A book of old ballads

Preface

Teachers of English are generally agreed that the logical time to use ballads is in the early adolescent period — in the ' m first years of the high school, or perhaps in the last year of the grammar grades — yet the standard ballad anthologies are too full and too unsifted for such use. From these larger collections not only the best known and the most typical examples have been chosen but also the best version of each.

As the ballads were unwritten in the beginning and were orally transmitted for many generations, the spelling of the early manuscripts is the spelling of the transcriber. The fifteenth and sixteenth century ballad-lovers knew the sounds of the words only, and the written forms in which they have been preserved are merely makeshift devices for visualizing those sounds. The more unobtrusive the makeshift, the less is the attention distracted from the sound and the sense, and the nearer are we to receiving the story as the early listeners received it. For this reason familiar words in the ballads in this book are printed in the familiar spelling of to-day except where rhyme or rhythm demanded the retention of an older form. After a student knows the content of a ballad, and appreciates it as a piece of good literature, if some quaint-appearing word rouses his interest in its philological side, he may readily find the older spelling of the same text in Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads.

Unfamiliar words and phrases are explained in the glossary at the end of the book. Many of these are still in common use in England and Scotland, but are defined for the convenience of younger pupils who have not yet discovered them in the writings of Scott, Burns or other masters of English who used dialectal forms.

No one to-day can edit a ballad book without acknowledging overwhelming indebtedness to Professor Child. So far-reaching were his researches and so indisputable were the most of his decisions that all subsequent students in his field have grown accustomed to consult his volumes almost as a dictionary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

English and Scottish Popular Ballads: edited by Francis

James Child. 5 volumes. 1882-1898.

Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: edited by Thomas

Percy. 3 volumes. 1765. (Edition of 1844.) Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: edited by Sir Walter

Scott. 3 volumes. 1802-1803. (Edition prepared by

T. F. Henderson, 1902.) The Legendary and Romantic Ballads of Scotland: edited by Charles Mackay (1861), and containing, slightly

abridged, Motherwell's essay on The Origin and History of

Scottish Ballad Literature.

The Beginnings of Poetry. Francis B. Gummere. 1901. The Popular Ballad. Francis B. Gummere. 1907. The History of Scottish Vernacular Literature. T. F.

Henderson. 1900.

Robin Hood: edited by Joseph Ritson. 2 volumes. 1795. The Great Hero of the Ancient Minstrelsy of England.

Joseph Hunter. 1852.

The History of the Lives and Actions of the Most Famous

Highwaymen. Charles Johnson. 18 14.

Contents

PAGE

Introduction 7

The Twa Sisters 15