My thanks are due Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for the use of the following modern ballads, “The Ballad of the Oysterman,” by Oliver Wendell Holmes; “The Luck of Edenhall,” “The Three Kings,” and “The Skeleton in Armour,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; “The Singing Leaves,” by James Russell Lowell; “Barclay of Ury,” by John Greenleaf Whittier.

Among the authoritative texts from which I have taken ancient and popular ballads, are Bell’s Early Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England; Bishop Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, and his Folio Manuscript, edited by Hales and Furnivall; A Collection of Old Ballads, London, 1723-25; Dixon’s Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (Percy Society); Jamieson’s Popular Ballads and Songs; Monk Lewis’s Tales of Wonder; Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern; Nicholson’s Historical and Traditional Tales ... Connected with the South of Scotland; Ritson’s Robin Hood; Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; Sheldon’s Minstrelsy of the English Border; also the scholarly collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, compiled and edited by Professor Francis James Child, for the use of which my acknowledgments are due its publishers, Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company.

The best texts available have been followed for the original ballads by Sir Walter Raleigh, George Herbert, Hogg, Scott, Lover, Kingsley, Tennyson, Campbell, and Keats.