George Wharton Edwards

“ The Lament of the Border Widow My love he built me a bonny bower, And clad it a' wi' a lilye flower, A brawer bower ye ne'er did see, Than my true love he built for me. There came a man, by middle day, He spied his sport and went away, And brought the king that very night, Who brake my bower, and slew my knight. ”

“ Until he came bold Robin to, Then he fell on his knee; "A boon, a boon," cries Little John, "Master, I beg of thee." "What is that boon," quoth Robin Hood, "Little John, thou begst of me?" "It is to burn fair Kirkley-hall, And all their nunnery." "Now nay, now nay," quoth Robin Hood, "That boon I'll not grant thee; I never hurt woman in all my life, Nor man in woman's company. "I never hurt fair maid in all my time, Nor at my end shall it be; But give me my bent bow in my hand, And a broad arrow I'll let flee ”

“ Many a widow with weeping tears Their makes they fetch away. This fray began at Otterburn, Between the night and the day; There the Douglas lost his life, And the Percy was led away. Then was there a Scottish prisoner ta'en, Sir Hugh Montgomery was his name, For sooth as I you say, He borrowed the Percy home again. Now let us all for the Percy pray, To Jesu most of might, To bring his soul to the bliss of heaven, For he was a gentle knight. ”

“ Modern poets have, in several instances, written ballads of striking picturesqueness and power, but as unlike the ballad of popular origin as the world of to-day is unlike the world in which "Chevy Chase" was first sung. These modern ballads are not necessarily better or worse than their predecessors; but they are necessarily different. It is idle to exalt the wild flower at the expense of the garden flower; each has its fragrance, its beauty, its sentiment; and the world is wide! ”

“ I wad my grave were growing green, A winding-sheet drawn ower my een, And I in Helen's arms lying, On fair Kirkconnell lea. I wad I were where Helen lies! Night and day on me she cries, And I am weary of the skies, Since my Love died for me.
Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale Come listen to me, you gallants so free, All you that love mirth for to hear, And I will tell you of a bold outlaw, That lived in Nottinghamshire. As Robin Hood in the forest stood All under the greenwood tree, There he was aware of a brave young man, As fine as fine might be. ”

“ When day was come, and night was gone, And all men wak'd from sleep, Sweet William to his lady sayd, "My dear, I have cause to weep. "I dreamt a dream, my dear ladye, Such dreames are never good: I dreamt my bower was full of red 'wine,' And my bride-bed full of blood." "Such dreams, such dreams, my honoured sir, They never do prove good; To dream thy bower was full of red 'wine,' And thy bride-bed full of blood." ”

“ In the reactions against sophisticated poetry which set in from lime to time, the popular ballad—the true folk-song—has often been exalted at the expense of other forms of verse. It is idle to attempt to arrange the various forms of poetry in an order of absolute values; it is enough that each has its own quality, and, therefore, its own value. The drama, the epic, the ballad, the lyric, each strikes its note in the complete expression of human emotion and experience. ”

“ Sir Patrick Spens The king sits in Dunfermline town, Drinking the blude-red wine; "O whare will I get a skeely skipper, To sail this new ship of mine?" O up and spak' an eldern knight, Sat at the king's right knee, "Sir Patrick Spens is the best sailor, That ever sailed the sea." Our king has written a braid letter, And seated it with his hand, And sent it to Sir Patrick Spens, Was walking on the strand. "To Noroway, to Noroway, To Noroway o'er the faem; The king's daughter of Noroway 'Tis thou maun bring her hame." ”

“ Every man saw that he did so, That ryall was ever in rout; Every man shot his horse him fro, And light him round about. Thus Sir Harry Percy took the field, For sooth as I you say, Jesu Christ in heaven on high, Did help him well that day. But nine thousand, there was no more, If chronicle will not layne; Forty thousand Scots and four That day fought them again, But when the battle began to join, In haste there came a knight, Then letters fair forth hath he ta'en, And thus he said full right: "My lord, your father he greets you well, With many a noble knight ”

“ AUTHOR Here may ye see, that women be In love, meek, kind, and stable; Let never man reprove them then, Or call them variable; But, rather, pray God that we may To them be comfortable; Which sometime proveth such, as he loveth, If they be charitable. For sith men would that women should Be meek to them each one; Much more ought they to God obey, And serve but Him alone.
The Fause Lover A fair maid sat in her bower door, Wringing her lily hands; And by it came a sprightly youth, Fast tripping o'er the strands. "Where gang ye, young John," she says, "Sae early in the day? ”

“ Fair Margaret sat in her bower-wind w, Combing her yellow hair; There she spyed sweet William and his bride, As they were a riding near. Then down she layd her ivory combe, And braided her hair in twain: She went alive out of her bower, But ne'er came alive in't again. When day was gone, and night was come, And all men fast asleep, Then came the spirit of Fair Marg'ret, And stood at William's feet. "Are you awake, sweet William?" shee said, "Or, sweet William, are you asleep? God give you joy of your gay bride-bed, And me of my winding sheet." ”

“ Each belongs to a particular stage of development, and each has the authority and the enduring charm which attach to every authentic utterance of the spirit of man under the conditions of life.
In this wide range of human expression the ballad follows the epic as a kind of aftermath; a second and scattered harvest, springing without regularity or nurture out of a rich and unexhausted soil. The epic fastens upon some event of such commanding importance that it marks a main current of history ”

“ This apparent arrest, in the ballad stage, of a story which seemed destined to become an epic, naturally suggests the vexed question of the author ship of the popular ballads. They are in a very real sense the songs of the people; they make no claim to individual authorship; on the contrary, the inference of what may be called community authorship is, in many instances, irresistible. They are the product of a social condition which, so to speak, holds song of this kind in solution; of an age in which improvisation, singing, and dancing are the most natural and familiar forms of expression. ”

