Several questions of general interest have arisen for discussion by the editor during the work of revision. Notes upon these have been brought together, so as to form an introduction, which it is hoped may be of some use to the readers of the Reliques, in the absence of an exhaustive compilation, which has yet to be made. Here there is no attempt at completeness of treatment, and the notes are roughly arranged under the following headings:—

• The Minstrels.
• Ballads and Ballad Writers.
• Imitators and Forgers.
• Authenticity of certain Ballads.
• Preservers of the Ballads.
• Life of Percy.
• Folio MS. and the Reliques.
• Ballad Literature since Percy.

The Minstrels.

When Percy wrote the opening sentence in his first sketch of that "Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels" (1765), which was the foundation of the literature of the subject, he little expected the severe handling he was to receive from the furious Ritson for his hasty utterance. His words were, "The minstrels seem to have been the genuine successors of the ancient bards, who united the arts of poetry and music, and sung verses to the harp of their own composing." The bishop was afterwards convinced, from Ritson's remarks, that the rule he had enunciated was too rigid, and in the later form of the Essay he somewhat modified his language. The last portion of the sentence then stood, "composed by themselves or others," and a note was added to the effect that he was "wedded to no hypothesis."

Sir Walter Scott criticised the controversy in his interesting article on Romance in the supplement to the EncyclopÆdia Britannica, where he wrote: "When so popular a department of poetry has attained this decided character, it becomes time to inquire who were the composers of these numerous, lengthened, and once-admired narratives which are called metrical romances, and from whence they drew their authority. Both these subjects of discussion have been the source of great controversy among antiquarians; a class of men who, be it said with their forgiveness, are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which, therefore, we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty." After some remarks upon the essays of Percy and Ritson, he added, "Yet there is so little room for this extreme loss of temper, that upon a recent perusal of both these ingenious essays, we were surprised to find that the reverend editor of the Reliques and the accurate antiquary have differed so very little as in essential facts they appear to have done. Quotations are indeed made by both with no sparing hand; and hot arguments, and on one side, at least, hard words are unsparingly employed; while, as is said to happen in theological polemics, the contest grows warmer in proportion as the ground concerning which it is carried on is narrower and more insignificant. In reality their systems do not essentially differ." Ritson's great object was to set forth more clearly than Percy had done that the term minstrel was a comprehensive one, including the poet, the singer, and the musician, not to mention the fablier, conteur, jugleur, baladin, &c.

Ritson delighted in collecting instances of the degradation into which the minstrel gradually sank, and, with little of Percy's taste, he actually preferred the ballad-writer's songs to those of the minstrel. Percy, on the other hand, gathered together all the material he could to set the minstrel in a good light. There is abundant evidence that the latter was right in his view of the minstrel's position in feudal times, but there were grades in this profession as in others, and law-givers doubtless found it necessary to control such Bohemians as wandered about the country without licence. The minstrel of a noble house was distinguished by bearing the badge of his lord attached to a silver chain, and just as in later times the players who did not bear the name of some courtier were the subjects of parliamentary enactments, so the unattached minstrels were treated as vagrants. Besides the minstrels of great lords, there were others attached to important cities. On May 26, 1298, as appears by the Wardrobe accounts of Edward I., that king gave 6s. 8d. to Walter Lovel, the harper of Chichester, whom he found playing the harp before the tomb of St. Richard in the Cathedral of Chichester.

Waits were formerly attached to most corporate towns, and were, in fact, the corporation minstrels. They wore a livery and a badge, and were formed into a sort of guild. No one, even were he an inhabitant of the town, was suffered to play in public who was not free of the guild. Besides singing out the hours of the night, and warning the town against dangers, they accompanied themselves with the harp, the pipe, the hautboy, and other instruments. They played in the town for the gratification of the inhabitants, and attended the mayor on all state occasions. At the mayor's feast they occupied the minstrels' gallery. From the merchants' guild book at Leicester, it appears that as early as 1314 "Hugh the Trumpeter" was made free of the guild, and in 1481 "Henry Howman, a harper," was also made free, while in 1499 "Thomas Wylkyns, Wayte," and in 1612 "Thomas Pollard, musician," were likewise admitted.[1]

Percy collected so many facts concerning the old minstrels, that it is not necessary to add much to his stock of information, especially as, though a very interesting subject in itself, it has really very little to do with the contents of the Reliques.

The knightly Troubadours and TrouvÈres, and such men as Taillefer, the Norman minstrel, who at the battle of Hastings advanced on horseback before the invading host, and gave the signal for attack by singing the Song of Roland, who died at Roncesvalles, had little in common with the authors of the ballads in this book.

The wise son of Sirach enumerates among those famous men who are worthy to be praised "such as found out musical tunes, and recited verses in writing;" but, according to Hector Boece, the early Scottish kings thought otherwise. In the Laws of Kenneth II., "bardis" are mentioned with vagabonds, fools, and idle persons, to be scourged and burnt on the cheek, unless they found some work by which to live; and the same laws against them were, according to Boece, still in force in the reign of Macbeth, nearly two centuries later. Better times, however, came, and Scotch bards and minstrels were highly favoured in the reign of James III.; but the sunshine did not last long. In 1574, "pipers, fiddlers, and minstrels" are again branded with the opprobrious term of vagabonds, and threatened with severe penalties; and the Regent Morton induced the Privy Council to issue an edict that "nane tak upon hand to emprent or sell whatsoever book, ballet, or other werk," without its being examined and licensed, under pain of death and confiscation of goods. In August, 1579, two poets of Edinburgh (William Turnbull, schoolmaster, and William Scot, notar, "baith weel belovit of the common people for their common offices"), were hanged for writing a satirical ballad against the Earl of Morton; and in October of the same year, the Estates passed an Act against beggars and "sic as make themselves fules and are bards ... minstrels, sangsters, and tale tellers, not avowed in special service by some of the lords of parliament or great burghs."

The minstrels had their several rounds, and, as a general rule, did not interfere with each other; but it is probable that they occasionally made a foray into other districts, in order to replenish their worn-out stock of songs.

One of the last of the true minstrels was Richard Sheale, who enjoys the credit of having preserved the old version of Chevy Chase. He was for a time in the service of Edward, Earl of Derby, and wrote an elegy on the Countess, who died in January, 1558. He afterwards followed the profession of a minstrel at Tamworth, and his wife was a "sylke woman," who sold shirts, head clothes, and laces, &c., at the fairs of Lichfield and other neighbouring towns. On one occasion, when he left Tamworth on horseback, with his harp in his hand, he had the misfortune to be robbed by four highwaymen, who lay in wait for him near Dunsmore Heath. He wrote a long account of his misfortune in verse,[2] in which he describes the grief of himself and his wife at their great loss, and laments over the coldness of worldly friends. He was robbed of threescore pounds—a large amount in those days—not obtained, however, from the exercise of his own skill, but by the sale of his wife's wares. This money was to be devoted to the payment of their debts, and in order that the carriage of it should not be a burden to him he changed it all for gold. He thought he might carry it safely, as no one would suspect a minstrel of possessing so much property, but he found to his cost that he had been foolishly bold. To add to his affliction, some of his acquaintances grieved him by saying that he was a lying knave, and had not been robbed, as it was not possible for a minstrel to have so much money. There was a little sweetness, however, in the poor minstrel's cup, for patrons were kind, and his loving neighbours at Tamworth exerted themselves to help him. They induced him to brew a bushel of malt, and sell the ale.

All this is related in a poem, which gives a vivid picture of the life of the time, although the verse does not do much credit to the poet's skill.

When the minstrel class had fallen to utter decay in England, it flourished with vigour in Wales; and we learn that the harpers and fiddlers were prominent figures in the Cymmortha, or gatherings of the people for mutual aid. These assemblies were of a similar character to the "Bees," which are common among our brethren in the United States. They were often abused for political purposes, and they gave some trouble to Burghley as they had previously done to Henry IV. In the reign of that king a statute was passed forbidding rhymers, minstrels, &c. from making the Cymmortha. The following extract from a MS. in the Lansdowne Collection in the British Museum, on the state of Wales in Elizabeth's reign, shows the estimation in which the minstrels were then held:—

"Upon the Sundays and holidays the multitudes of all sorts of men, women, and children of every parish do use to meet in sundry places, either on some hill or on the side of some mountain, where their harpers and crowthers sing them songs of the doings of their ancestors."[3]

Ben Jonson introduces "Old Father Rosin," the chief minstrel of Highgate, as one of the principal characters in his Tale of a Tub; and the blind harpers continued for many years to keep up the remembrance of the fallen glories of the minstrel's profession. Tom D'Urfey relates how merrily blind Tom harped, and mention is made of "honest Jack Nichols, the harper," in Tom Brown's Letters from the Dead to the Living (Works, ii. 191). Sir Walter Scott, in the article on Romance referred to above, tells us that "about fifty or sixty years since" (which would be about the year 1770) "a person acquired the nickname of 'Roswal and Lillian,' from singing that romance about the streets of Edinburgh, which is probably the very last instance of the proper minstrel craft." Scott himself, however, gives later instances in the introduction to the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He there writes: "It is certain that till a very late period the pipers, of whom there was one attached to each border town of note, and whose office was often hereditary, were the great depositaries of oral, and particularly of poetical tradition. About spring-time, and after harvest, it was the custom of these musicians to make a progress through a particular district of the country. The music and the tale repaid their lodging, and they were usually gratified, with a donation of seed corn. This order of minstrels is alluded to in the comic song of Maggy Lauder, who thus addresses a piper:

To this is added the following note:—"These town pipers, an institution of great antiquity upon the borders, were certainly the last remains of the minstrel race. Robin Hastie, town piper of Jedburgh, perhaps the last of the order, died nine or ten years ago; his family was supposed to have held the office for about three centuries. Old age had rendered Robin a wretched performer, but he knew several old songs and tunes, which have probably died along with him. The town-pipers received a livery and salary from the community to which they belonged; and in some burghs they had a small allotment of land, called the Pipers' Croft." Scott further adds:—"Other itinerants, not professed musicians, found their welcome to their night's quarters readily ensured by their knowledge in legendary lore. John GrÆme, of Sowport, in Cumberland, commonly called the Long Quaker, a person of this latter description, was very lately alive, and several of the songs now published have been taken down from his recitation." A note contains some further particulars of this worthy:—"This person, perhaps the last of our professed ballad reciters, died since the publication of the first edition of this work. He was by profession an itinerant cleaner of clocks and watches, but a stentorian voice and tenacious memory qualified him eminently for remembering accurately and reciting with energy the border gathering songs and tales of war. His memory was latterly much impaired, yet the number of verses which he could pour forth, and the animation of his tone and gestures, formed a most extraordinary contrast to his extreme feebleness of person and dotage of mind." Ritson, in mentioning some relics of the minstrel class, writes:—"It is not long since that the public papers announced the death of a person of this description somewhere in Derbyshire; and another from the county of Gloucester was within these few years to be seen in the streets of London; he played on an instrument of the rudest construction, which he properly enough called a humstrum, and chanted (amongst others) the old ballad of Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, which, by the way, has every appearance of being originally a minstrel song." He adds further in a note:—"He appeared again in January, 1790, and called upon the present writer in the April following. He was between sixty and seventy years of age, but had not been brought up to the profession of a minstrel, nor possessed any great store of songs, of which that mentioned in the text seemed the principal. Having, it would seem, survived his minstrel talents, and forgot his epic, nay Pindaric art, he has been of late frequently observed begging in the streets."[5]

These quotations relate to the end of the last or to the very early part of the present century, but we can add a notice of minstrels who lived well on towards the middle of this century. Mr. J. H. Dixon, in the preface to his Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, printed for the Percy Society in 1845, writes as follows:—"Although the harp has long been silent in the dales of the north of England and Scotland, it has been succeeded by the violin, and a class of men are still in existence and pursuing their calling, who are the regular descendants and representatives of the minstrels of old. In his rambles amongst the hills of the North, and especially in the wild and romantic dales of Yorkshire, the editor has met with several of these characters. They are not idle vagabonds who have no other calling, but in general are honest and industrious, though poor men, having a local habitation as well as a name, and engaged in some calling, pastoral or manual. It is only at certain periods, such as Christmas, or some other of the great festal seasons of the ancient church, that they take up the minstrel life, and levy contributions in the hall of the peer or squire, and in the cottage of the farmer or peasant. They are in general well-behaved, and often very witty fellows, and therefore their visits are always welcome. These minstrels do not sing modern songs, but, like their brethren of a bygone age, they keep to the ballads. The editor has in his possession some old poems, which he obtained from one of these minstrels, who is still living and fiddling in Yorkshire."

In his Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, 1846, Mr. Dixon notices one of these relics of the past, viz. Francis King, who was well known in the western dales of Yorkshire as "the Skipton Minstrel:"—"This poor minstrel, from whose recitation two of our ballads were obtained, met his death by drowning in December, 1844. He had been at a merry meeting at Gargrave in Craven, and it is supposed that owing to the darkness of the night he had mistaken his homeward road, and walked into the water. He was one in whose character were combined the mimic and the minstrel, and his old jokes and older ballads and songs ever insured him a hearty welcome. His appearance was peculiar, and owing to one leg being shorter than its companion, he walked in such a manner as once drew from a wag the remark, 'that few kings had had more ups and downs in the world!' As a musician his talents were creditable, and some of the dance tunes that he was in the habit of composing showed that he was not deficient in the organ of melody. In the quiet churchyard of Gargrave may be seen the minstrel's grave."

