INTRODUCTION
When the learned first gave serious attention to popular ballads,
from the time of Percy to that of Scott, they laboured under
certain disabilities. The Comparative Method was scarcely
understood, and was little practised. Editors were content to
study the ballads of their own countryside, or, at most, of Great
Britain. Teutonic and Northern parallels to our ballads were then
adduced, as by Scott and Jamieson. It was later that the ballads
of Europe, from the Faroes to Modern Greece, were compared with our
own, with European MARCHEN, or children's tales, and with the
popular songs, dances, and traditions of classical and savage
peoples. The results of this more recent comparison may be briefly
stated. Poetry begins, as Aristotle says, in improvisation. Every
man is his own poet, and, in moments of stronge motion, expresses
himself in song. A typical example is the Song of Lamech in
Genesis -
"I have slain a man to my wounding,
And a young man to my hurt."
Instances perpetually occur in the Sagas: Grettir, Egil,
Skarphedin, are always singing. In KIDNAPPED, Mr. Stevenson
introduces "The Song of the Sword of Alan," a fine example of
Celtic practice: words and air are beaten out together, in the
heat of victory. In the same way, the women sang improvised
dirges, like Helen; lullabies, like the lullaby of Danae in
Simonides, and flower songs, as in modern Italy. Every function of
life, war, agriculture, the chase, had its appropriate magical and
mimetic dance and song, as in Finland, among Red Indians, and among
Australian blacks. "The deeds of men" were chanted by heroes, as
by Achilles; stories were told in alternate verse and prose; girls,
like Homer's Nausicaa, accompanied dance and ball play, priests and
medicine-men accompanied rites and magical ceremonies by songs.
These practices are world-wide, and world-old. The thoroughly
popular songs, thus evolved, became the rude material of a
professional class of minstrels, when these arose, as in the heroic
age of Greece. A minstrel might be attached to a Court, or a
noble; or he might go wandering with song and harp among the
people. In either case, this class of men developed more regular
and ample measures. They evolved the hexameter; the LAISSE of the
CHANSONS DE GESTE; the strange technicalities of Scandinavian
poetry; the metres of Vedic hymns; the choral odes of Greece. The
narrative popular chant became in their hands the Epic, or the
mediaeval rhymed romance. The metre of improvised verse changed
into the artistic lyric. These lyric forms were fixed, in many
cases, by the art of writing. But poetry did not remain solely in
professional and literary hands. The mediaeval minstrels and
JONGLEURS (who may best be studied in Leon Gautier's Introduction
to his EPOPEES FRANCAISES) sang in Court and Camp. The poorer,
less regular brethren of the art, harped and played conjuring
tricks, in farm and grange, or at street corners. The foreign
newer metres took the place of the old alliterative English verse.
But unprofessional men and women did not cease to make and sing.
Some writers have decided, among them Mr. Courthope, that our
traditional ballads are degraded popular survivals of literary
poetry. The plots and situations of some ballads are, indeed, the
same as those of some literary mediaeval romances. But these plots
and situations, in Epic and Romance, are themselves the final
literary form of MARCHEN, myths and inventions originally POPULAR,
and still, in certain cases, extant in popular form among races
which have not yet evolved, or borrowed, the ampler and more
polished and complex GENRES of literature. Thus, when a literary
romance and a ballad have the same theme, the ballad may be a
popular degradation of the romance; or, it may be the original
popular shape of it, still surviving in tradition. A well-known
case in prose, is that of the French fairy tales.
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Perrault, in 1697, borrowed these from tradition and gave them
literary and courtly shape. But CENDRILLON or CHAPERON ROUGE in
the mouth of a French peasant, is apt to be the old traditional
version, uncontaminated by the refinements of Perrault, despite
Perrault's immense success and circulation. Thus tradition
preserves pre-literary forms, even though, on occasion, it may
borrow from literature. Peasant poets have been authors of
ballads, without being, for all that, professional minstrels. Many
such poems survive in our ballad literature.
The material of the ballad may be either romantic or historical.
The former class is based on one of the primeval invented
situations, one of the elements of the MARCHEN in prose. Such
tales or myths occur in the stories of savages, in the legends of
peasants, are interwoven later with the plot in Epic or Romance,
and may also inspire ballads. Popular superstitions, the witch,
metamorphosis, the returning ghost, the fairy, all of them
survivals of the earliest thought, naturally play a great part.
