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'The Pers? owt of Northombarlande, And a vowe to God mayd he,' &c.

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?--

'When as king Henry rul'd the land, The second of that name, Besides the queen he dearly lov'd, A fair and comely dame,' &c.

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; 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.

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 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--

"Words are things, and a small drop of ink Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think."

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.

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 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.

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:--

"While strolling t'other night, I dropped in a house, d'ye see; The landlord so polite, Insisted on treating me; I called for a glass of port, When half-a-bottle he brings; 'How much?'--'Nothing of the sort,' Says he, 'you're a cove wot sings.'"

"Some drunken rhymer thinks his time well spent, If he can live to see his name in print; Who, when he is once fleshed to the presse, And sees his handsell have such faire successe Sung to the wheele and sung unto the payle, He sends forth thraves of ballads to the sale."

"The spinsters and knitters in the sun, And the free maids that weave their thread with bones Do use to chant it."

"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."

"Here is Elderton lying in dust, Or lying Elderton; chuse which you lust. Here he lies dead, I do him no wrong, For who knew him standing, all his life long?"

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

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:--

"I scorn'd your ballad then, though it were done And had for finis, William Elderton,"

"The god of love That sits above, And knows me, and knows me How pitiful I deserve."

"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."

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.

Thomas Middleton, the dramatic poet, who produced the Lord Mayor's pageant for the mayoralty of his namesake, Sir Thomas Middleton , 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 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."

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--

"Thespis, the first professor of our art, At country wakes sung ballads from a cart,"

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.

"In this our spacious isle I think there is not one But he hath heard some talk of him, and little John, And to the end of time the tales shall ne'er be done Of Scarlock, George a Green, and Much the Miller's son. Of Tuck the merry Friar, which many a sermon made In praise of Robin Hood, his outlaws, and their trade."

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--

"In Wakefield there lives a jolly Pinder; In Wakefield all on a green,"

IMITATORS AND FORGERS.

AUTHENTICITY OF CERTAIN BALLADS

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.

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

Mr. Norval Clyne gives a satisfactory answer to the above. He writes:--

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.

'Some sang ring-sangs, dancis, ledis, roundis, With vocis schil, quhil all the dale resounds, Quhareto they walk into their karoling, For amourous layis dois all the rochis ring: Ane sang 'The schip salis over the salt fame, Will bring thir merchandis and my lemane hame.'

'Then bocht he wool, and wyselie couth it wey; And efter that sone saylit he the sey.'"

"The king sits in Dumferling toune, Drinking the blude-reid wine: O quhar will I get guid sail?r To sail this schip of mine?

Up and spak an eldern knicht, Sat at the kings richt kne: Sir Patrick Spence is the best sail?r, That sails upon the se."

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

"The first line that Sir Patrick red, A loud lauch lauched he; The next line that Sir Patrick red, The teir blinded his ee."

"Stately stept he east the wa', And stately stept he west, Full seventy years he now had seen Wi' scarce seven years of rest. He liv'd when Britons breach of faith Wrought Scotland mickle wae: And ay his sword tauld to their cost, He was their deadlye fae."

"Have owre, have owre to Aberdour, It's fiftie fadom deip, And thair lies guid Sir Patrick Spence, Wi' the Scots lords at his feit."

"'As fast I've sped owre Scotlands faes,'-- There ceas'd his brag of weir, Sair sham'd to mind ought but his dame, And maiden fairly fair. Black fear he felt, but what to fear He wist nae yet; wi' dread Sai shook his body, sair his limbs, And a' the warrior fled."

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."

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.

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