Percy wrote an interesting note upon the division of some of the long ballads into fits (see vol. ii. p. 182). The minstrel's payment for each of these fits was a groat; and so common was this remuneration, that a groat came to be generally spoken of as "fiddler's money."

Puttenham describes the blind harpers and tavern minstrels as giving a fit of mirth for a groat; and in Ben Jonson's masque of the Metamorphosed Gipsies, 1621, Townshead, the clown, cries out, "I cannot hold now; there's my groat, let's have a fit for mirth sake."

The payment seems to have remained the same, though the money became in time reduced in value, so that, as the minstrel fell in repute, his reward became less. In 1533, however, a Scotch eighteen-penny groat possessed a considerable buying power, as appears from the following extract:—

"Sir Walter Coupar, chaplaine in Edinburghe, gate a pynte of vyne, a laiffe of 36 vnce vaight, a peck of aite meill, a pynte of aill, a scheipe head, ane penny candell and a faire woman for ane xviii. penny grotte."[6]

After the Restoration, the sixpence took the place of the groat; and it is even now a current phrase to say, when several sixpences are given in change, "What a lot of fiddlers' money!"

Ballads and Ballad Writers.

One of the most important duties of the old minstrel was the chanting of the long romances of chivalry, and the question whether the ballads were detached portions of the romances, or the romances built up from ballads, has greatly agitated the minds of antiquaries. There seems reason to believe that in a large number of instances the most telling portions of the romance were turned into ballads, and this is certainly the case in regard to several of those belonging to the Arthurian cycle. On the other side, such poems as Barbour's Bruce and Blind Harry's Wallace have, according to Motherwell, swept out of existence the memory of the ballads from which they were formed. When Barbour wrote, ballads relative to Bruce and his times were common, "for the poet, in speaking of certain 'thre worthi poyntis of wer,' omits the particulars of the 'thrid which fell into Esdaill,' being a victory gained by 'Schyr Johne the Soullis,' over 'Schyr Andrew Hardclay,' for this reason:—

Another instance of the agglutinative process may be cited in the gradual growth of the Robin Hood ballads into a sort of epic, the first draught of which we may see in the Merrye Geste. The directness and dramatic cast of the minstrel ballad, however, form a strong argument in favour of the theory that they were largely taken from the older romances and chronicles, and the fragmentary appearance of some of them gives force to this view. Without preface, they go at once straight to the incident to be described. Frequently the ballad opens with a conversation, and some explanation of the position of the interlocutors was probably given by the minstrel as a prose introduction. Motherwell, in illustration of the opinion that the abrupt transitions of the ballads were filled up by the explanations of the minstrels, gives the following modern instance:—

"Traces of such a custom still remain in the lowlands of Scotland among those who have stores of these songs upon their memory. Reciters frequently, when any part of the narrative appears incomplete, supply the defect in prose.... I have heard the ancient ballad of Young Beichan and Susan Pye dilated by a story-teller into a tale of very remarkable dimensions—a paragraph of prose, and then a screed of rhyme, alternately given. From this ballad I may give a short specimen, after the fashion of the venerable authority from whom I quote: 'Well ye must know that in the Moor's castle there was a massymore, which is a dark, deep dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was twenty feet below the ground, and into this hole they closed poor Beichan. There he stood, night and day, up to his waist in puddle water; but night or day, it was all one to him, for no ae styme of light ever got in. So he lay there a long and weary while, and thinking on his heavy weird, he made a mournfu' sang to pass the time, and this was the sang that he made, and grat when he sang it, for he never thought of ever escaping from the massymore, or of seeing his ain country again:

'Now the cruel Moor had a beautiful daughter, called Susan Pye, who was accustomed to take a walk every morning in her garden, and as she was walking ae day she heard the sough o' Beichan's sang, coming, as it were, from below the ground,'" &c.[8]

The contrast between the construction of minstrel ballads and those of the ballad-mongers who arose as a class in the reign of Elizabeth is very marked. The ballad-singers who succeeded the minstrels were sufficiently wise not to reject the treasures of their predecessors, and many of the old songs were rewritten and lengthened to suit their purpose. Sir Patrick Spence would perhaps be the best of the minstrel ballads to oppose to one of the best of the later ballads, such as the Beggar's Daughter of Bednall Green; but as its authenticity has been disputed, it will be well to choose another, and Captaine Carre, which Ritson allows to have been one of the few minstrel ballads he acknowledges, will do well for the purpose. As both these poems are before our readers, it will only be necessary to quote the first stanzas of each. The version in the folio MS. of Captain Carre commences abruptly thus:—

This is a remarkable contrast to the opening of the Beggar's Daughter:—

Some may think, however, that this ballad is an adaptation by the ballad-monger from an older original, so that perhaps a still better instance of the great change in form that the ballads underwent will be found in the Children in the Wood.[11] This favourite ballad is one of the best specimens of that didactic style which is so natural in the hands of the master, but degenerates into such tedious twaddle when copied by the pupil. The first stanza is:—

To put the matter simply, we may say that the writer of the old minstrel ballad expected an unhesitating belief for all his statements. "If fifteen stalwart foresters are slain by one stout knight, single-handed, he never steps out of his way to prove the truth of such an achievement by appealing to the exploits of some other notable manslayer."[12] On the other hand the professional ballad-writer gives a reason for everything he states, and in consequence fills his work with redundancies. Percy understood the characteristics of the older ballads, and explained the difference between the two classes of ballads in his Essay on the Ancient Minstrels,[13] but unfortunately he did not bear the distinction in mind when he altered some of the ballads in the folio MS. So that we find it to have been his invariable practice to graft the prettinesses and redundancies of the later writers upon the simplicity of the earlier. For instance, in his version of Sir Cauline he inserts such well-worn saws as the following:—

Ritson also remarks upon the distinctive styles of the ancient and modern writers, but, as observed above, he had the bad taste to prefer the work of the later ballad-writer. His opinion is given in the following passage:—"These songs [of the minstrels] from their wild and licentious metre were incapable of any certain melody or air; they were chanted in a monotonous stile to the harp or other instrument, and both themselves and the performers banished by the introduction of ballad-singers without instruments, who sung printed pieces to fine and simple melodies, possibly of their own invention, most of which are known and admired at this day. The latter, owing to the smoothness of their language, and accuracy of their measure and rime, were thought to be more poetical than the old harp or instrument songs; and though critics may judge otherwise, the people at large were to decide, and did decide: and in some respects, at least, not without justice, as will be evident from a comparison of the following specimens.

"The first is from the old Chevy Chase, a very popular minstrel ballad in the time of Queen Elizabeth:—

How was it possible that this barbarous language, miserably chanted 'by some blind crowder with no rougher voice than rude stile,' should maintain its ground against such lines as the following, sung to a beautiful melody, which we know belongs to them?—

The minstrels would seem to have gained little by such a contest. In short, they gave up the old Chevy Chase to the ballad-singers, who, desirous, no doubt, to avail themselves of so popular a subject, had it new written, and sung it to the favourite melody just mentioned. The original, of course, became utterly neglected, and but for its accidental discovery by Hearne, would never have been known to exist."[17]

Percy held the view, which was afterwards advocated by Scott, that the Borders were the true home of the romantic ballad, and that the chief minstrels originally belonged either to the north of England or the south of Scotland;[18] but later writers have found the relics of a ballad literature in the north of Scotland. The characteristics of the ballad doubtless varied to some extent in different parts of the country, but there is no reason to believe that the glory of being its home can be confined to any one place. Unfortunately this popular literature was earlier lost in the plains than among the hills, while the recollection of the fatal fields of Otterburn, Humbledon, Flodden, Halidon, Hedgeley, Hexham, &c., would naturally keep it alive longer among the families of the Border than elsewhere.

Before proceeding further, it may be as well to say a few words upon the word ballad. The strong line of demarcation that is now drawn between an ordinary song and a ballad is a late distinction, and even Dr. Johnson's only explanation of the word "ballad" in his Dictionary is "a song." One of his quotations is taken from Watts, to the effect that "ballad once signified a solemn and sacred song, as well as trivial, when Solomon's Song was called the ballad of ballads; but now it is applied to nothing but trifling verse." The "balade" as used by Chaucer and others was a song written in a particular rhythm, but later writers usually meant by a ballad a song that was on the lips of the people.

It is not necessary to enlarge here upon the change of meaning that the word has undergone, nor to do more than mention the relation that it bears to the word ballet. As a ballad is now a story told in verse, so a ballet is now a story told in a dance. Originally the two were one, and the ballad was a song sung while the singers were dancing.

When Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun wrote, "I knew a very wise man, so much of Sir Christopher's sentiment that he believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation," he referred to the popular songs of the people, but, in point of fact, a nation makes its own ballads, which do not become current coin until stamped with public approval. No song will change a people's purpose, but the national heart will be found written in a country's songs as a reflection of what has happened.

The successful ballad-writer requires a quick eye and ear to discern what is smouldering in the public mind, and then if his words fall in with the humour of the people his productions will have a powerful influence, and may set the country in a blaze. Ça ira and the Carmagnole had much influence on the progress of the great French Revolution, as Mourir pour la Patrie had upon that of 1848. Lilliburlero gave the finishing stroke to the English Revolution of 1688, and its author (Lord Wharton) boasted that he had rhymed King James out of his dominions.

The old ballad filled the place of the modern newspaper, and history can be read in ballads by those who try to understand them; but the type is often blurred, and in attempting to make out their meaning, we must be careful not to see too much, for the mere fact of the existence of a ballad does not prove its popularity or its truth.

Literature is often presumed to assert a larger influence over a nation than it really does, and there is little doubt that literature is more a creation of the people than the people are a creation of literature. Where a healthy public opinion exists, people are less affected to action by what is written than is sometimes supposed, but still there is an important reflex action, and—

There are recorded instances of the powerful influence of ballads, and we know how much Dibdin's sea songs did for the British navy, when they placed before the sailor an ideal of his own feelings, and painted men he wished to be like.

The songs of a country are the truly natural part of its poetry, and really the only poetry of the great body of the people. Percy, in the dedication to his Reliques, calls ballads the "barbarous productions of unpolished ages." Nevertheless they are instinct with life, and live still, while much of the polished poetry of his age, which expelled nature from literature, is completely dead. Nature is the salt that keeps the ballad alive, and many have maintained a continuance of popularity for several centuries.

A good ballad is not an easy thing to write, and many poets who have tried their hand at composition in this branch of their art have signally failed, as may be seen by referring to some of the modern pieces in this book, which Percy hoped would "atone for the rudeness of the more obsolete poems."

The true ballad is essentially dramatic, and one that is to make itself felt should be all action, without[Pg xxxiii] any moralizing padding, for it is a narrative in verse meant for the common people. James Hogg, himself a successful ballad-writer, has something to say about a good song: "A man may be sair mista'en about many things, sic as yepics, an' tragedies, an' tales, an' even lang set elegies about the death o' great public characters, an' hymns, an' odes, an' the like, but he canna be mista'en about a sang. As sune as it's down on the sclate I ken whether it's gude, bad, or middlin'. If any of the two last I dight it out wi' my elbow; if the first, I copy it o'er into writ and then get it aff by heart, when it's as sure o' no' being lost as if it war engraven on a brass plate. For though I hae a treacherous memory about things in ordinar', a' my happy sangs will cleave to my heart to my dying day, an' I should na wonder gin I war to croon a verse or twa frae some o' them on my deathbed."

All ballads are songs, but all songs are not ballads, and the difference between a ballad and a song is something the same as that between a proverb and an apophthegm, for the ballad like the proverb should be upon many lips. A poet may write a poem and call it a ballad: but it requires the public approval before it becomes one in fact.

The objects of the minstrel and the ballad-singer were essentially different: thus the minstrel's stock of ballads usually lasted him his lifetime, and as his living depended upon them they were jealously guarded by him from others. Nothing he objected to more than to see them in print. The chief aim of the ballad-singer, on the other hand, was to sell his collection of printed broadsides, and to obtain continually a new stock, so as to excite the renewed attention of his customers.

Henry Chettle mentions in his Kind Hart's Dream, 1592, the sons of one Barnes, who boasted that they could earn twenty shillings a day by singing ballads at Bishop's Stortford and places in the neighbourhood. The one had a squeaking treble, the other "an ale-blown bass."