The Historical ballad, on the other hand, has a basis of resounding
fact, murder, battle, or fire-raising, but the facts, being derived
from popular rumour, are immediately corrupted and distorted,
sometimes out of all knowledge. Good examples are the ballads on
Darnley's murder and the youth of James VI.
In the romantic class, we may take TAMLANE. Here the idea of
fairies stealing children is thoroughly popular; they also steal
young men as lovers, and again, men may win fairy brides, by
clinging to them through all transformations. A classical example
is the seizure of Thetis by Peleus, and Child quotes a modern
Cretan example. The dipping in milk and water, I may add, has
precedent in ancient Egypt (in THE TWO BROTHERS), and in modern
Senegambia. The fairy tax, tithe, or teind, paid to Hell, is
illustrated by old trials for witchcraft, in Scotland. (1) Now, in
literary forms and romance, as in OGIER LE DANOIS, persons are
carried away by the Fairy King or Queen. But here the literary
romance borrows from popular superstition; the ballad has no need
to borrow a familiar fact from literary romance. On the whole
subject the curious may consult "The Secret Commonwealth of Elves,
Fauns, and Fairies," by the Reverend Robert Kirk of Aberfoyle,
himself, according to tradition, a victim of the fairies.
Thus, in TAMLANE, the whole DONNEE is popular. But the current
version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by
incongruous modernisms. Burns's version, from tradition, already
localizes the events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and
Yarrow. But Burns's version does not make the Earl of Murray
father of the hero, nor the Earl of March father of the heroine.
Roxburgh is the hero's father in Burns's variant, which is more
plausible, and the modern verses do not occur. This ballad
apparently owes nothing to literary romance.
In MARY HAMILTON we have a notable instance of the Historical
Ballad. No Marie of Mary Stuart's suffered death for child murder.
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She had no Marie Hamilton, no Marie Carmichael among her four
Maries, though a lady of the latter name was at her court. But
early in the reign a Frenchwoman of the queen's was hanged, with
her paramour, an apothecary, for slaying her infant. Knox mentions
the fact, which is also recorded in letters from the English
ambassador, uncited by Mr. Child. Knox adds that there were
ballads against the Maries. Now, in March 1719, a Mary Hamilton,
of Scots descent, a maid of honour of Catherine of Russia, was
hanged for child murder (CHILD, vi. 383). It has therefore been
supposed, first by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe long ago, later by
Professor Child, and then by Mr. Courthope, that our ballad is of
1719, or later, and deals with the Russian, not the Scotch,
tragedy.
To this we may reply (1) that we have no example of such a throwing
back of a contemporary event, in ballads. (2) There is a version
(CHILD, viii. 507) in which Mary Hamilton's paramour is a
"pottinger," or apothecary, as in the real old Scotch affair. (3)
The number of variants of a ballad is likely to be proportionate to
its antiquity and wide distribution. Now only SIR PATRICK SPENS
has so many widely different variants as MARY HAMILTON. These
could hardly have been evolved between 1719 and 1790, when Burns
quotes the poem as an old ballad. (4) We have no example of a poem
so much in the old ballad manner, for perhaps a hundred and fifty
years before 1719. The style first degraded and then expired:
compare ROB ROY and KILLIECRANKIE, in this collection, also the
ballads of LOUDOUN HILL, THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH, and others much
earlier than 1719. New styles of popular poetry on contemporary
events as SHERRIFFMUIR and TRANENT BRAE had arisen. (5) The
extreme historic inaccuracy of MARY HAMILTON is paralleled by that
of all the ballads on real events. The mention of the Pottinger is
a trace of real history which has no parallel in the Russian
affair, and there is no room, says Professor Child, for the
supposition that it was voluntarily inserted by reciter or copyist,
to tally with the narrative in Knox's History.
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On the other side, we have the name of Mary Hamilton occurring in a
tragic event of 1719, but then the name does not uniformly appear
in the variants of the ballad. The lady is there spoken of
generally as Mary Hamilton, but also as Mary Myle, Lady Maisry, as
daughter of the Duke of York (Stuart), as Marie Mild, and so forth.