“ In his pronounced reaction against the superficial ideas of literature so widely held in the Germany of his time, he espoused the conception of community authorship as the only possible explanation of the epics, ballads, and other folk-songs. In nature and popular life, or universal experience, he found the rich sources of the poetry whose charm he felt so deeply, and whose power and beauty he did so much to reveal to his contemporaries. Genius and nature are magical words with him, because they suggested such depths of being under all forms of expression ”

“ Herder, whose conception of the origin and function of literature was so vitalizing in the general aridity of thinking about the middle of the last century, and who did even more for ballad verse in Germany than Bishop Percy did in England, laid emphasis almost exclusively on community authorship. His profound instinct for reality in all forms of art, his deep feeling for life, and the immense importance he attached to spontaneity and unconsciousness in the truest productivity made community authorship not only attractive but inevitable to him. ”

“ When the conditions which produced the popular ballads become clear to the imagination, their depth of rootage, not only in the community life but in the community love, becomes also clear. We under stand the charm which these old songs have for us of a later age, and the spell which they cast upon men and women who knew the secret of their birth ”

“ Ye're bidden go take up your love, He's sleeping sound on Yarrow." She's torn the ribbons frae her head That were baith braid and narrow; She's kilted up her lang claithing, And she's awa' to Yarrow. She's ta'en him in her arms twa, And gi'en him kisses thorough; She sought to bind his mony wounds, But he lay dead on Yarrow. "O haud your tongue," her father says, "And let be a' your sorrow; I'll wed you to a better lord Than him ye lost on Yarrow." "O haud your tongue, father," she says, "Far warse ye mak' my sorrow; A better lord could never be Than him that lies on Yarrow." ”

“ In view of such a development of poetry, we must assume a time when the collective consciousness of a people or race is paramount in its unity; when the intellectual life of each is nourished from the same treasury of views and associations, of myths and sagas ”

“ Barger, whose "Lenore" is one of the most widely known of modern ballads, held the same view of the origin of popular song, and was even more definite in his confession of faith than Herder. He declared in the most uncompromising terms that all real poetry must have a popular origin; "can be and must be of the people, for that is the seal of its perfection." ”

“ And, oh! that my young babe were born, And set upon the nurse's knee, And I myself were dead and gane! And the green grass growing over me.
The Nut-brown Maid Be it right, or wrong, these men among On women do complain; Affirming this, how that it is A labour spent in vain To love them wele; for never a dele They love a man again: For let a man do what he can, Their favour to attain, Yet, if a new do them pursue, Their first true lover then Laboureth for nought ”

“ It is certainly true that no kind of verse is so completely out of the atmosphere of modern writing as the popular ballad. No other form of verse has, therefore, in so great a degree, the charm of freshness. In material, treatment, and spirit, these bat lads are set in sharp contrast with the poetry of the hour. They deal with historical events or incidents, with local traditions, with personal adventure or achievement. They are, almost without exception, entirely objective. Contemporary poetry is, on the other hand, very largely subjective ”

“ We have passed so entirely out of the song-making period, and literature has become to us so exclusively the work of a professional class, that we find it difficult to imagine the intellectual and social conditions which fostered improvisation on a great scale, and trained the ear of great populations to the music of spoken poetry. It is almost impossible for us to disassociate literature from writing. ”

“ The note of the popular ballad is its objectivity; it not only takes us out of doors, but it also takes us out of the individual consciousness. The manner is entirely subordinated to the matter; the poet, if there was a poet in the case, obliterates himself. What we get is a definite report of events which have taken place, not a study of a man's mind nor an account of a man's feelings. The true balladist is never introspective; he is concerned not with himself but with his story. ”

“ It was like being present at the birth of a piece of literature!
The fact that unwritten songs and stories still exist in great numbers among remote country-folk of our own time, and that additions are still made to them, help us to understand the probable origin of our own popular ballads, and what community authorship may really mean. To put ourselves, even in thought, in touch with the ballad-making period in English and Scotch history, we must dismiss from our minds all modern ideas of authorship ”

“ Our tongue, compared with the idiom of the savage, seems adapted rather for reflection than for the senses or imagination. The rhythm of popular verse is so delicate, so rapid, so precise, that it is no easy matter to defect it with our eyes ”

“ When to the possession of a mass of traditions and stories and of facility of improvisation is added the habit of singing and dancing, it is not difficult to reconstruct in our own thought the conditions under which popular poetry came into being, nor to understand in what sense a community can make its own songs. ”

“ Chevy Chace God prosper long our noble king, Our liffes and safetyes all; A woefull hunting once there did In Chevy-Chace befall. To drive the deere with hound and horne, Erle Percy took his way; The child may rue that is unborne The hunting of that day. The stout Erle of Northumberland A vow to God did make, His pleasure in the Scottish woods Three summers days to take; The cheefest harts in Chevy-Chace To kill and beare away: These tydings to Erle Douglas came, In Scotland where he lay. Who sent Erie Percy present word, He wold prevent his sport ”

“ It is always, in its popular form, a matter of growth it is direct, simple, free from didacticism; representing, as Aristotle says, "a single action, entire and complete." It subordinates character to action; it delights in episode and dialogue; it is content to tell the story as a story, and leave the moralization to hearers or readers. The popular ballad is so closely related to the popular epic that it may be said to reproduce its qualities and characteristics within a narrower compass, and on a smaller scale. ”

“ Their charm lies, not in their perfection of form, but in their spontaneity, sincerity, and graphic power. They are not rivers of song, wide, deep, and swift; they are rather cool, clear springs among the hills. ”