One of the most popular singers of the early time was a boy named Cheeke, and nicknamed "Outroaring Dick." He was originally a mechanic, but renounced that life for ballad-singing, by which occupation he earned ten shillings a day. He was well known in Essex, and was not missed for many years from the great fair at Braintree. He had a rival in Will Wimbars, who sung chiefly doleful tragedies. Mat Nash, a man from the "North Countrie," made the Border ballads his own by his manner of singing them, in which he accompanied his voice by dramatic action. Chevy Chase was his tour de force. Lord Burghley was so pleased with his singing that he enabled him to retire from his occupation. The gipsies have furnished many female singers, and one of them, named Alice Boyce, who came to London in Elizabeth's reign, paid the expenses of her journey up to London by singing the whole way. She had the honour of singing, "O, the broom" and "Lady Green Sleeves" before the queen. Gravelot, the portrait painter in the Strand, had several sittings from ballad-singers; and Hogarth drew the famous "Philip in the Tub" in his Wedding of the Industrious Apprentice.

Street singing still continues, and one of the songs of thirty years ago tells of "the luck of a cove wot sings," and how many friends he has. One of the verses is as follows:—

Mr. Chappell gives a large number of early quotations relating to ballad-singing, in his interesting History of Ballad Literature, and observes that "some idea of the number of ballads that were printed in the early part of the reign of Elizabeth may be formed from the fact that seven hundred and ninety-six ballads left for entry at Stationers' Hall remained in the cupboard of the Council Chamber of the Company at the end of the year 1560, to be transferred to the new Wardens, and only forty-four books."[19] Some of the old writers, like Shakspere's Mopsa, loved "a ballad in print;" but more of them disliked the new literature that was rising up like a mushroom, and took every opportunity of having a fling at it.

Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie (1586), refers to "the un-countable rabble of ryming ballet-makers and compylers of senseless sonnets;" and Chettle complains in Kind Hart's Dream (1592), that "now ballads are abusively chanted in every street; and from London, this evil has overspread Essex and the adjoining counties. There is many a tradesman of a worshipful trade, yet no stationer, who after a little bringing up apprentices to singing brokery, takes into his shop some fresh men, and trusts his servants of two months' standing with a dozen groats' worth of ballads, in which, if they prove thrifty, he makes them pretty chapmen, able to spread more pamphlets by the State forbidden than all the booksellers in London." Bishop Hall (1597) does not forget to satirize ballad-writing among other things more worthy of censure.

That is, by the spinsters and milkmaids. Shakspere also refers to the love which women at work have for a ballad in Twelfth Night (act i. sc. 4):

The larger number of ballads are anonymous, but we are told that in the reign of Henry VIII., "the most pregnant wits" were employed in writing them, and that the king himself set the example. The ballad, however, here referred to probably only meant an ordinary song. In course of time rhymesters succeeded poets, because, as the world becomes more educated, the poet confines himself to the refined, and the people have to content themselves with poor poetasters. Stirring times will, however, always give birth to some real poetry among the masses, because whatever is true and earnest must find an echo in many hearts. In Elizabeth's reign, as we have already seen, the ballad-writer had sunk very low in public esteem. In further illustration of this we find in Martin Mar-sixtus (1592) the following diatribe: "I lothe to speak it, every red-nosed rhymester is an auther, every drunken man's dream is a book; and he whose talent of little wit is hardly worth a farthing, yet layeth about him so outrageously as if all Helicon had run through his pen. In a word, 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." The producer and the product[Pg xxxvii] had not greatly changed in forty years, for we find the following character in the curious little book, entitled Whimzies, or a New Cast of Characters (1631):

"A ballad-monger is the ignominious nickname of a penurious poet, of whom he partakes in nothing but in povertie. He has a singular gift of imagination, for he can descant on a man's execution long before his confession. Nor comes his invention far short of his imagination. For want of truer relations, for a neede, he can finde you out a Sussex dragon, some sea or inland monster, drawne out by some Shoe-lane man in a Gorgon-like feature, to enforce more horror in the beholder."

The chief of the ballad-writers were William Elderton, Thomas Deloney, Richard Johnson, and Anthony Munday. Elderton was known as the prince of ballad-mongers; but, unfortunately, he was as notorious for his love of the bottle, and he is said to have drunk himself to death before the year 1592. Camden tells us that "he did arm himself with ale (as old Father Ennius did with wine) when he ballated," and two epitaphs made upon him are registered in the Remaines, the Latin one of which is also printed at p. 221 of vol. ii., with Oldys's translation, and the following:—

Nash asserts that "Elderton consumed his alecrammed nose to nothing in bear-bayting" an enemy "with whole bundells of ballets;"[20] and Gabriel Harvey attacks "Father Elderton and his son Greene as the ringleaders of the riming and scribbling crew."

[Pg xxxviii]

According to Stow, Elderton was an attorney in the Sheriffs' Courts of the City of London, and wrote some verses on the new porch and stone statues at Guildhall. Ritson does not think that his poetical powers are to be compared with those of Deloney and Johnson. Drayton also appears to have had a low opinion of him, for he writes:—

but Benedick, in Much Ado about Nothing (act v. sc. 2) does him the honour of singing one of his songs:—

Thomas Deloney, the shoemaker's historiographer, was a voluminous writer of ballads, which he himself collected into Garlands, with different taking titles. Several of his pieces are printed in these volumes. Nash calls him "the balleting silk-weaver of Norwich;" and in his Have with you to Saffron Walden, he remarks on the ballad-maker's change of style: "He hath rhyme enough for all miracles, and wit to make a Garland of Good Will, &c., but whereas his muse, from the first peeping forth, hath stood at livery at an ale-house wisp, never exceeding a penny a quart, day or night—and this dear year, together with the silencing of his looms, scarce that—he is constrained to betake himself to carded ale, whence it proceedeth that, since Candlemas, or his jigg of John for the King, not one merry ditty will come from him; nothing but The Thunderbolt against Swearers; Repent, England, Repent, and the Strange Judgments of God." Kemp, the comic actor and morris-dancer, was particularly angry with the ballad-makers in general, and Deloney in particular, and addresses them in the following terms:—

"Kemp's humble request to the impudent generation of Ballad-makers and their coherents, that it would please their rascalities to pitty his paines in the great journey he pretends, and not fill the country with lyes of his never done actes as they did in his late Morrice to Norwich. I knowe the best of ye, by the lyes ye writ of me, got not the price of a good hat to cover your brainless heds. If any of ye had come to me, my bounty should have exceeded the best of your good masters the ballad-buiers. I wold have apparrelled your dry pates in party-coloured bonnets, and bestowed a leash of my cast belles to have crown'd ye with cox-combs.

"I was told it was the great ballet-maker, T. D., alias Tho. Deloney, chronicler of the memorable lives of the 6 yeamen of the West, Jack of Newbery, the Gentle-Craft, and such like honest men, omitted by Stow, Hollinshead, Grafton, Hal, Froysart, and the rest of those wel deserving writers."[21]

Richard Johnson, the author of the Seven Champions of Christendom, like Deloney, collected his own ballads into a book, and his Crown Garland of Golden Roses was once highly popular.

Anthony Munday, a draper in Cripplegate, and a member of the Drapers' Company, has the fame of being a voluminous writer of ballads, but none of his productions are known to exist. Kemp calls him "Elderton's immediate heir," but he does not seem to have walked in his predecessor's disreputable steps, but to have lived respected to the good age of eighty. He died Aug. 10, 1633, and was buried in St. Stephen's, Coleman-street, where a monument with an inscription in praise of his knowledge as an antiquary was erected. He wrote many of the annual city pageants, besides plays, which caused Meres to call him "the best plotter" of his age.

Chettle disguised Munday as Anthony Now-Now, and Ben Jonson ridiculed him in The Case is Altered, as Antonio Balladino, the pageant poet. To the question, "You are not the pageant poet to the city of Milan, are you?" he is made to answer, "I supply the place, sir, when a worse cannot be had, sir." He had several enemies who ran him down, but he also had friends who stood up for him. William Webbe, in his Discourse of English Poetrie, describes Munday as "an earnest traveller in this art," and says that he wrote "very excellent works, especially upon nymphs and shepherds, well worthy to be viewed and to be esteemed as rare poetry."

Thomas Middleton, the dramatic poet, who produced the Lord Mayor's pageant for the mayoralty of his namesake, Sir Thomas Middleton (The Triumphs of Truth), in 1613, attacks poor Munday most viciously. On the title-page he declares his pageant to have been "directed, written, and redeem'd into forme, from the ignorance of some former times and their common writer," and in his book he adds:—"The miserable want of both [art and knowledge] which in the impudent common writer hath often forced from me much pity and sorrow, and it would heartily grieve any understanding spirit to behold many times so glorious a fire in bounty and goodness offering to match itselfe with freezing art, sitting in darknesse with the candle out, looking like the picture of Blacke Monday."

When the civil war broke out, the majority of the poets were ready to range themselves on the side of the King. Alexander Brome was the most voluminous writer of royalist songs, but Martin Parker, the writer of The King shall enjoy his own again, must take rank as the leading ballad-writer of his time. This was one of those songs that cheer the supporters of a losing cause, and help them to win success in the end. It is supposed to have formed a by no means unimportant item in the causes that brought about the Restoration. Parker is said to have been the leading spirit in a society of ballad-writers; he certainly was not the "Grub Street scribbler" that Ritson has called him. The Puritans hated this "ballad-maker laureat of London," and lost no opportunity of denouncing him and his works. Mr. Chappell has written an interesting notice of him in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, where he mentions some other royalist ballad writers, as John Wade, the author of The Royal Oak, Thomas Weaver, the author of a Collection of Songs, in which he ridiculed the Puritans so effectually that the book was denounced as a seditious libel against the Government, and John Cleveland, who, according to Anthony Wood, was the first to come forth as a champion of the royal cause. The last of these was one of the very few ballad writers whose names are enrolled in the list of British poets.

In December, 1648, Captain Betham was appointed Provost Marshal, with power to seize upon all ballad-singers, and five years from that date there were no more entries of ballads at Stationers' Hall, but when Cromwell became Protector he removed the ban against ballads and ballad-singers. After the Restoration, the courtier poets wrote for the streets, and therefore most of the ballads were ranged on the side of the Court. After a time, however, the Court fell into popular disfavour, and it was then discovered that ballad-singers and pamphleteers had too much liberty. Killigrew, the Master of the Revels to Charles II., licensed all singers and sellers of ballads, and John Clarke, a London bookseller, rented of Killigrew this privilege for a period, which expired in 1682. Besides licensers of the singers and sellers, there were licensers of the ballads themselves. These were Sir Roger L'Estrange, from 1663 to 1685, Richard Pocock, from 1685 to 1688, J. Fraser, from 1689 to 1691, and Edmund Bohun, who died in 1694, the year that the licensing system also expired.

When James, Duke of York, went to Scotland to seek for that popularity which he had lost in England, he is supposed to have taken with him an English ballad-maker to sing his praises, and this man is believed to have produced The Banishment of Poverty by H. R. H. James, Duke of Albany. Ballad-singing was very much out of favour among the authorities in the eighteenth century, and in 1716 the Middlesex grand jury denounced the singing of "scandalous" ballads about the streets as a common nuisance, tending to alienate the minds of the people. In July, 1763, we are told that "yesterday evening two women were sent to Bridewell by Lord Bute's order for singing political ballads before his lordship's door in South Audley Street."

Ballads were then pretty much the same kind of rubbish that they are now, and there was little to show that they once were excellent. The glorious days when—

had long ago departed. There are but few instances of true poets writing for the streets in later times, but we have one in Oliver Goldsmith. In his early life in Dublin, when he often felt the want of a meal, he wrote ballads, which found a ready customer at five shillings each at a little bookseller's shop in a by-street of the city. We are informed that he was as sensitive as to the reception of these children of his muse as in after years he was of his more ambitious efforts; and he used to stroll into the street to hear his ballads sung, and to mark the degrees of applause with which they were received. Most of the modern ballad-writers have been local in their fame, as Thomas Hoggart, the uncle of Hogarth the painter, whose satiric lash made him a power in his native district of Cumberland, dreaded alike by fools and knaves.

The chief heroes of the older ballads were King Arthur and his knights, Robin Hood, and Guy of Warwick. The ballads relating to the first of these appear to have been chiefly chipped off from the great cycle of Arthurian romances. The popularity of Robin Hood was at one time so great that Drayton prophesied in his Polyolbion:—

From a local hero he grew into national fame, and superseded Arthur in popular regard. He then sunk into a mere highwayman, to be again raised into fame by literary men, Ritson being the chief of these. Wakefield is still proud of its Pinder, who was one of Robin Hood's company—

and one of the thoroughfares of that place is now called Pinder Field Road. Robin Hood was a purely English hero, but Guy of Warwick was almost as popular in foreign countries as in his own land. The earliest of English political ballads was an outcome of the Barons' wars in the reign of Henry III.,[23] and each period of political excitement since then has been represented in ballads. The controversies between Protestant and Papist were carried on in verse, and Laud and his clergy were attacked by the ballad-writers of the Puritan party.

Imitators and Forgers.

No attempt was made to produce false antique ballads until the true antiques had again risen in public esteem, and one of the first to deceive the connoisseurs was Lady Wardlaw, who was highly successful in her object when she gave Hardyknute to the world (see vol. ii. p. 105). She seems to have been quite contented with the success which attended the mystification, and does not appear to have taken any particular pains to keep her secret close. Suspicions were rife long before the publication of the Reliques, but when they appeared the whole truth came out. With regard to the other ballads, to which she had added verses, there does not appear to have been any attempt at concealment. The recent endeavour to attribute a large number of the romantic ballads of Scotland to her pen will be considered further on.