Though she bids sailors carry the tale of her doom, she is not
abroad, but in Edinburgh town. Nothing can be less probable than
that a Scots popular ballad-maker in 1719, telling the tale of a
yesterday's tragedy in Russia, should throw the time back by a
hundred and fifty years, should change the scene to Scotland (the
heart of the sorrow would be Mary's exile), and, above all, should
compose a ballad in a style long obsolete. This is not the method
of the popular poet, and such imitations of the old ballad as
HARDYKNUTE show that literary poets of 1719 had not knowledge or
skill enough to mimic the antique manner with any success.
We may, therefore, even in face of Professor Child, regard MARY
HAMILTON as an old example of popular perversion of history in
ballad, not as "one of the very latest," and also "one of the very
best" of Scottish popular ballads.
ROB ROY shows the same power of perversion. It was not Rob Roy but
his sons, Robin Oig (who shot Maclaren at the plough-tail), and
James Mohr (alternately the spy, the Jacobite, and the Hanoverian
spy once more), who carried off the heiress of Edenbelly. Indeed a
kind of added epilogue, in a different measure, proves that a poet
was aware of the facts, and wished to correct his predecessor.
Such then are ballads, in relation to legend and history. They
are, on the whole, with exceptions, absolutely popular in origin,
composed by men of the people for the people, and then diffused
among and altered by popular reciters. In England they soon won
their way into printed stall copies, and were grievously handled
and moralized by the hack editors.
No ballad has a stranger history than THE LOVING BALLAD OF LORD
BATEMAN, illustrated by the pencils of Cruikshank and Thackeray.
Their form is a ludicrous cockney perversion, but it retains the
essence. Bateman, a captive of "this Turk," is beloved by the
Turk's daughter (a staple incident of old French romance), and by
her released. The lady after seven years rejoins Lord Bateman: he
has just married a local bride, but "orders another marriage," and
sends home his bride "in a coach and three." This incident is
stereotyped in the ballads and occurs in an example in the Romaic.
(2)
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Now Lord Bateman is YOUNG BEKIE in the Scotch ballads, who becomes
YOUNG BEICHAN, YOUNG BICHEM, and so forth, and has adventures
identical with those of Lord Bateman, though the proud porter in
the Scots version is scarcely so prominent and illustrious. As
Motherwell saw, Bekie (Beichan, Buchan, Bateman) is really Becket,
Gilbert Becket, father of Thomas of Canterbury. Every one has
heard how HIS Saracen bride sought him in London. (Robert of
Gloucester's LIFE AND MARTYRDOM OF THOMAS BECKET, Percy Society.
See Child's Introduction, IV., i. 1861, and MOTHERWELL'S
MINSTRELSY, p. xv., 1827.) The legend of the dissolved marriage is
from the common stock of ballad lore, Motherwell found an example
in the state of CANTEFABLE, alternate prose and verse, like
AUCASSIN AND NICOLETTE. Thus the cockney rhyme descends from the
twelfth century.
Such are a few of the curiosities of the ballad. The examples
selected are chiefly chosen for their romantic charm, and for the
spirit of the Border raids which they record. A few notes are
added in an appendix. The text is chosen from among the many
variants in Child's learned but still unfinished collection, and an
effort has been made to choose the copies which contain most poetry
with most signs of uncontaminated originality. In a few cases Sir
Walter Scott's versions, though confessedly "made up," are
preferred. Perhaps the editor may be allowed to say that he does
not merely plough with Professor Child's heifer, but has made a
study of ballads from his boyhood.
This fact may exempt him, even in the eyes of too patriotic
American critics, from "the common blame of a plagiary." Indeed,
as Professor Child has not yet published his general theory of the
Ballad, the editor does not know whether he agrees with the ideas
here set forth.
So far the Editor had written, when news came of Professor Child's
regretted death. He had lived to finish, it is said, the vast
collection of all known traditional Scottish and English Ballads,
with all accessible variants, a work of great labour and research,
and a distinguished honour to American scholarship. We are not
told, however, that he had written a general study of the topic,
with his conclusions as to the evolution and diffusion of the
Ballads: as to the influences which directed the selection of
certain themes of MARCHEN for poetic treatment, and the processes
by which identical ballads were distributed throughout Europe. No
one, it is to be feared, is left, in Europe at least, whose
knowledge of the subject is so wide and scientific as that of
Professor Child. It is to be hoped that some pupil of his may
complete the task in his sense, if, indeed, he has left it
unfinished.
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