NOTES.

The history of our traditional ballad poetry is very succinctly and exactly given by Mr. Allingham. It was "composed by unlearned men for popular audiences, passing from mouth to mouth and generation to generation of singers and reciters, dull and clever, undergoing numerous alterations by reason of slips of memory, personal tastes, local adaptations and prejudices, additions, omissions, patches, and lucky thoughts," -and later it was transferred into the editorial laboratories, there sifted, mixed, shaken, clarified, improved (or the contrary), no one can ever tell how much."

First in such editorial importance (though Allan Ramsay set the work agoing in his Tea-Table Miscellany so early as 1724) is Bishop Percy, who accidentally came into possession of a certain FOLIO MANUSCRIPT (transcriber unknown, but the copy guessed to be of the date of 1650, or thereabout), a "scrubby, shabby paper" book, "used to light the fire," and picked up from the floor of a friend's house, said MS. containing nearly two hundred old ballads and songs, some whole, some mutilated. So possessed, he conceived the idea of publication, and accordingly in 1765 brought out three volumes-" Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, consisting of old heroic Ballads, Songs, and other pieces of our earlier Poets with some few of later date "; a very miscellaneous gathering of one hundred and seventy-six pieces, of which forty-five were taken from the Folio MS., not without patches, emendations, additions, and adaptations to the taste of the period. The fashion taking, he was followed by other collecting editors; by Herd in 1769; Pinkerton, 1781; Sir Walter Scott (Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border), 1802; Jamieson, 1806; and a host of others, Motherwell, Cunningham, Finlay, Kinloch, Buchan, Chambers, etc. All these editors, without exception, were more or less menders and improvers, collating the various anonymous writings or

oral transmissions that came within the scope of their research, associating (as Robert Chambers says of his own procedure) "the best stanzas and the best lines, nay, even the best words of the various copies extant" ("some of them in no fewer than six different forms "); making as free with the texts before them as if the ballads had been of their own writing, and often not hesitating to insert their own as ancient originals.

Allan Ramsay, says Professor Aytoun, "never felt any hesitation in altering, retouching, and adding"; Burns did as pleased him with the ancient songs he contributed to Johnson's Scots' Musical Museum; even Sir Walter's Minstrelsy is not authentic, though it may be that the ballads "have gained by his treatment "; Jamieson "put in many stanzas," says Allingham; and Herd's is "an indiscriminate gathering ""-"no authorities given;" of Pinkerton's Tragic Ballads Ritson declares that "systematic forgery pervades the whole;" Buchan, "a most daring forger," says Dyce, has scarcely anything to be trusted as genuine"; Professor Child has no confidence" in the "souvenirs of Allan Cunningham; and most industrious and sceptical Robert Chambers owns to altering "for the sake of completing the narrative in a consistent manner. Our one valuable edition is that in eight volumes (Boston, 1864) by Professor Francis James Child, and he had to build with the scattered bricks and rubble within his reach. It was only in 1867, then mainly through his persistent urging, that the famous Folio Manuscript was put in print, edited by Messrs. Hales and Furnival; and we could see at least some veritable remains, or ruins, of old time.

But the Folio itself is by an illiterate writer, and of none of the ballads, there or elsewhere, can we obtain anything better than a very doubtful text. In the present selection the principle adopted has been as far as possible to choose a single likeliest version rather than to make patchwork from various editings; and the spelling (very careless in all the "originals") has been corrected and modernized, except in doubtful words, or where rhyme or rhythm or dialectic flavour forbade an alteration.

"cor

THOMAS THE RHYMER. From Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. Given by him from a copy obtained from a lady, rected and enlarged" by another MS. "Thomas the Rhymer, or Thomas of Ercildoun, is the Scottish Merlin, whose prophecies, supposed to have been learned by him in Fairy-land, were household words throughout Scotland. Eildon (or Ercildoun) is the name of a hill near Melrose.

KEMPION. Scott's Minstrelsy. Kempion is Champion, There is a Danish ballad essentially the same. The characteristic incident of the story (a maiden transformed into some kind of monster, and only to be

restored to her proper shape by the kiss of a knight) is, says Professor Child, "as common in the popular fiction of the North as Scott asserts it to be in chivalrous romance." Estmere, the opposite of West-mere-land, seems to locate the story to the rocky coast of Northumberland.

THE BOY AND THE MANTLE. From the Percy Folio: omitting some later stanzas, describing further tests of chastity by means of a knife and a drinking-horn, which have a look of additions to the story.

KING ARTHUR'S DEATH. From the Percy Folio. Prefixed to the ballad in our text the Folio has ninety-six lines, in which Arthur, in his own person, recounts his former battles; and following our text are other stanzas telling what became of the Duke. Neither prefix nor appendix appears to fairly belong to the Death of Arthur.