A large number of poets have imitated the old ballad, but very few have been successful in the attempt to give their efforts the genuine ring of the original. Tickell and Goldsmith entered into the spirit of their models, but Scott succeeded best in old Elspeth's fragment of a chant (the Battle of Harlaw) in the Antiquary. W. J. Mickle, the translator of the Lusiad, contributed several imitations to Evans's Collection of Old Ballads, but although these are beautiful poems in themselves, their claim to antiquity was made to rest chiefly upon a distorted spelling. One of the most remarkably successful imitations of modern times is the ballad of Trelawny, which the late Rev. R. S. Hawker, of Morwenstow, wrote to suit the old burden of "And shall Trelawny die." This spirited ballad deceived Scott, Macaulay, and Dickens, who all believed it to be genuine, and quoted it as such. In 1846 it was actually printed by J. H. Dixon in his "Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, taken down from oral tradition, and transcribed from private manuscripts, rare broadsides, and scarce publications," published by the Percy Society. Mr. Dixon was probably deceived by Davies Gilbert, who sent the ballad to the Gentleman's Magazine in 1827, and said that it formerly "resounded in every house, in every highway, and in every street." In 1832 Hawker had, however, himself acknowledged the authorship. He wrote in his Records of the Western Shore (p. 56), "With the exception of the chorus contained in the last two lines, this song was written by me in the year 1825. It was soon after inserted in a Plymouth paper. It happened to fall into the hands of Davies Gilbert, Esq., who did me the honour to reprint it at his private press at East Bourne, under the impression, I believe, that it is an early composition of my own. The two lines above-mentioned formed, I believe, the burthen of the old song, and are all that I can recover."[24] Hawker was fond of these mystifications, and although he did not care to lose the credit of his productions, he was amused to see another of his ballads, Sir Beville, find its way into a collection of old ballads.

A far more beautiful ballad than Hardyknute is Auld Robin Gray, in which a lady of rank caught the spirit of the tender songs of peasant life with excellent effect. Lady Anne Barnard kept her secret for fifty years, and did not acknowledge herself the author of it until 1823, when she disclosed the fact in a letter to Sir Walter Scott.

These were harmless attempts to deceive, such as will always be common among those who take a pleasure in reducing the pride of the experts; and when they were discovered no one was found to have been injured by the deceit. It is far different, however, when a forgery is foisted in among genuine works, because when a discovery is made of its untrustworthiness, the reputation of the true work is injured by this association with the false. Pinkerton inserted a large number of his own poems in his edition of Select Scottish Ballads (1783), which poems he alleged to be ancient. He was taken severely to task by Ritson on account of these fabrications, and he afterwards acknowledged his deceit.[25]

One of the most barefaced of literary deceptions was the work published in 1810 by R. H. Cromek, under the title of Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song. Although the ballads contained in these volumes are very varied in their subject, they were almost entirely composed by Allan Cunningham, who produced whatever was required of him by his employer.

Poets are often the worst of editors, as they find the temptation to "improve" their originals too strong to resist. Allan Cunningham published in 1826 a collection of the Songs of Scotland, in which he availed himself so largely of this license that Motherwell felt called upon to reprobate the work in the strongest terms. He observes: "While thus violating ancient song, he seems to have been well aware of the heinousness of his offending. He might shudder and sicken at his revolting task indeed! To soothe his own alarmed conscience, and, if possible, to reconcile the mind of his readers to his wholesale mode of hacking and hewing and breaking the joints of ancient and traditionary song; and to induce them to receive with favour the conjectural emendations it likes him to make, he, in the course of his progress, not unfrequently chooses to sneer at those, and to underrate their labours, who have used their best endeavours to preserve ancient song in its primitive and uncontaminated form."[26] These are by no means the hardest words used by Motherwell in respect to the Songs of Scotland.

The worst among the forgers, however, was a man who ought to have been above such dishonourable work, viz., Robert Surtees, the author of the History of the County Palatine of Durham, in whose honour the Surtees Society was founded. In Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border will be found three ballads—The Death of Featherstonhaugh, Lord Ewrie, and Bartram's Dirge, which are treated by Sir Walter as true antiques, and of the genuine character of which he never had a doubt. They are all three, however, mere figments of Surtees's imagination. Each of the ballads was accompanied by fictitious historical incidents, to give it an extra appearance of authenticity. Featherstonhaugh was said to be "taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years of age, mother of one of the miners in Alston Moor;" [Pg xlviii]Lord Ewrie was obtained from "Rose Smith, of Bishop Middleham, a woman aged upwards of ninety-one;" and Bartram's Dirge from "Anne Douglas, an old woman who weeded in his (Surtees's) garden." On other occasions Sir Walter Scott was deluded by his friend with false information. Mr. George Taylor makes the following excuse in his Life of Surtees (p. 25): "Mr. Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject, and the result must have been gratifying to him. But at a later period of their intimacy, when personal regard was added to high admiration for his correspondent, he probably would not have subjected him to the mortification of finding that he could be imposed on in a matter where he had a right to consider himself as almost infallible. And it was most likely from this feeling that Mr. Surtees never acknowledged the imposition: for so late as the year 1830, in which Scott dates his introduction to the edition of the Minstrelsy, published in 1831, the ballad of the Death of Featherstonhaugh retains its place (vol. i. p. 240) with the same expressions of obligation to Mr. Surtees for the communication of it, and the same commendation of his learned proofs of its authenticity." In spite of this attempted justification, we cannot fail to stigmatize Surtees's forgery as a crime against letters which fouls the very wells of truth.

Authenticity of Certain Ballads

As was to be expected, the existence of the forgeries just referred to caused several persons to doubt the genuineness of many of the true ballads. Finlay wrote, in 1808, "the mention of hats and cork-heeled shoon (in the ballad of Sir Patrick Spence) would lead us to infer that some stanzas are interpolated, or that its composition is of a comparatively modern date;"[27] and, in 1839, the veteran ballad-collector, Mr. David Laing, wrote as follows: "Notwithstanding the great antiquity that has been claimed for Sir Patrick Spence, one of the finest ballads in our language, very little evidence would be required to persuade me but that we were also indebted for it to Lady Wardlaw (Stenhouse's Illustrations of the Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland, with additional notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, p. 320[27])." At p. 457[27] of the same book, Mr. Laing, after quoting from Finlay, made the following further observations: "Bishop Percy also remarks that 'an ingenious friend thinks the author of Hardyknute has borrowed several expressions and sentiments from the foregoing and other old Scottish songs in this collection.' It was this resemblance with the localities Dunfermline and Aberdour, in the neighbourhood of Sir Henry Wardlaw's seat, that led me to throw out the conjecture, whether this much-admired ballad might not also have been written by Lady Wardlaw herself, to whom the ballad of Hardyknute is now universally attributed."[28]

Mr. J. H. Dixon, in 1845, considered that the suspicion had become a certainty, and wrote of Lady Wardlaw as one "who certainly appears to have been a great adept at this species of literary imposture." "This celebrated lady is now known to be the author of Edward! Edward! and of Sir Patrick Spence, in addition to Hardyknute."[29] Mr. Dixon and the late Mr. Robert Chambers have also thrown out hints of their disbelief in the authenticity of the recitations of Mrs. Brown of Falkland.

These, however, were mere skirmishing attacks, but in 1859 Robert Chambers marshalled his forces, and made a decisive charge in his publication entitled The Romantic Scottish Ballads, their Epoch and Authorship. He there explains his belief as follows:—

"Upon all these considerations I have arrived at the conclusion that the high-class romantic ballads of Scotland are not ancient compositions—are not older than the early part of the eighteenth century—and are mainly, if not wholly, the production of one mind. Whose was this mind is a different question, on which no such confident decision may, for the present, be arrived at; but I have no hesitation in saying that, from the internal resemblance traced on from Hardyknute through Sir Patrick Spence and Gil Morrice to the others, there seems to be a great likelihood that the whole were the composition of the authoress of that poem, namely, Elizabeth Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie."

Scotsmen were not likely to sit down tamely under an accusation by which their principal ballad treasures were thus stigmatized as false gems, and we find that several writers immediately took up their pens to refute the calumny. It will be seen that the charge is divided into two distinct parts, and it will be well to avoid mixing them together, and to consider each part separately.

I. Certain ballads, generally supposed to be genuine, were really written by one person, in imitation of the antique.

II. The author of this deceit was Lady Wardlaw, the writer of Hardyknute.

I. The ballads in the Reliques, which are instanced by Chambers, are as follows:—

1. Sir Patrick Spence.
2. Gil Morrice.
3. Edward! Edward!
4. Jew's Daughter.
5. Gilderoy.
6. Young Waters.
7. Edom o' Gordon.
8. Bonny Earl of Murray.

Two of these (2 and 7) are in the Folio MS., which was written before Lady Wardlaw was born; Edom o' Gordon also exists in another old MS. copy; Gilderoy (5) is known to have been a street ballad, and the remainder are found in other copies. It is not necessary to discuss each of these cases separately, and we shall therefore reserve what we have to say for the special consideration of Sir Patrick Spence.

Before proceeding, we must first consider how far Chambers's previous knowledge of ballad literature prepared him for this inquiry; and we cannot rate that knowledge very highly, for in his Collection of Scottish Songs, he actually attributes Wotton's Ye Meaner Beauties to Darnley, and supposes Mary Queen of Scots to have been the subject of the author's praises. At this period also his scepticism had not been aroused, for all the ballads that he thought spurious in 1859 had been printed by him in 1829 as genuine productions.

To return to the main Point at issue. Chambers writes:—

"It is now to be remarked of the ballads published by the successors of Percy, as of those which he published, that there is not a particle of positive evidence for their having existed before the eighteenth century. Overlooking the one given by Ramsay in his Tea-table Miscellany, we have neither print nor manuscript of them before the reign of George III. They are not in the style of old literature. They contain no references to old literature. As little does old literature contain any references to them. They wholly escaped the collecting diligence of Bannatyne. James Watson, who published a collection of Scottish poetry in 1706-1711, wholly overlooks them. Ramsay, as we see, caught up only one."

Mr. Norval Clyne (Ballads from Scottish History, 1863, p. 217) gives a satisfactory answer to the above. He writes:—

"The want of any ancient manuscript can be no argument against the antiquity of a poem, versions of which have been obtained from oral recitation, otherwise the great mass of ballads of all kinds collected by Scott, and by others since his time, must lie under equal suspicion. Bannatyne, in the sixteenth century, and Allan Ramsay, in the early part of the eighteenth, were not collectors of popular poetry in the same sense as those who have since been so active in that field. The former contented himself, for the most part, with transcribing the compositions of Dunbar, Henrysone, and other "makers," well known by name, and Ramsay took the bulk of his Evergreen from Bannatyne's MS. That a great many poems of the ballad class, afterwards collected and printed, must have been current among the people when the Evergreen was published, no one that knows anything of the subject will deny." The old ballads lived on the tongues of the people, and a small percentage of them only were ever committed to writing, so that a fairer test of authenticity is the existence of various versions. Of known forgeries no varieties exist, but several versions of Sir Patrick Spence have been rescued from oblivion.

It is not probable that any fresh ballads will be obtained from recitation, but it is in some degree possible, as may be seen from an instance of a kindred nature in the field of language. We know that local dialects have almost passed away, and yet some of the glossaries of them lately issued contain words that explain otherwise dark passages in manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Chambers further affirms that the sentiment of these ballads is not congenial to that of the peasantry—"it may be allowably said, there is a tone of breeding throughout these ballads, such as is never found in the productions of rustic genius." This, however, is begging the question, for it does not follow that the songs of the peasantry were written by the peasantry. It is they who have remembered them, and held to them with greater tenacity than the educated classes.

We now come to the text that bears specially upon Sir Patrick Spence, and we will give it in Chambers's own words:—"The Scottish ladies sit bewailing the loss of Sir Patrick Spence's companions 'wi' the gowd kaims in their hair.' Sir Patrick tells his friends before starting on his voyage, 'Our ship must sail the faem;'[30] and in the description of the consequences of his shipwreck, we find 'Mony was the feather-bed that flattered on the faem.'[30] No old poet would use faem as an equivalent for the sea; but it was just such a phrase as a poet of the era of Pope would use in that sense." In the first place, we should be justified in saying that this test is not a fair one, because no one will contend that the ballads have not been altered in passing from hand to hand, and new words inserted; but Mr. Norval Clyne has a complete answer for this particular objection; he writes: "Bishop Gawin Douglas completed his translation of Virgil's Æneid on 22nd July, 1513, and in his Prologue to the twelfth book are these lines:—

Here we have the expression, to which attention is called, occurring in a popular song in common use before the battle of Flodden. I have seen it remarked, however, that it is the elliptical use of 'sail the faem' for 'sail over the faem,' which indicates an authorship not older than the day of Queen Anne. My answer to this objection shall also be an example from an 'old poet.' One of the Tales of the Three Priests of Peblis assigned to the early part of the sixteenth century, describes in homely verse the career of a thrifty burgess, and contains these lines (Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, 1802):—

These quotations completely set aside one portion of the charge, and the other, in which an attempt is made to show that a similar form of expression is constantly occurring in the several poems, is really of little weight, pressed as it is with some unfairness. We have already seen that the old minstrels used certain forms of expression as helps to memory, and these recur in ballads that have little or no connection with each other. Chambers, following David Laing, uses Percy's note at the end of Sir Patrick Spence[32] as an engine of attack against the authenticity of the ballad, but there is really no reason for the conclusion he comes to, "that the parity he remarked in the expressions was simply owing to the two ballads being the production of one mind," for a copyist well acquainted with ballad literature would naturally adopt the expressions found in them in his own composition.

