Ballads are living organisms.[1] If a teacher requires a pupil to analyze minutely a ballad according to rules of prosody and literary criticism, the analysis ruthlessly destroys its spontaneous folk-spirit. To dissect a ballad is literary slaughter.

We all know how the cold-blooded analysis of choice masterpieces destroys forever a pupil’s pleasure in reading them. The teacher of ballad-literature should use the opposite method to that of literary criticism. She should make her pupil delight in a ballad for its own sake; for its unity, its swinging rhythm, its unself-conscious expressions of emotion, and for the human life within it.

A ballad treated in this sympathetic manner will become a thrilling memory for the pupil to carry through the years. A ballad presented thus has educational values besides that of giving joy. It may be used to develop the pupil’s sense of time and rhythm; to enlarge his vocabulary; to teach him to express his thoughts without affectation; to give him ease in sight-reading of Scottish dialect and old English spelling and to accustom him to obsolete words. As a memory exercise for the pupil, the learning and recitation of ballads is unrivaled; because young people memorize them without effort. And furthermore, ballads have dramatic qualities that hold and move a mixed audience of boys and girls of all ages—and of grown folk, too, for that matter.

But perhaps the most important educational function of ballad-literature is that of being a safety-valve for the escape of new, fast-rising feelings and enthusiasms of growing boys and girls, feelings that throng and press for utterance. Young people do not know how to put them into their own words, but find a wholesome and satisfying means of expressing their emotions through learning and reciting ballads or by reading them aloud.

THE BALLADS IN THIS BOOK

There are many versions of old ballads, of some as many as twenty or more; those most suitable for young people are given here.

There are included here ballads in Scottish dialect, and in old English wording with obsolete spelling and capitalization. These versions may be used with confidence by the teacher, because no pains have been spared in collating them by authoritative texts.[2]

Even such differing forms as o’ or o; wi’ or wi; e’e or ee; then for than or than for then; and variations of proper names, as in “Proud Lady Margaret,” have been followed according to the text used.

Quotation marks, only, have been added for the convenience of the young folk. A few objectionable, but unimportant, words have been changed. In the version of “Chevy-Chase,” Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript has been followed with a few emendations from his Reliques, including the capitalization of the first letter of each line. The Folio Manuscript is more authoritative than the Reliques.

Some of the ballads and verses which follow the old forms given by collectors are: “The Stormy Winds Do Blow,” p. 2; “Sir Patrick Spens,” p. 3; “The DÆmon Lover,” p. 7; “Chevy-Chase,” p. 21; “Proud Lady Margaret,” p. 62; “The Famous Flower of Serving-Men,” p. 65; “The Young Tamlane,” p. 255; “Thomas the Rhymer,” p. 93; “The Wee Wee Man,” p. 114; “The Earl of Mar’s Daughter,” p. 115; “Kemp Owyne,” p. 122; “Fair Anny of Roch-royal,” p. 191; “The Cruel Sister,” p. 196; “Blancheflour and Jellyflorice,” p. 209; “The Gay Goss-Hawk,” p. 218; “Bonny Baby Livingston,” p. 224; “Young Beichan and Susie Pye,” p. 237; “The Wife of Usher’s Well,” p. 263; “Sir Roland,” p. 265; the Robin Hood ballads, p. 290 ff.; “True Valour,” p. 355; “Pilgrimage,” p. 351; “Peace,” p. 356.

In striking and pleasing contrast to the old ballads are the modern ones with capitalization to please modern children. It may be noted that the texts of Keats’s “La Belle Dame,” and Campbell’s “Earl March,” are different from the versions usually included in children’s ballad-books. The texts followed here are those most lately approved by literary critics.