719.  The style first degraded and then expired:

compare ROB ROY and KILLIECRANKIE, in this collection, also the

ballads of LOUDOUN HILL, THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH, and others much

earlier than 1719.  New styles of popular poetry on contemporary

events as SHERRIFFMUIR and TRANENT BRAE had arisen.  (5) The

extreme historic inaccuracy of MARY HAMILTON is paralleled by that

of all the ballads on real events.  The mention of the Pottinger is

a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian

affair, and there is no room, says Professor Child, for the

supposition that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist,

to tally with the narrative in Knox's History.
 No Marie of Mary Stuart's suffered death for child murder.

On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a

tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear

in the variants of the ballad.  The lady is there spoken of

generally as Mary Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as

daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth.

Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom, she is not

abroad, but in Edinburgh town.  Nothing can be less probable than

that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719, telling the tale of a

yesterday's tragedy in Russia, should throw the time back by a

hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to Scotland (the

heart of the sorrow would be Mary's exile), and, above all, should

compose a ballad in a style long obsolete.  This is not the method

of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as

HARDYKNUTE show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or

skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.



We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard MARY

HAMILTON as an old example of popular perversion of history in

ballad, not as "one of the very latest," and also "one of the very

best" of Scottish popular ballads.



ROB ROY shows the same power of perversion.  It was not Rob Roy but

his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and

James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian

spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly.  Indeed a

kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet

was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.



Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history.  They

are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin,

composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused

among and altered by popular reciters.  In England they soon won

their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled

and moralized by the hack editors.



No ballad has a stranger history than THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD

BATEMAN, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray.

Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the

essence.  Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is  beloved by the

Turk's daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by

her released.  The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman:  he

has just married a local bride, but "orders another marriage," and

sends home his bride "in a coach and three."  This incident is

stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic.
Now Lord Bateman is YOUNG BEKIE in the Scotch ballads, who becomes

YOUNG BEICHAN, YOUNG BICHEM, and so forth, and has adventures

identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in

the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious.  As

Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket,

Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury.  Every one has

heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London.  (Robert of

Gloucester's LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF THOMAS BECKET, Percy Society.

See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and MOTHERWELL'S

MINSTRELSY, p. xv., 1827.)  The legend of the dissolved marriage is

from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example

in the state of CANTEFABLE, alternate prose and verse, like

AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE.  Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the

twelfth century.



Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad.  The examples

selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the

spirit of the Border raids which they record.  A few notes are

added in an appendix.  The text is chosen from among the many

variants in Child's learned but still unfinished collection, and an

effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry

with most signs of uncontaminated originality.  In a few cases Sir

Walter Scott's versions, though confessedly "made up," are

preferred.  Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does

not merely plough with Professor Child's heifer, but has made a

study of ballads from his boyhood.



This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic

American critics, from "the common blame of a plagiary."  Indeed,

as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the

Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas

here set forth.



So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child's

regretted death.  He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast

collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads,

with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research,

and a distinguished honour to American scholarship.  We are not

told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic,

with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the

Ballads:  as to the influences which directed the selection of

certain themes of MARCHEN for poetic treatment, and the processes

by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe.  No

one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose

knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of

Professor Child.  It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may

complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it

unfinished.