II. The consideration of the opinion that Lady Wardlaw was the author of Sir Patrick Spence and other ballads, need not detain us long, because the main point of interest is their authenticity, and the question of her authorship is quite a secondary matter: that falls to the ground if the grand charge is proved false, and need not stand even if that remains unrefuted. The only reason for fixing upon Lady Wardlaw appears to have been that as these ballads were transmitted to Percy by Lord Hailes, and one of them was an imitation of the antique by Lady Wardlaw, and another was added to by the same lady, therefore if a similarity between the ballads could be proved, it would follow that all were written by her. Now the very fact that the authorship of Hardyknute was soon discovered is strong evidence against any such supposition, because none of her associates had any suspicion that she had counterfeited other ballads, and could such a wholesale manufacture have been concealed for a century it would be a greater mystery than the vexed question, who was Junius? The other point, whether the author of the indistinct and redundant Hardyknute could have written the clear and incisive lines of Sir Patrick Spence may be left to be decided by readers who have the two poems before them in these volumes.

A few particulars may, however, be mentioned. The openings of these ballads form excellent contrasted examples of the two different styles of ballad writing. Sir Patrick Spence commences at once, like other minstrel ballads, with the description of the king and his council:—

The king then sends a letter to Spence. There is no description of how this was sent, but we at once read:—

Hardyknute, on the other hand, is full of reasons and illustrative instances in the true ballad-writer's style:—

Having placed the openings of the two poems in opposition, we will do the same with the endings. How different is the grand finish of Sir Patrick Spence—

from the feeble conclusion of Hardyknute:—

Sir Patrick Spence gives us a clear picture that a painter could easily reproduce, but Hardyknute is so vague that it is sometimes difficult to follow it with understanding, and if the same author wrote them both she must have been so strangely versatile in her talents that there is no difficulty in believing that she wrote all the romantic ballads of Scotland.

How little Chambers can be trusted may be seen in the following passage, where he writes: "The first hint at the real author came out through Percy, who in his second edition of the Reliques (1767) gives the following statement, 'There is more than reason,' &c.,[33] to which he adds the note: 'It is rather remarkable that Percy was not informed of these particulars in 1765; but in 1767, Sir John Hope Bruce having died in the interval (June, 1766), they were communicated to him. It looks as if the secret had hung on the life of this venerable gentleman." Who would suspect, what is the real fact of the case, that Percy's quoted preface was actually printed in his first edition (1765), and that Chambers's remarks fall to the ground because they are founded on a gross blunder.[34]

Preservers of the Ballads.

Printed broadsides are peculiarly liable to accidents which shorten their existence, and we therefore owe much to the collectors who have saved some few of them from destruction. Ballads were usually pasted on their walls by the cottagers, but they were sometimes collected together in bundles. Motherwell had "heard it as a by-word in some parts of Stirlingshire that a collier's library consists but of four books, the Confession of Faith, the Bible, a bundle of Ballads, and Sir William Wallace. The first for the gudewife, the second for the gudeman, the third for their daughter, and the last for the son, a selection indicative of no mean taste in these grim mold-warps of humanity."[35]

The love of a good ballad has, however, never been confined to the uneducated. Queen Mary II., after listening to the compositions of Purcell, played by the composer himself, asked Mrs. Arabella Hunt to sing Tom D'Urfey's ballad of "Cold and Raw," which was set to a good old tune, and thereby offended Purcell's vanity, who was left unemployed at the harpsichord. Nevertheless, the composer had the sense afterwards to introduce the tune as the bass of a song he wrote himself. When ballads were intended for the exclusive use of the ordinary ballad-buyers they were printed in black letter, a type that was retained for this purpose for more than a century after it had gone out of use for other purposes. According to Pepys the use of black letter ceased about the year 1700, and on the title-page of his collection he has written "the whole continued down to the year 1700, when the form till then peculiar thereto, viz. of the black letter with pictures, seems (for cheapness sake) wholly laid aside for that of the white letter without pictures." White-letter printing of non-political street ballads really commenced about 1685, and of political ballads about half a century earlier. The saving referred to by Pepys as being made by the omission of woodcuts could not have been great, for they seldom illustrated the letterpress, and were used over and over again, so that cuts which were executed in the reign of James I. were used on ballads in Queen Anne's time.

Until about the year 1712 ballads were universally printed on broadsides, and those intended to be sold in the streets are still so printed, but after that date such as were intended to be vended about the country were printed so as to fold into book form.

The great ballad factory has been for many years situated in Seven Dials, where Pitts employed Corcoran and was the patron of "slender Ben," "over head and ears Nic," and other equally respectably named poets. The renowned Catnach lived in Seven Dials, and left a considerable business at his death. He was the first to print yards of songs for a penny, and his fame was so extended, that his name has come to be used for a special class of literature.

Although, thanks to the labours of far-sighted men, our stock of old ballads and songs is large, we know that those which are irrevocably lost far exceed them in number. It is therefore something to recover even the titles of some of these, and we can do this to a considerable extent by seeking them in some of the old specimens of literature. In Cockelbie's Sow, a piece written about 1450, which was printed in Laing's Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1822), there is a list of the songs sung at a meeting. In Henryson's curious old pastoral, Robin and Makyne (vol. 2, p. 85), reference is made to the popular tales and songs, which were even then old:—

To the prologues of Gawin Douglas's translation of Virgil's Æneid, we are indebted for a knowledge of four old songs, a fact that outweighs in the opinion of some the merits of the work itself, which was the first translation of a classic that ever appeared in England.

In the Catalogue of Captain Cox's Library, printed in Laneham's letter on the Kenilworth entertainments, there is a short list of some of the popular ballads of his time, but it is sorely tantalizing to read of "a bunch of ballets and songs all auncient," "and a hundred more he hath fair wrapt in parchment, and bound with a whipcord." We learn the names of ballads which were popular in old Scotland from the Complaynt of Scotland, a most interesting list, which Mr. Furnivall has fully illustrated and explained in his edition of Laneham. Another source of information for learning the names of songs no longer known to exist are the medleys, which are made up of the first lines of many songs. The extreme popularity of ballads in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is reflected in the literature of the time, which is full of allusions to them. Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, who put a little of almost everything into his book, could not be expected to overlook ballads. He says: "The very rusticks and hog-rubbers ... have their wakes, whitson ales, shepherds' feasts, meetings on holy dayes, countrey dances, roundelayes ... instead of odes, epigrams and elegies, &c., they have their ballads, countrey tunes, O the Broom, the bonny, bonny Broom, ditties and songs, Bess a Bell she doth excel." The favourite songs of Father Rosin, the minstrel in Ben Jonson's Tale of a Tub (act i. sc. 2), are Tom Tiler, the Jolly Joiner, and the Jovial Tinker. The old drama is full of these references, and one of the most frequent modes of revenge against an enemy was to threaten that he should be balladed. Thus Massinger writes:—

Fletcher sets side by side as equal evils the having one's eyes dug out, and the having one's name sung

The ballad-writers are called base rogues, and said to "maintaine a St. Anthonie's fire in their noses by nothing but two-penny ale."[38]

Shakspere was not behind his contemporaries in his contemptuous treatment of "odious ballads," or of "these same metre ballad-mongers," but he has shown by the references in King Lear and Hamlet his high appreciation of the genuine old work, and there is no doubt that the creator of Autolycus loved "a ballad but even too well."

There have been two kinds of collectors, viz. those who copied such fugitive poetry as came in their way, and those who bought up all the printed ballads they could obtain.

Of the manuscript collections of old poetry, the three most celebrated are the Maitland MS. in the Pepysian Library, Cambridge, the Bannatyne MS. presented by the Earl of Hyndford to the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, and the famous folio MS. which formerly belonged to Percy, and is now in the British Museum. The Maitland MS., which contains an excellent collection of Scotch poetry, was formed by Sir Richard Maitland, of Lethington, Lord Privy Seal and Judge in the Court of Session (b. 1496, d. 1586). Selections from this MS. were printed by Pinkerton in 1786.

In the year 1568, when Scotland was visited by the Plague, a certain George Bannatyne, of whom nothing is known, retired to his house to escape infection, and employed his leisure in compiling his most valuable collection of Scottish poetry. This MS. was lent out of the Advocates' Library to Percy, and he was allowed to keep it for a considerable time. Sir David Dalrymple published "Some ancient Scottish Poems" in 1770, which were taken from this MS.

The great Lord Burghley was one of the first to recognize the value of ballads as an evidence of the popular feeling, and he ordered all broadsides to be brought to him as they were published. The learned Selden was also a collector of them, but the Chinese nation was before these wise men, and had realized an idea that has often been suggested in Europe. One of their sacred books is the Book of Songs, in which the manners of the country are illustrated by songs and odes, the most popular of which were brought to the sovereign for the purpose.

The largest collections of printed ballads are now in Magdalene College, Cambridge, in the Bodleian at Oxford, and in the British Museum. Some smaller collections are in private hands. In taking stock of these collections, we are greatly helped by Mr. Chappell's interesting preface to the Roxburghe Ballads. The Pepysian collection deposited in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, consisting of 1,800 ballads in five vols., is one of the oldest and most valuable of the collections. It was commenced by Selden, who died in 1654, and continued by Samuel Pepys till near the time of his own death in 1703. Tradition reports that Pepys borrowed Selden's collection, and then "forgot" to return it to the proper owner. Besides these five volumes, there are three vols. of what Pepys calls penny merriments. There are 112 of these, and some are garlands that contain many ballads in each.

Cambridge's rival, Oxford, possesses three collections, viz. Anthony Wood's 279 ballads and collection of garlands, Francis Douce's 877 in four vols., and Richard Rawlinson's 218.

Previously to the year 1845, when the Roxburghe collection was purchased, there were in the British Museum Library about 1,000 ballads, but Mr. Chappell, without counting the Roxburghe Ballads, gives the number as 1292 in 1864. They are as follows:—

The celebrated Roxburghe collection was bought by Rodd at Benjamin Heywood Bright's sale in 1845 for the British Museum, the price being £535. It was originally formed by Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, and as John Bagford was one of the buyers employed by the Earl, he is the reputed collector of the ballads. At the sale of the Harleian Library, this collection became the property of James West, P.R.S., and when his books were sold in 1773, Major Thomas Pearson bought it for, it is said, £20. This gentleman, with the assistance of Isaac Reed, added to the collection, and bound it in two volumes with printed title-pages, indexes, &c. In 1788, John, Duke of Roxburghe, bought it at Major Pearson's sale for £36 14s. 6d., and afterwards added largely to it, making a third volume. At the Duke's sale in 1813, the three volumes were bought for £477 15s., by Harding, who sold them to Mr. Bright for, it is supposed, £700. The collection consists of 1335 broadsides, printed between 1567 and the end of the eighteenth century, two-thirds of them being in black letter. Bright added a fourth volume of eighty-five pages, which was bought for the British Museum for £25 5s.

Some early ballads are included in the collection of broadsides in the library of the Society of Antiquaries, and a collection of proclamations and ballads was made by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, and presented by him to the Chetham Library at Manchester.

The late George Daniel picked up a valuable collection of ballads at an old shop in Ipswich, which is supposed to have come from Helmingham Hall, Suffolk, where it had lain unnoticed or forgotten for two centuries or more. It originally numbered 175 to 200 ballads, but was divided by Daniel, who sold one portion (consisting of eighty-eight ballads) to Thorpe, who disposed of it to Heber. At Heber's sale it was bought by Mr. W. H. Miller, of Britwell, and from him it descended to Mr. S. Christie Miller. Twenty-five ballads known to have belonged to the same collection were edited by Mr. Payne Collier for the Percy Society in 1840. The portion that Daniel retained was bought at the sale of his library by Mr. Henry Huth, who has reprinted seventy-nine of the best ballads. Other known private collections are five volumes belonging to Mr. Frederic Ouvry, President of the Society of Antiquaries, which contain Mr. Payne Collier's collection of Black-letter Ballads, the Earl of Jersey's at Osterley Park, and one which was formed by Mr. Halliwell Phillipps, who printed a full catalogue of the ballads contained in it, and then disposed of it to the late Mr. William Euing of Glasgow.

We owe our gratitude to all these collectors, but must also do honour to those writers who in advance of their age tried to lead their contemporaries to fresher springs than those to which they were accustomed. The first of these was Addison, who commented on the beauties of Chevy Chase and the Children in the Wood in the Spectator. He wrote: "it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it some peculiar aptness to please and gratify the mind of man."