KING ESTMERE. Given by Percy in the Reliques "from two copies, one of them in the Folio, but which contained very great variations." Neither copy exists, and Percy owns to having torn up that in the Folio. There is no knowing therefore how much of the present version may be his own. In the eighth stanza, he prints

"Thus the renisht them to ryde

and a later stanza has

Of twoe good renisht steeds,"

"And thus they renisht them to ryde

On tow good renish steedes."

So literatim. Taking into account this manifest incapacity for spelling, and in the absence of any explanation of the word renisht, furnish'd may perhaps be allowed as a possible reading.

SIR CAWLINE. From the Percy Folio. It is worth giving in the fragmentary state in which it there appears, if only to show the condition in which many of our old ballads have come into the hands of editors. Great must have been the temptation to restore, if not to amend! In the first edition of Percy's Reliques the two hundred and one lines are increased to three hundred and ninety-two, with a tragic and sentimental ending. Failing to find the meaning of swire (neck) Percy invented a squire (a dwarf) to carry the five heads for the Giant. He has omitted the advenVery probably it does not belong to it. For means yet,

ture with the lion. in the line

For some deeds of arms fain would I do.

Christ his (Christ's) lay, or lay-land, means the earth, between hell and heaven.

He brought him off his hand

That is, he cut off his hand.

THE EARL OF MAR'S DAUGHTER. From Buchan's Ancient Ballads: an unlikely place for accuracy. Similar stories are found throughout the North and elsewhere. Our text follows some corrections by Allingham; and omits some unnecessary and evidently spurious stanzas.

SIR ALDINGAR. From the Percy Folio. The story in its essentials, says Child, is found also in Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands; and has furnished the theme for various romances and tragedies. It likewise occurs in connection with historical personages, not only in England, but also in Germany, France, Italy, and Spain.

The only variations from the Folio in our text, here or elsewhere (except spelling and the omission of plainly redundant words) are marked in parenthesis. Unless so marked the copied text is strictly adhered to. Percy's version in the Reliques is "corrected" and smoothed, and has new incidents by the good bishop himself. The remainder of the line beginning With a Mu had been torn out of the Folio manuscript.

CHILD MAURICE. From the Percy Folio. Professor Child (edition 1864) gives it as Gil Morrice," as it stands in the Reliques; but degrades to the margin twelve stanzas as "undoubtedly spurious." Even so stinted, the version has many stanzas not in the Folio, from which it else varies considerably. Motherwell gives a third version as "Child Noryce." Child means simply a youthful knight, a word answering to the French damoiseau.

GLASGERION. From the Percy Folio: not materially altered in the Reliques. There is a Scottish inferior version of the same story, under the title of "Glenkindie." The little pen-knife" is the dagger, stuck in the garter, carried for their protection, by women, dancing girls in the East, and others.

TAMLANE. Professor Child's version of this differs widely from that in Scott's Minstrelsy. Child also inserts additional stanzas from other versions. In the absence of any authoritative text, the only possible treatment seems to be to keep what is necessary for the story, and leave out apparent modernizations.

SIR PATRICK SPENS. Scott's Minstrelsy. Percy's Reliques contains a shorter version. The ballad is supposed to refer to some expedition on account of Margaret, the "Maid of Norway," daughter of Alexander the Third, of Scotland. She was taken to Norway in 1281, to be married to Eric, King of Norway, and the Scottish historian Fordoun speaks of the drowning of nobles on their way back.

CHEVY CHACE, or THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT: the name of Chevy-Chace generally given to a later version. The copy of our earlier ballad, from a manuscript in the Ashmolean collection at Oxford, is in the British Museum Library, in black letter, in the preface to Hearne's Gulielmus Newbrigensis. The manuscript is signed by the transcriber, Richard Sheale, and the authorship has been attributed to him; but the ballad appears to have been popular in Scotland in 1548, before his time of writing. It is probably of the date of Henry the Sixth, and to this rather than to the more modern "Chevy-Chace" Sir Philip Sidney must have referred when he said it moved his heart more than a trumpet, although "evil appareled in the dust and cobweb of an uncivil age." But there is yet another ballad, "The Battle of Otterbourne (describing a recorded battle said to have been fought, near Newcastle, in 1388), which may have been the earliest of the three.

P. 63.-The text in Hearne has

"they made them biers

Of birch and hazel so gray."

"

Probably a mistake of the transcriber. There is nothing gray about the hazel. And see also at the burial of Johnie of Braedislee, p. 67—

"They made a rod o' the hazel bush,

And ane o' the slae-thorn tree."

"An ancient North

JOHNIE OF BRAEDISLEE. Scott's Minstrelsy. dale ballad: with a flavour of Scott, who selects the verses of " greatest merit" from two copies. Lincome twine may be Lincoln green, the usual forester's wear: Lincoln as famous for its green as Coventry for blue. Scott has in the last stanza

"And his gude grey dogs are slain."

THE LOCHMABEN HARper. From Scott; not without a look of his handiwork. Of this, a Scottish ballad, one version gives King Henry instead of the Warden. There is also a very different and later English version (reprinted by the Percy Society) in which the theft is to settle a