Rowe was another appreciator of this popular literature, and his example and teaching may have had its influence in the publication of the first Collection of Old Ballads, for the motto to the first volume is taken from the prologue to Rowe's Jane Shore (first acted in 1713):—

Parnell, Tickell, and Prior belonged to the small band who had the taste to appreciate the unfashionable old ballad. Prior says of himself in a MS. essay quoted by Disraeli in the Calamities of Authors: "I remember nothing further in life than that I made verses: I chose Guy Earl of Warwick for my first hero, and killed Colborne the giant before I was big enough for Westminster school." The few were, however, unable to convert the many, and Dr. Wagstaffe, one of the wits of the day, ridiculed Addison for his good taste, and in a parody of the famous essay on Chevy Chase he commented upon the History of Tom Thumb, and pretended to point out the congenial spirit of this poet with Virgil.

There is still another class of preservers of ballads to be mentioned, viz. those whose tenacious memories allow them to retain the legends and songs they heard in their youth, but as Prof. Aytoun writes: "No Elspats of the Craigburnfoot remain to repeat to grandchildren that legendary lore which they had acquired in years long gone by from the last of the itinerant minstrels." The most celebrated of these retailers of the old ballads was Mrs. Brown of Falkland, wife of the Rev. Dr. Brown, for from her both Scott and Jamieson obtained some of their best pieces. Her taste for the songs and tales of chivalry was derived from an aunt, Mrs. Farquhar, "who was married to the proprietor of a small estate near the sources of the Dee in Braemar, a good old woman, who spent the best part of her life among flocks and herds, [but] resided in her latter years in the town of Aberdeen. She was possest of a most tenacious memory, which retained all the songs she had heard from nurses and countrywomen in that sequestered part of the country."[39] Doubts have been expressed as to the good faith of Mrs. Brown, but they do not appear to be well grounded. Another of these ladies from whose mouths we have learnt so much of the ever-fading relics of the people's literature was Mrs. Arrot.

The earliest printed collection of Scottish popular poetry known to exist is a volume printed at Edinburgh, "by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, in the year 1508," which was reprinted in facsimile by David Laing in 1827. The next work of interest in the bibliography of ballads is "Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, collected out of sundrie partes of the Scripture, with sundrie of other ballates, chainged out of prophaine songs for avoiding of Sinne and Harlotrie," printed in 1590 and 1621, and reprinted by J. G. Dalzell in 1801, and by David Laing in 1868. It contains parodies of some of the songs mentioned in the Complaint of Scotland, and is supposed to be the work of three brothers—James, John, and Robert Wedderburn, of Dundee. To the last of the three Mr. Laing attributed the Complaint, but Mr. Murray, the latest editor of that book, is unable to agree with him.

The first book of "prophane" songs published in Scotland was a musical collection entitled "Cantus [Pg lxviii]Songs and Fancies to several musicall parts, both apt for voices and viols: with a brief introduction to musick, as it is taught by Thomas Davidson in the Musick School of Aberdeen. Aberdeen, printed by John Forbes." 1662, 1666, and 1682.

The next work in order of time is "A Choise Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems, both ancient and modern, by several hands. Edinburgh, printed by James Watson." In three parts, 1706, 1709, 1710. Supposed to have been compiled by John Spottiswood, author of Hope's Minor Practicks.

All these works emanated from Scotchmen, and the only works of the same character that were published in England were small collections of songs and ballads, called Garlands and Drolleries. These are too numerous to be noticed here; but that they were highly popular may be judged from the fact that a thirteenth edition of The Golden Garland of Princely Delight is registered. The Garlands are chiefly small collections of songs on similar subjects. Thus, there were Love's Garlands, Loyal Garlands, Protestant Garlands, &c. Considerable pains seem to have been taken in order to obtain attractive titles for these little brochures. Thus, on one we read:—

Drolleries were collections of "jovial poems" and "merry songs," and some of them were confined to the songs sung at the theatres.

One of the first English collections of any pretensions was Dryden's Miscellany Poems, published in 1684-1708, which was shortly after followed by Tom D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719-20. But the first attempt to bring together a large number of popular ballads, as distinguished from songs, was made in "A Collection of Old Ballads, corrected from the best and most ancient copies extant, with Introductions historical, critical, or humorous." London. Vols I. and II. 1723. Vol. III. 1725.

The object of most of the works referred to above was the publication of songs to be sung; the object of this one was the presentment of ballads to be read. It had a large sale, and the editor (who is said to have been Ambrose Phillips) expresses his satisfaction in the Preface to Vol. II.: "Though we printed a large edition for such a trifle, and in less than two months put it to the press again, yet could we not get our second edition out before it was really wanted." In spite, however, of its satisfactory reception, it does not appear to have taken any permanent position in literature, although it must have prepared the public mind to receive the Reliques. This collection contains one hundred and fifty-nine ballads, out of which number twenty-three are also in the Reliques.[40] Many of the others are of considerable interest, but some had better have been left unprinted, and all are of little critical value.

In the year after the first two volumes of the English collection were published, Allan Ramsay issued in Edinburgh "The Evergreen, being a collection of Scots poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600," the principal materials of which were derived from the Bannatyne MS. This was followed in the same year (1724) by "The Tea-Table Miscellany: a Collection of choice Songs, Scots and English," a work which is frequently referred to by Percy in the following pages. In neither of these works was Ramsay very particular as to the liberties he allowed himself in altering his originals. In order to make the volumes fit reading for his audience, which he hoped would consist of

Ramsay pruned the songs of their indelicacies, and filled up the gaps thus made in his own way. The Tea-table Miscellany contains upwards of twenty presumably old songs, upwards of twelve old songs much altered, and about one hundred songs written by the editor himself, Crawford, Hamilton, and others.

In 1725, William Thomson, a teacher of music in London, brought out a collection of Scottish songs, which he had chiefly taken from the Tea-table Miscellany without acknowledgment. He called his book Orpheus Caledonius.

For some years before Percy's collection appeared, the Foulises, Glasgow's celebrated printers, issued from their press, under the superintendence of Lord Hailes, various Scottish ballads, luxuriously printed with large type, in a small quarto size.

These were the signs that might have shown the far-sighted man that a revival was at hand. At last the time came when, tired out with the dreary and leaden regularity of the verse-writers of the day, the people were ready to receive poetry fresh from nature. The man who arose to supply the want (which was none the less a want that it was an unrecognized one) was Thomas Percy, a clergyman living in a retired part of the country, but occasionally seen among the literati of the capital.

Life of Percy.

Thomas Percy was born on April 13th, 1729, at Bridgnorth in Shropshire, in a street called the Cartway. His father and grandfather were grocers, spelt their name Piercy, and knew nothing of any connection with the noble house of Northumberland.[41] His early education was received at the grammar school of Bridgnorth, and in 1746, being then in his eighteenth year, and having obtained an exhibition, he matriculated as a commoner at Christ Church, Oxford.

He took the degree of B.A. on May 2nd, 1750, that of M.A. on July 5th, 1753, and shortly after was presented by his college to the living of Easton Maudit, in the county of Northampton. In this poor cure he remained for twenty-five years, and in the little vicarage his six children (Anne, Barbara, Henry, Elizabeth, Charlotte, and Hester), were all born. Percy's income was increased in 1756 by the gift of the rectory of Wilby, an adjacent parish, in the patronage of the Earl of Sussex, and on April 24th, 1759, he married Anne, daughter of Barton Gutteridge,[42] who was his beloved companion for forty-seven years. It was to this lady, before his marriage to her, that Percy wrote his famous song, "O Nancy, wilt thou go with me?" Miss Matilda LÆtitia Hawkins stated in her Memoirs, that these charming verses were intended by Percy as a welcome to his wife on her release from a twelve-month's confinement in the royal nursery, and Mr. Pickford follows her authority in his Life of Percy, but this is an entire mistake, for the song was printed as early as the year 1758 in the sixth volume of Dodsley's Collection of Poems. Anyone who reads the following verses will see, that though appropriate as a lover's proposal, they are very inappropriate as a husband's welcome home to his wife.

By the alteration of a few words, such as gang for go, toun for town, &c., "Oh Nanny, wilt thou gang with me?" was transposed into a Scotch song, and printed as such in Johnson's Musical Museum. Burns remarked on this insertion: "It is too barefaced to take Dr. Percy's charming song, and by the means of transposing a few English words into Scots, to offer it to pass for a Scots song. I was not acquainted with the editor until the first volume was nearly finished, else had I known in time I would have prevented such an impudent absurdity." Stenhouse, suggested[43] that Percy may have had in view the song called The young Laird and Edinburgh Kate, printed in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, the second stanza of which is somewhat similar—

Mr. Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, however, hinted[44] that "perhaps both the author of The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katy, and the Bishop, took the idea of their ballads from a song in Lee's beautiful tragedy of Theodosius, or the Force of Love."

Dr. Rimbault communicated this poem to the editors of the folio MS. from a MS. dated 1682, or fifteen years earlier than Lee's version. It is called The Royal Nun, and the first stanza is as follows:—

The likeness in this stanza to Percy's song is not very apparent, and the subject is very different. The other three stanzas have nothing in common with O Nancy. Even could it be proved that Percy had borrowed the opening idea from these two poems, it does not derogate from his originality, for the charm of the song is all his own.

A portrait of Mrs. Percy holding in her hand a scroll inscribed Oh Nancy, is preserved at Ecton House, near Northampton, the seat of Mr. Samuel Isted, husband of Percy's daughter Barbara.

The song was set to music by Thomas Carter, and sung by Vernon at Vauxhall in 1773.

In 1761 Percy commenced his literary career by the publication of a Chinese novel, Hau Kiau Chooan, in four volumes, which he translated from the Portuguese, and in the same year he undertook to edit the works of the Duke of Buckingham. In 1762 he published "Miscellaneous Pieces relating to the Chinese," and in 1763 commenced a new edition of Surrey's Poems, with a selection of early specimens of blank verse. The "Buckingham" and "Surrey" were printed, but never published, and the stock of the latter was destroyed by fire in 1808. In 1763 were published "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry—translated from the Icelandic Language," and in the following year appeared "A New Translation of the Song of Solomon from the Hebrew, with Commentary and Notes," and also "A Key to the New Testament." Dr. Johnson paid a long-promised visit to the Vicarage of Easton Maudit in the summer of 1764, where he stayed for some months, and the little terrace in the garden is still called after him, "Dr. Johnson's Walk." At this time Percy must have been full of anxiety about his Reliques, which were shortly to be published, and in the preparation of which he had so long been engaged. The poet Shenstone was the first to suggest the subject of this book, as he himself states in a letter to a friend, dated March 1, 1761. "You have heard me speak of Mr. Percy; he was in treaty with Mr. James Dodsley for the publication of our best old ballads in three volumes. He has a large folio MS. of ballads, which he showed me, and which, with his own natural and acquired talents, would qualify him for the purpose as well as any man in England. I proposed the scheme to him myself, wishing to see an elegant edition and good collection of this kind. I was also to have assisted him in selecting and rejecting, and fixing upon the best readings; but my illness broke off the correspondence in the beginning of winter."

In February, 1765, appeared the first edition of the Reliques, which gave Percy a name, and obtained for him the patronage of the great. He became Chaplain and Secretary to the Duke of Northumberland, with whose family he kept up intimate relations throughout his life. The Northumberland Household Book, which he compiled in accordance with the wishes of his patron, was privately printed in the year 1768.[46] In 1769 he was appointed Chaplain to George III., and in the following year appeared his translation of Mallet's Northern Antiquities. Each of these three works was the first of its class, and created a taste which produced a literature of the same character. The Household Book gave rise to a large number of publications which have put us in possession of numerous facts relating to the domestic expenses and habits of the royal and noble families of old England. The mythology of the Eddas was first made known to English readers by Percy, and in his Preface to Mallet's work he clearly pointed out the essential difference between the Celtic and Teutonic races, which had previously been greatly overlooked.

The remuneration which Percy received for his labours was not large. Fifty pounds was the pay for the Chinese novel, and one hundred guineas for the first edition of the Reliques. The agreements he made with the Tonsons were fifty guineas for Buckingham's Works and twenty guineas for Surrey's Poems. He also agreed to edit the Spectator and Guardian, with notes, for one hundred guineas, but was obliged to abandon his intention on account of the engrossing character of his appointments in the Northumberland family.

About this time Mrs. Percy was appointed nurse [Pg lxxvii]to Prince Edward, the infant son of George III., afterwards Duke of Kent, and father of her present Majesty, who was born in 1767.

In 1770 Percy took his degree of D.D. at Cambridge, having incorporated himself at Emmanuel College, the master of which was his friend, Dr. Farmer, to be remembered as the Shakspere commentator. Later on in the year he lost his eldest daughter, and in January, 1771, yet another child was buried in the village church. In 1771 he printed the Hermit of Warkworth, which exhibited his continued interest in the subject of the Reliques, and we find him for many years after this date continually writing to his literary correspondents for information relating to old ballads.

In 1778 Percy obtained the Deanery of Carlisle, which four years afterwards he resigned on being appointed to the bishopric of Dromore, worth £2,000 a year. He did not resign his vicarage and rectory until the same time, and he was succeeded in the first by Robert Nares, the compiler of the well-known glossary. It was in 1778 that the memorable quarrel between Percy and Johnson occurred which is graphically described by Boswell. The cause of the heat was the different views held by the two disputants as to the merits of the traveller Pennant. When the reconciliation was brought about Johnson's contribution to the peace was, "My dear sir, I am willing you shall hang Pennant."

In this same year Percy was writing about his son Henry, then a tall youth of fifteen, who he hoped in a few years would be able to edit the Reliques for him, but in April, 1783, soon after he had settled at Dromore, a great sorrow fell upon him, and this only and much-loved son died at the early age of twenty. In 1780 a large portion of Northumberland House, Strand, was consumed by[Pg lxxviii] fire, when Percy's apartments were burnt. The chief part of his library, was, however, saved. Four very interesting letters of the bishop's, written to George Steevens in 1796 and 1797, are printed in the AthenÆum for 1848 (pp. 437 and 604). The first relates to his edition of Goldsmith's works, which was published in 1801 in four volumes octavo. His object in undertaking the labour was to benefit two surviving relations of Goldsmith, and he complains to Steevens that the publishers had thwarted him in his purpose. The second letter is on the same subject, and the third and fourth relate to his work on blank verse before Milton, attached to Surrey's Poems. In 1798 the Irish Rebellion broke out, and Percy sent a large quantity of correspondence and valuable books to his daughter, Mrs. Isted, for safe preservation at Ecton House. In 1806 his long and happy union with Mrs. Percy was abruptly brought to a close, and to add to his afflictions he became totally blind. He bore his trials with resignation, and ere five more years had passed by, he himself was borne to the tomb. On the 30th of September, 1811, he died in the eighty-third year of his age, having outlived nearly all his contemporaries.[47]

That his attachment to "Nancy" was fervent as well as permanent, is shown by many circumstances. One of these is a little poem printed for the first time in the edition of the folio MS.[48]

"On leaving —— on a Tempestuous Night, March 22, 1788, by Dr. Percy.

Percy had naturally a hot temper, but this cooled down with time, and the trials of his later life were accepted with Christian meekness. One of his relations, who as a boy could just recollect him, told Mr. Pickford "that it was quite a pleasure to see even then his gentleness, amiability, and fondness for children. Every day used to witness his strolling down to a pond in the palace garden, in order to feed his swans, who were accustomed to come at the well-known sound of the old man's voice." He was a pleasing companion and a steady friend. His duties, both in the retired country village and in the more elevated positions of dean and bishop, were all performed with a wisdom and ardour that gained him the confidence of all those with whom he was brought in contact. The praise given to him in the inscription on the tablet to his memory in Dromore Cathedral does not appear to have gone beyond the truth. It is there stated that he resided constantly in his diocese, and discharged "the duties of his sacred office with vigilance and zeal, instructing the ignorant, relieving the necessitous, and comforting the distressed with pastoral affection." He was "revered for his piety and learning, and beloved for his universal benevolence, by all ranks and religious denominations."

There are three portraits of Percy. The first and best known was painted by Reynolds in May, 1773. It represents him habited in a black gown and bands, with a loose black cap on his head, and the folio MS. in his hand. It is not known whether the original is still in existence, but engravings from it are common. The next was painted by Abbot in 1797, and hangs at Ecton Hall. Percy is there represented as a fuller-faced man, in his episcopal dress, and wearing a wig. We have Steevens's authority for believing this to be an excellent likeness. An engraving from it is prefixed to the "Percy Correspondence," in Nichols's Illustrations of Literature.

In the third volume of Dibdin's Bibliographical Decameron is a beautiful engraving from a watercolour drawing, which represents the bishop in his garden at Dromore, when totally blind, feeding his swans.[49]

The Folio MS. and the "Reliques."

What were the sources from which Percy obtained the chief contents of his celebrated work? They were:—1. The folio MS.; 2. Certain other MS. collections, the use of which he obtained; 3. The Scotch ballads sent to him by Sir David Dalrymple (better known by his title of Lord Hailes, which he assumed on being appointed one of the Judges of the Court of Session in Edinburgh); 4. The ordinary printed broadsides; 5. The poems he extracted from the old printed collections of fugitive poetry—The Paradise of Dainty Devices, England's Helicon, &c.

In considering the above sources, it will be necessary to give some little space to the discussion of the connection between the folio MS. and the Reliques, as it is not generally understood by the ordinary readers of the latter.

The folio MS. came into Percy's hands early in his life, and the interest of its contents first caused him to think of forming his own collection. One of the notes on the covers of the MS. is as follows:—

"When I first got possession of this MS. I was very young, and being no degree an antiquary, I had not then learnt to reverence it; which must be my excuse for the scribble which I then spread over some parts of its margin, and, in one or two instances, for even taking out the leaves to save the trouble of transcribing. I have since been more careful. T. P."

He showed it to his friends, and immediately after the publication of the Reliques he deposited it at the house of his publishers, the Dodsleys, of Pall Mall. In spite of all this publicity, Ritson actually denied the very existence of the MS. Another memorandum on the cover of the folio was written on Nov. 7, 1769. It is as follows:—

[Pg lxxxii]

"This very curious old manuscript, in its present mutilated state, but unbound and sadly torn, &c., I rescued from destruction, and begged at the hands of my worthy friend Humphrey Pitt, Esq., then living at Shiffnal, in Shropshire, afterwards of Priorslee, near that town; who died very lately at Bath (viz., in summer 1769). I saw it lying dirty on the floor, under a Bureau in y^e Parlour: being used by the maids to light the fire. It was afterwards sent, most unfortunately, to an ignorant Bookbinder, who pared the margin, when I put it into Boards in order to lend it to Dr. Johnson. Mr. Pitt has since told me that he believes the transcripts into this volume, &c., were made by that Blount who was author of Jocular Tenures, &c., who he thought was of Lancashire or Cheshire, and had a remarkable fondness for these old things. He believed him to be the same person with that Mr. Thomas Blount who published the curious account of King Charles the 2^ds escape intitled Boscobel, &c., Lond. 1660, 12mo, which has been so often reprinted. As also the Law Dictionary, 1671, folio, and many other books which may be seen in Wood's AthenÆ, ii. 73, &c. A Descendant or Relation of that Mr. Blount was an apothecary at Shiffnal, whom I remember myself (named also Blount). He (if I mistake not) sold the Library of the said predecessor Thos. Blount to the above-mentioned Mr. Humph^y Pitt: who bought it for the use of his nephew, my ever-valued friend Rob^t Binnel. Mr. Binnel accordingly had all the printed books, but this MS. which was among them was neglected and left behind at Mr. Pitt's house, where it lay for many years. T. Percy."

Mr. Furnivall believes that the copier of the MS. must have been a man greatly inferior to Thomas Blount, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple, of considerable learning.

[Pg lxxxiii]

Percy afterwards kept the volume very much to himself, and Ritson affirmed that "the late Mr. Tyrwhitt, an excellent judge and diligent peruser of old compositions, and an intimate friend of the owner, never saw it."[50] Although Jamieson was obliged by receiving a copy of three of the pieces in the MS., he was not allowed a sight of the volume, and no one else was permitted to make any use of it. This spirit of secrecy was kept up by the bishop's descendants, who refused all who applied to see it. Sir Frederic Madden alone was allowed to print some pieces in his Syr Gawayne for the Bannatyne Club, 1839. The public obtained a glimpse of its contents through Dr. Dibdin, who copied from Percy's list the first seventy-two entries, and would have finished the whole, had he not been stopped by his entertainers (Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Isted, of Ecton Hall), when they found out what he was about. He gave in his Bibliographical Decameron a description of the MS. which he thus handled in the winter of 1815. Mr. Furnivall writes as follows of his several attempts to get the MS. printed, and of his success at last: "The cause of the printing of Percy's MS., of the publication of the book, was the insistence time after time by Professor Child, that it was the duty of English antiquarian men of letters to print this foundation document of English balladry, the basis of that structure which Percy raised, so fair to the eyes of all English-speaking men throughout the world. Above a hundred years had gone since first the Reliques met men's view, a Percy Society had been born and died, but still the Percy manuscript lay hid in Ecton Hall, and no one was allowed to know how the owner who had made his fame by it had dealt with it, whether his treatment [Pg lxxxiv]was foul or fair. No list even of its contents could be obtained. Dibdin and Madden, and many a man less known had tried their hands, but still the MS. was kept back, and this generation had made up its mind that it was not to see the desired original in type.... I tried to get access to the MS. some half-a-dozen years ago. Repulsed, I tried again when starting the Early English Text Society. Repulsed again, I tried again at a later date, but with the like result. Not rebuffed by this, Professor Child added his offer of £50 to mine of £100, through Mr. Thurstan Holland, a friend of his own and of the owners of the MS., and this last attempt succeeded." The less said the better about the conduct of these owners who were only to be tempted to confer a public benefit by the increased offers of two private gentlemen, but there cannot be two opinions about the spirited conduct of Mr. Furnivall and Professor Child. The three volumes[51] that the printed edition of the MS. occupy, form a handsome monument of well-directed labour. The text is printed with the most careful accuracy under the superintendence of Mr. Furnivall, and the elaborate prefaces which exhibit that union of judgment and taste for which Mr. Hales is so well known, leave nothing to be desired.

"The manuscript itself is a 'scrubby, shabby paper' book, about fifteen and a half inches long by five and a half wide, and about two inches thick, which has lost some of its pages both at the beginning and end.... The handwriting was put by Sir F. Madden at after 1650 A.D.; by two authorities at the Record Office whom I consulted, in the reign of James I. rather than that of Charles I., but as the volume contains, among other late pieces, one on the siege of Newark in Charles I.'s time (ii. 33), another on the taking of Banbury in 1642 (ii. 39), and a third, The King inioyes his rights againe, which contains a passage[52] that (as Mr. Chappell observes in Pop. Mus. ii. 438, note 2) fixes the date of the song to the year 1643, we must make the date about 1650, though rather before than after, so far as I can judge. I should keep it in Charles I.'s reign, and he died Jan. 30, 1649, but within a quarter of a century one can hardly determine.... The dialect of the copier of the MS. seems to have been Lancashire, as is shown by the frequent use of the final st, thoust for thou shalt, Ist for I will, youst for you will, unbethought for umbethought, and the occurrence of the northern terms, like strang, gange, &c. &c. Moreover, the strong local feeling shown by the copier in favour of Lancashire and Cheshire, and the Stanleys, in his choice of Flodden Feilde, Bosworth Feilde, Earles of Chester, Ladye Bessiye, confirms the probability that he was from one of the counties named. That much, if not all, of the MS. was written from dictation and hurriedly is almost certain, from the continual miswriting of they for the, rought for wrought, knight for night (once), me fancy for my fancy, justine for justing."[53]

A very erroneous impression has grown up as to the proportion of pieces in the Reliques which were taken from the MS. This is owing to a misleading statement made by Percy in his preface, to the effect that "the greater part of them are extracted from [Pg lxxxvi]an ancient MS. in the editor's possession, which contains near two hundred poems, songs, and metrical romances." The fact is that only one-fourth were so taken. The Reliques contain 180 pieces, and of these only forty-five[54] are taken from the manuscript. We thus see that a very small part of the manuscript was printed by Percy. He mentions some of the other pieces in various parts of his [Pg lxxxvii]book, and he proposed to publish a fourth volume of the Reliques at some future period that never came.

Mr. Furnivall has the following remarks on the gains to literature by the publication of the manuscript: "It is more that we have now for the first time Eger and Grime in its earlier state, Sir Lambewell, besides the Cavilere's praise of his hawking, the complete versions of Scottish Feilde and Kinge Arthur's Death, the fullest of Flodden Feilde and the verse Merline, the Earle of Westmorlande, Bosworth Feilde, the curious poem of John de Reeve, and the fine alliterative one of Death and Liffe, with its gracious picture of Lady dame Life, awakening life and love in grass and tree, in bird and man, as she speeds to her conquest over death."

In 1774 Percy wrote: "In three or four years I intend to publish a volume or two more of old English and Scottish poems in the manner of my Reliques." And again in 1778: "With regard to the Reliques, I have a large fund of materials, which when my son has compleated his studies at the University, he may, if he likes it, distribute into one or more additional volumes." The death of this son put an end to his hopes, but before the fourth edition was required, the bishop had obtained the assistance of his nephew, the Rev. Thomas Percy. In 1801 he wrote as follows to Jamieson, who had asked for some extracts from the folio: "Till my nephew has completed his collection for the intended fourth volume it cannot be decided whether he may not wish to insert himself the fragments you desire; but I have copied for you here that one which you particularly pointed out, as I was unwilling to disappoint your wishes and expectations altogether. By it you will see the defective and incorrect state of the old text in the ancient folio MS., and the[Pg lxxxviii] irresistible demand on the editor of the Reliques to attempt some of those conjectural emendations, which have been blamed by one or two rigid critics, but without which the collection would not have deserved a moment's attention."

Percy has been very severely judged for the alterations he made in his manuscript authorities; and Ritson has attempted to consider his conduct as a question of morality rather than one of taste. As each point is noticed in the prefaces to the various pieces, it is not necessary to discuss the question here. It may, however, be remarked that, in spite of all Ritson's attacks (and right was sometimes on his side), the Reliques remain to the present day unsuperseded.

Mr. Thoms communicated to the Notes and Queries (5th series, v. 431) the following note, which he made upwards of forty years ago, after a conversation with Francis Douce:—

"Mr. Douce told me that the Bishop (Percy) originally intended to have left the manuscript to Ritson; but the reiterated abuse with which that irritable and not always faultless antiquary visited him obliged him to alter his determination. With regard to the alterations (? amendments) made by Percy in the text, Mr. Douce told me that he (Percy) read to him one day from the MS., while he held the work in his hand to compare the two; and 'certainly the variations were greater than I could have expected,' said my old friend, with a shrug of the shoulders."

Of the other sources from which Percy drew his materials little need be said. 2. Some of the ballads were taken from MSS. in public libraries, and others from MSS. that were lent to him. 3. The Scotch ballads supplied by Sir David Dalrymple have already been referred to. 4. The printed ballads[Pg lxxxix] are chiefly taken from the Pepys Collection at Cambridge. 5. When the Reliques were first published, the elegant poems in the Paradyse of Daynty Devises, England's Helicon, were little known, and it was a happy thought on the part of Percy to intersperse these smaller pieces among the longer ballads, so as to please the reader with a constant variety.

The weak point in the book is the insertion of some of the modern pieces. The old minstrel believed the wonders he related; but a poet educated in modern ideas cannot transfer himself back to the times of chivalry, so that his attempts at imitating "the true Gothic manner" are apt to fill his readers with a sense of unreality.

After the first edition of the Reliques was printed, and before it was published, Percy made a great alteration in its arrangement. The first volume was turned into the third, and the third into the first, as may be seen by a reference to the foot of the pages where the old numbering remains. By this means the Arthur Ballads were turned off to the end, and Chevy Chase and Robin Hood obtained the place of honour. Several ballads were also omitted at the last moment, and the numbers left vacant. These occur in a copy of two volumes at Oxford which formerly belonged to Douce. In Vol. III. (the old Vol. I.), Book 1, there is no No. 19; in the Douce copy this is filled by The Song-birds. In Vol. II., Book 3, there are no Nos. 10 and 11; but in the Douce copy, Nos. 9, 10, and 11 are Cock Lorrell's Treat, The Moral Uses of Tobacco, and Old Simon the Kinge. Besides these omissions it will be seen that in Book 3 of Vol. III. there are two Nos. 2; and that George Barnwell must have been inserted at the last moment, as it occupies a duplicate series of pages 225-240, which are printed between brackets. In 1765 the volumes were published in London. In the following year a surreptitious edition was published in Dublin, and in 1767 appeared a second edition in London. In 1775 was published the third edition, which was reprinted at Frankfort in 1790. The fourth edition, ostensibly edited by the Rev. Thomas Percy, but really the work of the bishop himself, was published in 1794. Many improvements were made in this edition, and it contains Percy's final corrections; the fifth edition, published in 1812, being merely a reprint of the fourth.

The year 1765 was then a memorable one in the history of literature. The current ballads which were bawled in the street, or sung in the ale-house, were so mean and vulgar that the very name of ballad had sunk into disrepute. It was therefore a revelation to many to find that a literature of nature still existed which had descended from mother to child in remote districts, or was buried in old manuscripts, covered with the dust of centuries. It is necessary to realize this state of things in order to understand Percy's apologetic attitude. He collected his materials from various sources with great labour, and spared no pains in illustrating the poetry by instructive prose. Yet after welding with the force of genius the various parts into an harmonious whole, he was doubtful of the reception it was likely to obtain, and he called the contents of his volumes "the barbarous productions of unpolished ages." He backed his own opinion of their interest by bringing forward the names of the chiefs of the republic of letters, and ill did they requite him. Johnson parodied his verses, and Warburton sneered at him as the man "who wrote about the Chinese." Percy looked for his reward where he received nothing but laughter; but the people accepted his book with gladness, and the young who fed upon the food he presented to them grew up to found new schools of poetry.

Few books have exerted such extended influence over English literature as Percy's Reliques. Beattie's Minstrel was inspired by a perusal of the Essay on the Ancient Minstrels; and many authors have expressed with gratitude their obligations to the bishop and his book.

How profoundly the poetry of nature, which lived on in the ballads of the country, stirred the souls of men is seen in the instance of two poets of strikingly different characteristics. Scott made his first acquaintance with the Reliques at the age of thirteen, and the place where he read them was ever after imprinted upon his memory. The bodily appetite of youth was unnoticed while he mentally devoured the volumes under the huge leaves of the plantain tree. Wordsworth was not behind Scott in admiration of the book. He wrote: "I have already stated how much Germany is indebted to this work, and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligation to the Reliques. I know that it is so with my friends; and for myself, I am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own." After such men as these have spoken, who can despise our old ballads?

Ballad Literature since Percy.

The impetus given to the collection of old ballads by the publication of Reliques showed itself in the rapid succession of volumes of the same class which issued from the press. Most of these were devoted to the publication of Scottish ballads exclusively. In 1769, David Herd, a native of St. Cyrus, in Kincardineshire, who had spent most of his life as clerk in an accountant's office in Edinburgh, published his Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, &c., a work which was enlarged into two volumes in 1776.[55] He was a most successful and faithful collector, and not being a poet, he was preserved from the temptation of tampering with his stores. Motherwell mentions twenty ballads which had not appeared in a collected form before the publication of this work. Herd was assisted in his editorial labours by George Paton.

In 1777 appeared the first edition of Evans's Old Ballads, Historical and Narrative, in two volumes. The best edition of this work, edited by the son of the original compiler, was published in 4 vols., 1810.

In 1781 Pinkerton published his Scottish Tragic Ballads, which was followed in 1783 by Select Scottish Ballads. These volumes contained several fabrications by the editor, as already stated on a previous page.

In 1783 Ritson commenced the publication of that long series of volumes which is of such inestimable value to the literary antiquary, with A Select Collection of English Songs. The Bishopric Garland, or Durham Minstrel, followed, in 1784; The Yorkshire Garland, in 1788; the Pieces of Ancient Popular Poetry, in 1791; Ancient Songs and Ballads from the reign of Henry II. to the Revolution, in 1787; The Northumberland Garland, in 1793; Scottish Songs, in 1794; and Robin Hood, in 1795.

In 1787 was commenced The Scots Musical Museum, by James Johnson. Johnson was a music-seller and engraver in Edinburgh, and the work was really projected by William Tytler of Woodhouselee, Dr. Blacklock, and Samuel Clark. The first volume was partly printed, when Burns became acquainted with the object of the work. He then entered into the scheme with enthusiasm, and besides "begging and borrowing" old songs, wrote many new songs himself.

In 1801 was published at Edinburgh, Scottish Poems of the XVIth Century, edited by J. G. Dalzell, which contains a reprint of Ane Compendious Booke of Godly and Spirituall Songs, already referred to above.

In 1802 appeared the first two volumes of the only work which is worthy to stand side by side with the Reliques. Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border is a book that can be read through, and it and the Reliques are the only works of the class in which the materials are welded into a whole, so as no longer to appear a collection of units.

In 1806, Robert Jamieson published at Edinburgh his Popular Ballads and Songs, from Tradition, Manuscripts, and scarce editions. He was working upon this book at the same time that Scott was engaged upon his Minstrelsy, and he obtained much of his material from the same source as Scott, viz. Mrs. Brown, of Falkland; but he, nevertheless, was able to print seventeen ballads that had not before appeared in any published collection. Jamieson has the following remarks on himself in the Introduction to the first volume:—

"Being obliged to go, at a few weeks' warning, to a distant part of the world, and to seek, on the shores of the frozen Baltic, for (which his own country seems to deny him) the means of employing his talents and industry in some such manner as may enable him to preserve (for a time, at least) his respectability and a partial independence in the world, the following sheets have been prepared for the press, amidst all the anxiety and bustle of getting ready and packing up for a voyage." (Vol. i. p. xvii.)

John Finlay of Glasgow published in 1808 his Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads. These volumes only contain twenty-six ballads in all.

John Gilchrist's Collection of Ancient and Modern Scottish Ballads, Tales, and Songs, (Edinburgh 1815) is a carefully edited work, compiled from former books.

In 1822 David Laing published his valuable Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, and in 1824 C. K. Sharpe printed privately a little volume which he entitled A Ballad Book. James Maidment printed also privately A North Countrie Garland in the same year (1824).

In 1825 E. V. Utterson printed "Select Pieces of Early English Poetry, republished principally from early printed copies in Black Letter."

Peter Buchan commenced his ballad career by publishing at Peterhead, in 1825, a little volume entitled "Gleanings of Scotch, English, and Irish scarce old ballads, chiefly tragical and historical, many of them connected with the localities of Aberdeenshire." In 1828 he published his "Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland, hitherto unpublished." He affirmed that his materials were faithfully and honestly transcribed, and "they have suffered no change since they fortunately were consigned to me by their foster parents." A portrait is given in this book, which represents the compiler as a wild-looking, unkempt, man. Besides these two books Buchan made a large collection of ballads, songs, and poems, which he took down from the oral recitation of the peasantry. These were pronounced by Scott to be "decidedly and indubitably original." The two folio MS. volumes in which they were contained came into the possession of the Percy Society, and a selection was made from them by J. H. Dixon, in 1845, who entitled his work Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads (Percy Society Publications, vol. xvii.).

In 1826 Allan Cunningham published The Songs of Scotland, to which reference has already been made.

George R. Kinloch published in 1827, "Ancient Scottish Ballads, recovered from tradition, and never before published." He states in his introduction that "the present collection is almost entirely composed of ballads obtained in the 'North Countrie,' a district hitherto but little explored, though by no means destitute of traditional poetry."

In this same year appeared William Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ancient and Modern, a work of the most sterling character, which contains the best account of ballad literature extant.

In 1829 Robert Chambers published his collection of Scottish Ballads, which contains eighty pieces, of which number twelve are modern, or imitations. At this period the editor had not elaborated his theory that Sir Patrick Spence and certain other ballads were modern imitations.

Peter Cunningham published The Songs of England and Scotland, in 1835, and Thomas Wright printed The Political Songs of England from the reign of John to that of Edward II. in 1839, for the Camden Society.

In 1840 was founded, in honour of Bishop Percy, the Percy Society, which continued to print some of the old Garlands and various collections of old Ballads until 1852.

William Chappell published in 1840 his valuable Collection of National English Airs, consisting of Ancient Song, Ballad and Dance Tunes, which work was re-arranged and enlarged, and issued in 1855 as Popular Music of the Olden Time. This work is a mine of wealth concerning both the airs and the words of our ballad treasures. It was a truly national undertaking, and has been completed with great skill. No ballad lover can get on without it.

In 1844 Alexander Whitelaw published The Book of Scottish Ballads, and The Book of Scottish Song. An edition of the former was printed in 1875, and one of the latter in 1866, which contains about twelve hundred and seventy songs.

In 1847 John Matthew Gutch published "A Lytell Geste of Robin Hode, with other Ancient and Modern Ballads and Songs relating to this celebrated yeoman."

In the same year appeared Frederick Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, but it is a work of very little value.

Dr. Rimbault printed in 1850 those valuable Musical Illustrations of Bishop Percy's Reliques, which are so frequently quoted in the following pages.

Professor Francis James Child, of Harvard College, one of our greatest authorities on Ballad lore, published at Boston, U.S., a very complete collection of English and Scottish Ballads, in eight volumes. The first volume contains a full list of the principal collections of Ballads and Songs.

In 1858 William Edmondstoune Aytoun published his Ballads of Scotland, which contain collated versions of one hundred and thirty-nine ballads, with short introductions.

The year 1867 was memorable as seeing the publication of the first instalment of the Folio Manuscript under the editorship of J. W. Hales and F. J. Furnivall.

In 1868 appeared "Scottish Ballads and Songs, historical and traditionary, edited by James Maidment, Edinburgh, 1868," 2 vols. The number of pieces is small but select, and the introductions are full and elaborate.

In 1871 Messrs. Ogle of Glasgow published a well edited collection of Scottish Ballads, with an interesting introduction and notes, entitled "The Ballad Minstrelsy of Scotland. Romantic and Historical. Collated and Annotated."

Upon the completion of the Percy Folio, Mr. Furnivall started the Ballad Society, for the publication of the various collections of ballads that exist. Mr. Chappell has edited half of the Roxburghe Ballads in several parts, and Mr. Furnivall himself has printed some interesting ballads from manuscripts. All these have been presented to readers with a wealth of illustrative notes.

The books referred to above form but a portion of the literature of the subject. So mighty has been the growth of the small seed set by Percy, that the despised outcasts which the literary leaders attempted to laugh out of existence have made good their right to a high position among the poetry of the nation, and proved that they possessed the germs of a long and vigorous life.

H. B. W.

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